Lawmakers gave final approval March 27 to a bill intended to increase access to behavioral health services in Nebraska.<\/p>\n
LB901, introduced by Lincoln Sen. Amanda McGill, requires the University of Nebraska Medical Center\u2019s Behavioral Health Education Center to fund five one-year doctoral-level internships within 12 months of the bill\u2019s enactment. The number of internships will increase to 10 within 36 months.<\/p>\n
Under the bill, interns will be placed in communities where their presence will improve access to behavioral health services for patients residing in rural and underserved areas of Nebraska.<\/p>\n
The bill also requires the state Department of Health and Human Services to establish a mental health first aid training program. The program will:
\n\u2022 help the public identify, understand and respond to the signs of mental illness and substance abuse;
\n\u2022 emphasize the need to reduce the stigma of mental illness; and
\n\u2022 assist persons believed to be developing a mental health or substance abuse problem.<\/p>\n
The program will be administered through the state\u2019s behavioral health regions with instructors certified by a national authority. The department is required to measure the efficacy of the training program and report to the Legislature annually.<\/p>\n
LB901 passed on a 43-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers gave final approval March 27 to a bill intended to increase access to behavioral health services in Nebraska. LB901,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-15320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-and-human-services","tag-sen-amanda-mcgill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15321,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15320\/revisions\/15321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}