The Indiana Behavioral Health Commission has released recommendations for the upcoming session. (Getty Images)
In 2022, the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission (INBHC) released a report citing the fiscal impact of untreated mental illness in Indiana at $4 billion. This report was critical in elevating the issue of Hoosier mental health to a top priority and bringing it to its highest funding levels in state history.
Over the last few years the commission — in collaboration with the Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Division of Mental Health & Addiction, and community partners — has worked diligently to address this issue. Their biggest wins being the successful roll out of the 988 Initiative, earning additional Project AWARE funding from the federal government, and the Certified Community Behavioral Mental Health Clinics.
On Oct. 1, the group released its 2024 report with recommendations, and to their credit, they did not let the upcoming contentious budget landscape scare them. They are aiming for the fences.
What seems most squarely in their sights are Hoosier kids. This year’s report unapologetically takes a much needed proactive and preventive stance. With focuses on youth with high acuity needs, kids with disabilities, and infrastructure needs as top priorities. This year’s report also pushes for more strategic partnerships and inner agency collaboration. Most specifically, the report notes the need for the Family and Social Services Administration, Indiana Department of Education and the General Assembly to work together to ensure that all schools in Indiana have the resources to implement the Comprehensive School Mental Health Framework to address the social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs amongst students and their communities.
While this sounds easy, there is no clear roadmap for implementation, funding, or the eventual return on investment for Indiana taxpayers.
According to the guidance from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the national gold standard for Comprehensive School Mental Health Frameworks, data and funding are core principles to ensuring that these school based efforts are effective.
Opportunity: New policies are being implemented to advance innovative and locally responsive ideas and services.
Challenge: Multiple systems involved in school mental health (e.g., education, health, behavioral health) operate in a disconnected or fragmented way.
Strategy: Connect mental health to other academic outcomes
While the 2024 INBHC report is moving us toward the opportunity and challenges outlined, it falls short by not recommending the data collection necessary for showing an impact of mental health on academic achievement. Indiana school-based data systems and mental health-based data systems are not linked in a systemic way. Hence, academic and mental health data in Indiana do not currently inform each other. Setting up reliable and confidential data infrastructure will be a critical component to ensuring these efforts are successful.
Everyone agrees that Indiana schools are the point of access to kids and that we have a crisis level need for school based mental health services in schools. Unfortunately, we seem to forget that schools are judged, and funded, by their ability to put academic achievement points on the scoreboard.
While the INBHC report makes these recommendations, schools across Indiana are facing funding challenges and more than 14,000 Hoosier third graders still can’t pass the state IREAD test. If we continue to push recommendations for schools that only leverage them as an access point for services, without tangibly supporting their mandated mission of increasing academic achievement, we will miss the biggest opportunity we have; to conquer the great data divide between health and education. As we push for schools to offer more mental health services AND increase their literacy rates we must directly align their data systems.
The latest commission report should serve as the catalyst the General Assembly needs to begin addressing cross sector data infrastructure efforts. The only remaining question is whether lawmakers will follow the proactive lead the commission has laid out. Will legislators take this opportunity to embrace innovation and invest in education and health or overlook the opportunity?
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