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Expanding NM’s behavioral health workforce

I serve on the interim Legislative Health and Human Services Committee. During this past summer and fall, our committee held hearings around the state on what we should be working on in the 2023 session. Everywhere we went, the No. 1 issue was the same: there are not enough behavioral health providers to meet the need.
Adding money to expand services is going to be successful only if there are actually social workers, counselors, psychologists and psychiatric nurses available to staff those programs. Right now in our state, there aren’t enough. Our challenge is how to get more behavioral health providers – and quickly.
Here is a seven-point effort we will be advancing to do this. It won’t change the picture overnight completely, but it will start filling the pipeline and we should begin seeing an increased supply of trained professionals within a year or two – if we implement all seven points of this plan.

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