The State of Maryland Earns Millions in Mental Health Grants

The Maryland Department of Health (MDH) has announced over $48 million in mental health-related grants. The funding for these grants is being allocated through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Supporting mental health programs is critical to maintaining a healthy society. After the pandemic, people of all ages and genders started seeing significant spikes in mental health-related issues. This has made it even more crucial to ensure the proper organizations have the resources needed to provide mental health care.

“Addressing head-on the mental health and substance use challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified is instrumental to Maryland’s successful recovery,” MDH Secretary Dennis R. Schrader said. “This new funding will enable us to strengthen programs and services for the Marylanders who have been most severely impacted, including those experiencing mental illness, homelessness and opioid use disorders.”

Grants for Those Who Need It

The funding awarded through the SAMHSA will go toward funding at least 15 imperative mental-health and substance abuse related initiatives.

Allocation of this funding came from two separate state programs. One of these programs helps specifically with people who are suffering from serious mental health conditions. The second focuses on addressing substance abuse disorders.

$16 million will go toward:

• Early serious mental illness services, including early intervention in psychosis, evidence-based approaches to crisis reduction and management among those with emerging psychosis symptoms
• Crisis care infrastructure, including the Care Traffic Control system
• Suicide prevention and weapons safety training for service members, veterans and their families
• Critical Time Intervention to help people experiencing homelessness, with serious mental illness, or with substance use disorder during periods of transition
• Readmission reduction programs to provide case management support for people repeatedly hospitalized for psychiatric-related crisis or interventions
• Expansion of Family Peer Support and navigation to strengthen equitable distribution of services to more Maryland families

The other $32 Million will go toward:

• Workforce development and substance use prevention programs for local health departments
• Programs to address behavioral health services gaps for Hispanic residents to support systematic and comprehensive services around trauma and related behavioral health disorders 
• Programs for pregnant women and women with children, ensuring women and their children can be treated together, reducing the need for family separation
• A new technology platform to allow recovery residences to collect outcome data at the residence, program and system levels
• Expansion of peer support in opioid treatment programs
• A management initiative to actively engage patients who may otherwise be difficult to treat through positive reinforcements and motivational incentives 
• Expansion of child crisis services 
• COVID-19 point-of-care testing for substance use residential treatment providers
• HIV/AIDS services 

The funding for these grants came from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act.

GrantNews Notes

Funding key mental health initiatives in Maryland will help ensure that more residents can gain access to proper care. GrantWatch has a category for mental health related grants and one for substance abuse related grants. Consider signing up for a paid GrantWatch subscription.