Last Friday, Governor Janet Mills proposed providing nearly $20 million to strengthen Maine’s behavioral health system as a part of her change package to the 2022-23 supplemental budget. The funding, which will provide for improvements in Maine’s behavioral health infrastructure and MaineCare rates for behavioral health providers, is just the latest investment Governor Mills has made in bolstering the state’s behavioral system. The progress achieved by those investments has been crucial for Maine people who need behavioral health care, particularly after eight years of Paul LePage, who neglected the system.

During his time in the Blaine House, Paul LePage:

  • Cut eligibility for mental health care that resulted in thousands of Maine people losing access to vital behavioral health services like case management and daily living supports

  • Rejected federal funds to help young Mainers with mental illness, adding to LePage’s long record of forfeiting federal money that could have improved lives

  • Fought against staff at Maine’s mental health institutions by vetoing legislation to increase their wages and decrease turnover, and instituting a mental health staff hiring freeze when he didn’t get his way

  • Supported legislation to put mental health patients in prison, even if they had never been convicted of a crime

  • Focused his efforts on developing a small “step-down” psychiatric facility to be run by an out-of-state private prison company, which the Press Herald decried as a “a testament to the governor’s pettiness and an example for future state officials of the exact wrong way to address a public health crisis”

“Behavioral health care is an essential service that provides a lifeline to some of the most at-risk people in our state,” said Drew Gattine, Chair of the Maine Democratic Party. “It was absolutely horrifying to watch Paul LePage fight against not just those vulnerable Mainers, but the behavioral and mental health workers who provided them with care. Undoing LePage’s damage and working together with providers to improve our behavioral health system is just one of the many, many ways in which Governor Mills has made our state a better place. We can’t let LePage undo our progress.”

In addition to the total $230 million invested in the behavioral health system in the 2022-23 budget, Governor Mills has worked with Democrats in the legislature to:

  • Address the shortage in mental health care workers

  • Include funding increases for behavioral health in each budget she has approved

  • Set up a long term, comprehensive plan to strengthen Maine’s mental health system

  • Expand mental health crisis services across the state

***