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Mississippi is one of 10 states joining a federal program that funds community mental health centers to expand their services, enabling them to sustainably provide care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.
Two regional community mental health centers were selected to host pilot programs, and will receive four years of federal Medicaid funding to help cover expenses. The pilot centers are Communicare, covering north-central Mississippi, and LifeHelp covering rural counties in the Delta. Leadership at the mental health centers see this support as a lifeline in a system that has struggled to stay financially afloat.
“It’s truly a transformational moment for our public mental health system,” said Phaedre Cole, executive director of LifeHelp.
Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, addresses the impact of funding cuts to addiction programs at the Fairland Center in Dublin, Miss., on Monday, April 28, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
The Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic model is the “gold-standard” when it comes to behavioral therapy, Cole told Mississippi Today, because it creates an accountability-focused framework to cover a coordinated system of care. In states that have shifted to this model, clinics have expanded treatment options beyond therapy, reduced wait times and increased staffing, data from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing shows.
Other recently added states included Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Washington and West Virginia, according to a May 28 press release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Participating mental health centers must “provide 24/7 crisis care, timely outpatient services, and access to a comprehensive range of services” to any patient seeking mental health care, the press release said.
Congress created the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic Medicaid Demonstration Program in 2014, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, amid growing awareness about the need for community solutions for mental health treatment. “At the core of this program is the belief that everyone deserves access to behavioral health services and treatment, something DMH wholeheartedly stands behind,” wrote Adam Moore, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Mental Health.
Mississippi’s entry into the demonstration program comes after a 2025 bill authored by Sen. Rod Hickman, a Democrat from Shuqualak, directed the Department of Mental Health and state Division of Medicaid to apply for the program. Mississippi first applied in 2024, but was not selected that round.
Hickman said the funding opens up resources for local clinics, and told Mississippi Today he is excited to see how the program is implemented at community mental health centers.
“I’ve talked a lot with the CMHCs over the last year, and a lot of them have been saying that they are worried about collapsing,” he said. “[The program] allows for our mental health facilities to provide more services and benefits to the people that they serve.”
In Mississippi, four regional centers have closed since 2013, citing financial difficulties and stretching the coverage area of the remaining 12. Currently, community mental health centers operate under the “fee for service” model, which reimburses providers for billable appointments. This system rewards volume over value and doesn’t cover all of their costs, Cole said.
By contrast, the certified behavioral health clinic model is a “prospective payment system” that has fixed reimbursements for a set of services, including ones the traditional model doesn’t cover. It is designed to pay a clinic back for providing a system of comprehensive care, such as through preventative screenings, treatment planning, case management and peer support.
This program is rolled out through Medicaid, making it more reliable than the patchwork of grants community mental health centers across the country have historically relied on, Cole said.
“You can’t really plan for the future when you don’t know if those grants are going to be there or not,” she said. “This is predictability that we desperately need.”
House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany who authored the bill in his chamber, pointed to around-the-clock care as a high impact area for patients.
“If a problem arises and it’s not during working hours, they end up being held in jail or the emergency room,” Creekmore said. “This provides them a place to go and be treated.” he said, adding that he hopes to see the program implemented across the state by 2030.
As the executive director of a statewide organization for families of children with behavioral needs, Joy Hogge is more skeptical. The organization called Families as Allies has supported the certified behavioral health clinic model since at least 2021, their website shows. But when Mississippi applied for the demonstration program, Hogge said family advocates were excluded from planning.
Joy Hogge, retiring executive director of Families as Allies, speaks at an interview with Mississippi Today. Credit: Taylor Vance / Mississippi Today
“It just seems bizarre to me that if you really want everyone at the table and all the different perspectives, I would assume that peer support would be a big part of this,” she said. To her knowledge, neither her group nor any other end users of the system, the people who receive treatment, were contacted to provide feedback on the application.
Hogge said she is concerned the program will change community mental health centers’ billing structure, but not provide the systemic change she sees as necessary.
“I think there’s definitely a risk that nothing will change as far as how responsive the system is to people,” she said. “I also think there’s a risk that Medicaid dollars won’t be used wisely.”
Still, she sees the opportunity the program funding provides, especially for at-home treatment options for youth behavioral health treatment. The potential for providers getting rewarded based on their patients’ outcomes is exciting, for instance if Mississippi chooses to offer clinics an end-of-year bonus for meeting certain benchmarks. She hopes that centers will actively seek feedback from people with lived experiences, update peer support requirements alongside peer-run organizations, and coordinate with schools to keep children in classroom learning rather than pulling them out for therapy sessions.
Although Hogge will be retiring from Families as Allies by June 30, she plans to keep an eye on the demonstration program rollout and response from the pilot mental health centers.
Meanwhile, Cole is enthusiastic about the program’s implications and grateful to the Mississippi departments that wrote the application.
“This certainly gives me renewed hope,” she said. “This is not just a model that improves care, but it’s also a sustainability piece.” When the four years of the pilot are up, she hopes that Mississippi continues to opt in to the program, and to see the model become the statewide standard.
Mississippi Today mental health reporter Allen Siegler contributed to this reporting.
This story was produced with support from the Sarah Yelena Haselhorst Fund for Health Journalism.
