March 13, 2021
Dear Friends,
Congress delivered a major milestone this week with the final House passage of our American Rescue Plan, led by President Joe Biden. This bill puts resources in the hands of America’s families, workers, schools, small businesses, healthcare providers and much more. We’re delivering funding to help safely reopen schools and—for the first time—establish a coordinated nationwide vaccination plan. Taken together, these measures will help struggling households on the brink, lift half of America’s poorest children out of poverty, and help America finally turn the corner on this dark chapter of our history.
I was proud to cast my vote for this life-saving legislation, now made law. But our federal response must continue to push further into areas that remain unaddressed—not only in terms of physical effects but also in the mental health impacts caused by COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Senator Amy Klobuchar and I stood together to address this very challenge as we introduced our bipartisan COVID-19 Mental Health Research Act. Our legislation directs research into the effects of this pandemic on the mental health of Americans, with special emphasis on how it is impacting our children and our frontline health care providers.
Specifically, our bill authorizes $100 million annually through 2025 to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to conduct research on:
- The mental health impact of COVID–19 on health care providers
- Long-term impacts of COVID-19 stressors on mental health
- How we can strengthen our mental health response to COVID-19, including adapting to or providing additional services for new or increasing mental health needs
- The reach, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of digital mental health interventions
- The effectiveness of strategies for implementation and delivery of evidence-based mental health interventions and services for underserved populations
- On the rising threat of suicide and how we can respond to it
- Other mental health impacts on America’s children and adolescents
A few days after introducing our bill, Senator Klobuchar and I hosted a mental health forum to raise awareness and push for this urgently needed legislation. We were joined by Dr. Brenda Robinson, CEO of the Black Nurses Coalition; Glenn Liebman, CEO of the Mental Health Association in NYS; Andrea Smyth, Executive Director of the NYS Coalition for Children’s Behavioral Health; and Sue Abderholden, Executive Director of NAMI Minnesota. This all-star group of health care advocates shared powerful insights and personal experiences from the past year as they each grappled with our nation’s growing mental health crisis. Their stories made it clear; the American people are suffering and we must act.
Studying these impacts will give us clues for how we can better support our medical professionals, emergency responders, struggling families, and children alike, and provide them and all Americans in need with the resources necessary to recover and rebuild from this pandemic.
So even as we cheer the passage of the American Rescue Plan, let us look to the future again and continue to lay plans that will become our next steps to heal our communities. I, for one, will not stop pushing to move smart bipartisan legislation forward to ensure we deliver hope, understanding and a path forward for our fellow Americans who need us, now more than ever.
And, as always, thank you for reading.
Your friend,
DID YOU KNOW?
Throughout this pandemic, my office and I have worked to make sure you remain informed with the latest updates and recommendations on any and all COVID-19 related topics. With that in mind here is some information from the IRS that may be of interest to you: