Modern Healthcare (6/5, Robeznieks, Subscription Publication) reports that on June 2, by a 417-10 vote, “the US House of Representatives…approved funding to give crisis-intervention training to police on de-escalating violent confrontations with people who have behavioral-health problems and to fund ‘mental health courts’ that seek to provide psychiatric care instead of” incarceration.
The funding “will be available through block grants under the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program.” Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) reintroduced a “new version of his Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act,” which American Psychiatric Association president Renée Binder, MD, praised in a news release (6/5) as “strengthening enforcement of mental health parity, enhancing the psychiatric workforce, ensuring better coordination of federal resources, and improving research and treatment for persons with mental illness, including substance use disorders.”
Related Links:
— “House OKs funding to train police, create courts to deal with mentally ill,” Andis Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare, June 4, 2015.