Please take 2 minutes today to ask your Representatives to support the ACCESS in Mental Health Act (H.R. 7924). This bill, which APA helped draft, will help reduce mental healthcare provider shortages by increasing access to graduate degrees in mental health fields, including psychology, at all types of minority-serving institutions. This includes Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities.  

As our nation faces a mental health crisis, 158 million U.S. residents —nearly half our population— live in a mental health workforce shortage area. Despite the need for their services, multiple barriers exist to both growing and diversifying the mental health care workforce.  

The ACCESS in Mental Health Act will help to eradicate these barriers by:  

Providing grants to Minority-Serving Institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Asian American, Native Alaskan, and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, and Hispanic Serving Institutions, to create, expand, or improve graduate programs in mental health fields such as psychology, counseling, social work, psychiatry, school mental health, substance use disorder prevention and treatment, and more. 

Providing grants of $10,000 per year to students attending these graduate programs to help cover the cost of attendance. 

Please join our efforts to reduce provider shortages and diversify the psychology workforce today! 

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