Lawmakers address mental health with bill proposals

DOVER — State lawmakers unveiled a series of bills Thursday that address mental health issues for children and adults through proposals such as annual wellness checks and more practitioners in middle schools.

House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst, D-Bear, announced the three bills as a continuation of recent efforts to vastly improve mental health services for Delawareans.

A chief proposal would require Delaware health insurers to cover a yearly behavioral health well check for every insured person, putting mental health on par with other routinely covered preventive services, such as annual physicals or cancer screenings.

Additional legislation from Rep. Longhurst would hire more mental health practitioners for schools and equip educators with a comprehensive mental health curriculum at all grade levels, building on a successful effort last year to expand those types of services to children.

“We know that unaddressed trauma leads to lifelong mental health challenges, substance use disorders, as well as higher rates of incarceration and negative health behaviors, including suicide,” Rep. Longhurst said in a press release. “Untreated mental health issues impact a person’s physical health and create costly outcomes over the course of their lifetime. These costs ripple throughout our health care system, our criminal justice system, and our economy at large.

“We encourage people all the time to get an annual physical, enroll in a diabetes prevention program, schedule a mammogram, see your gynecologist, get screened for colon cancer, the list goes on. These are all covered by insurance. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health.”

House Bill 303 would guarantee insurance coverage for an annual, pre-deductible visit with a licensed mental health clinician with at least a master’s degree.

The behavioral well check would require a review of medical history, an evaluation of adverse childhood experiences and use of a validated screening tool.

“We can’t begin to address the mental health crisis in this nation until we make sure everyone has access to affordable mental health services,” said Sen. Nicole Poore, D-New Castle, prime Senate sponsor of HB 303. “This legislation takes a major step forward in that effort by making Behavioral Health Well Check as routine and accessible as an annual visit to your primary care doctor.”

According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, every dollar invested in mental health can yield up to 10 times the savings in health care, criminal and juvenile justice, and lost productivity,

For example, an annual behavioral health well check could diagnose someone with mild depression, which can be treated with therapy. But severe depression that goes undetected could require longer-term treatment, costly medication and even more intensive services.

“By adding a Behavioral Health Well Check to pre-deductible, preventative healthcare plans, we are telling people that mental health is a critical part of total body health,” said Carolyn Petrak, associate executive director of the Ability Network of Delaware. “With the passage of Behavioral Health Well Checks we can take a giant step towards true parity and give individuals and families the resources to prioritize mental health the same as the rest of their bodies.

“And by doing this, I wholeheartedly believe we will be taking a very significant step at destigmatizing the care of our mental well-being.”

Dr. Meghan Walls, legislative and policy adviser with Nemours Children’s Health, agreed and added that prioritizing mental health makes perfect sense.

“We know how imperative mental health services are for people of all ages,” she said. “This legislation does what we know works best, moving things upstream from intervention to prevention. By reimbursing providers for visits before there is a major problem and allowing people to see mental health as part of preventive medicine, we can make a huge impact on the overall wellness of Delawareans.”

Dr. Walls continued, “I’m thrilled that Rep. Longhurst and Sen. Poore understand that, to see true progress, we need policy change across the spectrum, including prevention and integration of behavioral health and medicine.”

HB 300 could expand services for students

The other bills announced Thursday would continue to expand mental health programs in Delaware schools.

HB 300 would create positions for counselors, social workers and psychologists in all Delaware middle schools, effectively lowering the ratio of students to those practitioners.

This legislation, introduced during National School Counseling Week, builds on the passage last year of HB 100, which created a structure to place these professionals in every elementary school statewide.

“We are in the midst of a mental health crisis in Delaware that began well before the pandemic and has only accelerated in the last two years,” said Rep. Longhurst. “Anyone who has paid attention to this issue should be alarmed at the especially brutal toll this crisis has taken on our children.

“Teachers across the state are seeing it every day in their classrooms. So many of their students come to school with significant unmet needs that impact their ability to learn, such as hunger, homelessness, trauma, and other untreated mental health issues. Without adequate resources to support our students, these challenges create the kind of disruptions in school that impact learning and affect all students.”

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 5 youth are affected by a mental health disorder, and untreated mental illness has been shown to lead to an increased risk of dropping out of school, homelessness, substance abuse, chronic illness, incarceration and possibly suicide.

However, students with access to counseling services in school-based health centers are 10 times more likely to seek care for mental health or substance abuse than youth without that availability.

“This legislation continues what we started last year by providing the same support at the middle school level, where children are just beginning the transition into adulthood,” said Sen. Marie Pinkney, D-Bear, the prime Senate sponsor of HB 300. “Having school-based social workers, psychologists and mental health counselors at the ready will help our young people grapple with those challenges and develop the kinds of healthy coping skills that are just as important later in life as their classroom lessons.”

HB 301 addresses concern at each grade

A companion measure, HB 301, would establish a statewide mental health curriculum for K-12, tailored to the developmental needs of students at each level.

“Even before the pandemic, as many as one in 10 teens and children in this country was experiencing severe depression, while the teen suicide rate has increased dramatically over the last decade,” said Sen. Sarah McBride, D-Wilmington, chair of the Senate Health & Social Services Committee and the prime Senate sponsor of HB 301. “Sadly, far too many people never get treatment due to the pervasive stigmas around mental health.”

Chris Locke, co-founder of Newark-based SL24: Unlocke the Light Foundation, said children need all the resources they can get to address mental health issues. His son, Sean, committed suicide in 2018.

“Too many of our children are suffering in silence with mental health issues. Too many of our children do not know where to turn to have an honest conversation about mental illness,” Mr. Locke said. “The stigma is still too great. The darkness is too dark. I know this personally.

“My son Sean was everything you would want in a son; smart, a leader, a tremendous athlete, a friend to so many but for all of his amazing accomplishments he was not equipped to handle his depression and anxiety.”

He added that these proposals will make it easier for children to seek assistance.

“I as (Sean’s) father, we as a society did not teach him to ask for help, to seek help that he needed. Mandatory health education from age 5 to age 18 will substantially remove the stigma and will make it commonplace for us to have honest and open conversations about mental health issues. We need to do this so that our sons, our daughters, and the Seans in all of our lives do not suffer in silence anymore.”

House Bills 300, 301 and 303 are scheduled to be filed in the House today.

Staff writer Mike Finney can be reached at 302-741-8230 or [email protected]. Follow @MikeFinneyDSN on Twitter.