Addiction and Mental Health Centers Pushed To The Brink

By Claudia Smajlaj | DCI

Key Points:

• Addiction and mental health centers are laying off staff while facing a surge in patients

• Almost half of mental health and addiction providers say they can only continue running for six months or less in the current fiscal climate, according to a June survey of more than 660 behavioral health providers

Overwhelmed mental health and addiction treatment centers are struggling to stay afloat after waiting for a promised federal bailout for the healthcare industry that seems to be delayed. This means that a third of these centers have no received any of the $175 billion that the United States Department of Health and Human Services is providing to hospitals and health providers on the front lines.

These centers are facing two major problems. First, being caught in a financial squeeze has required the centers to remove staff while trying to serve new patients. Second, centers are struggling to afford protective gear.

Meanwhile, the burden of the pandemic is driving up mental health crises, a trend experts say could go back on the progress the government has made on the opioid crisis.

Read more at Politico.