HOW YOU CAN JOIN NAMI-MARYLAND FOR LEGISLATIVE DAY AT NOON! (1969 hits)
Join Advocacy Day, Virtually!!
If you cannot attend Advocacay Day with NAMI Maryland today, you can still make a difference! Together, we can send a message loud and clear that we must Keep the Door Open and improve access to timely and effective treatment for individuals with mental illness and their families!!!
The stigma associated with mental illness continues to be a barrier to equal funding and treatment among other important sectors of health care. With the expansion of Medicaid and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the need for behavioral health care services in Maryland continues to grow, while state resources continue to diminish. Individual with mental illness and/or substance use disorders need in-person treatment and that treatment must be readily accessible to the individual in his or her community. Across the state children and adults face waiting lists to access these critical behavioral health services and programs, if the services and programs are even available. Further, the high cost of not treating serious mental illnesses vastly exceeds the cost of treatment. The costs to Maryland are enormous when individuals are unable to access timely and effective treatment—costly treatment in emergency rooms, high rates of incarceration in jails and prisons, high rates of unemployment and lost productivity.
Please help us send the message to Maryland's elected officials that we can no longer ignore years of inadequate and unpredictable provider rate increases. We can no longer ask providers to do more with less. We can no longer allow an individual in need of behavioral health care services to struggle, allow their condition to worsen or allow the individual to become a danger to themselves or others. Families should no longer have to worry that their loved one may cycle into crisis, require expensive inpatient services, be discharged, and cycle down into yet another crisis.
