The country's main mental health agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, commonly known as SAMHSA, is in the process of being dissolved. It has lost more than a third of its staff of about 900 this year as part of recent reductions in the federal workforce. President Trump's budget bill cuts $1 billion from the agency's operating budget, and its mission is being folded into a new entity shaped by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Lawmakers, researchers and health care providers are concerned. At a hearing held by the House Appropriations Committee last month, some Democratic lawmakers grilled the health secretary about this. Rep. Madeleine Dean , representing suburban Philadelphia, asked Kennedy about these changes in light of the recent progress in overd