Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California

What is the bipartisan Senate Mental Health caucus?

The bipartisan Senate Mental Health Caucus is a forum for Senators and their staff to collaborate on and promote mental health solutions, hold events to raise awareness of critical mental health issues, and reduce stigma.

The Caucus aims to improve prevention and early intervention efforts, expand the country’s mental health professional workforce, enhance our nation’s crisis response services, and increase access to evidence-based mental health treatment and common-sense solutions for all Americans. The Senate Mental Health Caucus serves our membership through a variety of ways, including keeping offices informed on current issues, highlighting innovative breakthroughs in the behavioral health field, and sharing the work of our colleagues to elevate mental health issues and implement policies to improve the mental health of all Americans. 

Significant progress has been made in our efforts to expand access to quality mental health care. In recent years, Congress has worked on a bipartisan basis to launch the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, permanently expand the successful Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) demonstration program, invest in our mental health workforce, improve access to mental health services through telehealth, expand access to suicide prevention programs for veterans, build out the infrastructure for mental health in K-12 school settings, and more. But our work is not done, as evidenced by the fact that in 2021 more than one-third of those with serious mental illness did not receive any form of mental health care.

As we continue to work towards bipartisan solutions to alleviate the burden of mental illness in the United States, our work in this caucus will serve as the foundation. Research shows us that mental health treatment works, and narrowly tailored policy solutions to treat our most vulnerable populations are critically important. 

The time is now to address these challenges in a collaborative and comprehensive way to ensure our next generation of leaders have access to the tools to live happy, healthy lives. Together we can address our nation’s mental health crisis and improve the American people’s quality of life.