Giving Compass' Take:

• DJ Jaffe covers the Trump administration's consideration of mental health care initiatives including funding institutions and reforming civil commitment.

• What are some barriers that exist to providing quality mental health care, and how can donors advocate for mental health patients?

• Read about the funding gap for mental health.

Mental health advocates were delighted to read recent media reports stating that the Trump administration is researching several initiatives designed to improve treatment of the seriously mentally ill.

There are two important initiatives that should be on the table. Those are increasing the number of psychiatric hospitals and reforming procedures for involuntary commitment (known as “civil commitment”).

To achieve his objective of increasing the number of hospital beds, President Trump should work with Congress to eliminate the Institutes for Mental Disease (IMD) Exclusion embedded in Medicaid. The IMD Exclusion prevents states from receiving Medicaid funds for seriously mentally ill adults when they reside in a state psychiatric hospital. The only way states can get Medicaid funds for hospitalized mentally ill adults is to kick them out of the psychiatric hospitals, at which point Medicaid will reimburse them for their care. Homelessness, arrest and incarceration are the inevitable results of evicting people from hospitals who need hospital care. It’s not fair and it’s not compassionate.

When it comes to civil commitment, the most important change that President Trump can propose is increasing the use of assisted outpatient treatment (AOT), a procedure that allows judges — after full due process — to commit the few seriously mentally ill who are historically and potentially dangerous to stay in up to one year of outpatient treatment.

Those who claim that allowing Medicaid to fund psychiatric hospitalization will return us to the days of “snake-pit” hospitals are wrong. It was the lack of money that created the snake pits. Giving hospitals more money will enable them to deliver care that is truly therapeutic.

Read the full article about the two important mental health reforms that should be considered by DJ Jaffe at Manhattan Institute.