Highlighted Action Steps to Transform the Mental Health System
Principle A: Focus on the Outcomes of Mental Health Care, Including Employment, Self-Care, Interpersonal Relationships, and Community Participation
Action Steps
- Initiate a National Public Education Campaign.
- Launch the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.
- Educate the Public about Men and Depression.
- Respond to refugees' mental health needs.
- Develop prototype individualized plans of care that promote resilience and recovery.
- Provide technical assistance on resilience and recovery.
- Promote the use of customized employment strategies.
- Promote the transition of youth with serious emotional disturbances from school to post-secondary opportunities and/or employment.
- Develop an employer initiative to increase the recruitment, employment, advancement, and retention of people with psychiatric disabilities.
- Assist youth with serious emotional disturbances involved with the juvenile justice system to transition into employment.
- Promote the employment of people with mental illnesses who are chronically homeless.
- Establish a DOL Work Group to promote quality employment of adults with serious mental illnesses and youth with serious emotional disturbances.
- Provide treatment and vocational rehabilitation that supports employment for people with mental disorders.
- Conduct outreach to homeless individuals with mental disorders.
- Initiate a national effort focused on meeting the mental health needs of young children as part of overall health care.
- Create a comprehensive action agenda for implementing throughout the Veterans Health Administration all relevant recommendations of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
- Launch a user-friendly, consumer-oriented Web site.
- Promote ADA compliance, support and work to eliminate unnecessary institutionalization, and help eliminate discrimination.
Principle B: Focus on Community-Level Models of Care that Coordinate Multiple Mental Health and Human Service Providers and Private and Public Payers
Action Steps
- Include issues critical to mental health in health care reform.
- Launch the Federal Executive Steering Committee on Mental Health.
- Build on and expand criminal and juvenile justice and mental health collaborations.
- Support the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.
- Review standards and set guidelines for culturally competent care.
- Create a National Strategic Workforce Development Plan to reduce mental health disparities.
- Initiate a project to examine cultural competence in behavioral health care education and training programs.
- Advance efforts to integrate mental health and primary care services for racial and ethnic minorities.
- Participate in HHS "Close the Gap Initiative."
- Develop a National Rural Mental Health Plan.
- Promote strategies to appropriately serve children at risk for mental health problems in high-risk service systems.
- Develop a demonstration project for children in foster care.
- Foster joint responsibility and implementation strategies for children, youth, adults, and older adults with co-occurring disorders.
- Focus on children in the juvenile justice and child welfare settings.
- Include mental health in Community Health Center consumer assessment tools.
Principle C: Maximize Existing Resources by Increasing Cost Effectiveness and Reducing Unnecessary and Burdensome Regulatory Barriers
Action Steps
- Educate employers and benefits managers on the practicability of paying for mental health care.
- Evaluate and report the impact of mental health parity.
- Initiate Medicaid Demonstration Projects.
- Convene Directors of State Mental Health, State Medicaid, and Regional Medicare Programs.
- Help parents avoid relinquishing custody and obtain mental health services for their children.
- Support the Ticket to Work Program.
- Address reimbursement in primary care.
- Develop a strategy to implement innovative technology in the mental health field.
- Explore creation of a Capital Investment Fund for Technology.
Principle D: Use Mental Health Research Findings to Influence the Delivery of Services
Action Steps
- Accelerate research to reduce the burden of mental illnesses.
- Foster a research partnership.
- Expand the "Science-to-Services" agenda.
- Conduct research to understand co-occurring disorders.
- Harness research to improve care.
- Support research to develop new medications.
- Expand the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices to include mental health.
- Develop new toolkits on specific evidence-based mental health practices.
- Develop the knowledge base in understudied areas.
- Conduct research to reduce mental health disparities.
- Review the literature and develop new studies on mental illness/general health.
- Conduct mental health services research in diverse populations and settings.
- Test new treatments for co-occurring disorders in community settings.
- Disseminate findings of the Juvenile Justice and Mental Health Project.
Principle E: Ensure Innovation, Flexibility, and Accountability at All Levels of Government and Respect the Constitutional Role of the States and Indian Tribes
ActionSteps
- Award State Mental Health Transformation Grants.
- Provide technical assistance to help develop comprehensive State Mental Health Plans.
- Award Child and Adolescent State Infrastructure Grants.
- Track State mental health system transformation activities.
- Establish a foundation for the Samaritan Initiative.
- Establish the Re-Entry Initiative for ex-prisoners with psychiatric disabilities.
- Award Seclusion and Restraint State Incentive Grants.
- Develop statewide systems of care for children with mental disorders.
- Provide technical assistance to States on systems of care for children with serious emotional disturbances and their parents and other family members.
- Convene State leadership to develop statewide plans to serve children with serious emotional disturbances.
- Expand the Partnerships for Youth Transition Grant Program.
- Provide technical assistance on Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT).
- Facilitate linkages between DOL/SSA's joint Disability Program Navigator Initiative, SAMHSA, and related State and local mental health systems.
- Disseminate information on mental health issues through DOL grant and program initiatives.
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