Tackling Minnesota’s mental health crisis
Besides the obvious health concerns and concerns about their livelihoods, many folks have told me the harshest toll they have felt from Covid-19 has been on their mental health. This is particularly true for students.
I am proud of the Senate’s long-term commitment to providing more effective treatments and better supports for individuals who are in crisis or simply trying to improve their mental health. That support continued this year.
We provided a monthly supplementary services rate boost aimed at helping people with mental illnesses obtain stable housing and keep them out of the cycle of jails, shelters, and hospitals. We permanently expanded our groundbreaking telehealth program to include substance use disorders and mental health treatment, allowing more people to have access to this critical care. And we provided resources to support the mental and behavioral health needs of students and children, including creating individualized treatment plans for children in outpatient services.
We also allocated more funding for School-linked Mental Health Grants. This program provides support to students in schools, and it has proven to be one of the “most effective programs at reducing barriers to children and youth accessing mental health treatment,” according to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. These treatments increase accessibility for children and youth who do not have adequate insurance (or lack insurance altogether), improve outcomes, and help us better identify and treat mental health issues in children.
We still have a lot of work to do. But the improvements we have made over the last few years will help a lot of people, and that’s something we should all be proud of. I look forward to making even more progress next session.
October tour of bonding projects begins soon
The Senate’s Capital Investment Committee has continued its tour of the state visiting proposed bonding projects. In September we visited communities all over Northeast Minnesota that had submitted funding requests, including water infrastructure projects in Buhl, Cloquet, and Grand Rapids; a proposed regional public safety center in Hibbing; a flood mitigation project in Mora, and the MinnTac Mine in Mountain Iron.
In mid-October, we set off for southwest Minnesota. That swing included visits at dozens of small communities like Belle Plaine, Fairmont, Sherburn, Wilder, Slayton, Worthington, Marshall, and more to hear their presentations. Many of them have local road improvement projects, flood and water mitigation efforts, sewer improvements and other key infrastructure improvements they are hoping to address.
Deciding how to invest the state’s limited resources is a complicated, difficult task. Each project is incredibly important to the community requesting it, and prioritizing who needs the assistance is not always easy. These tours allow us a chance to get an up-close look at each project and learn much more about it than we ever could in an information pamphlet.
Contact me
If you have any questions about mental health treatment, the next bonding tour or any other legislative issue, feel free to contact me any time at sen.john.jasinski@senate.mn or 651-296-0284. It is a privilege to serve you!