Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2016

The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2016 aims to reorganize the federal approach to mental health by creating a new Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use to oversee and evaluate national programs. The bill focuses on increasing the availability of psychiatric hospital beds, expanding the mental health workforce, and providing grants for community-based crisis response and suicide prevention. For families and patients, the legislation seeks to improve access to care by clarifying privacy laws to allow better communication between doctors and caregivers, while also strengthening "mental health parity" to ensure insurance companies cover mental health services at the same level as physical health services.