Mississippi mental health organizations say they lost at least $9.2 million when the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration terminated grants across the country Tuesday, a loss they say could be devastating for Mississippians.
The federal agency cut hundreds of mental health and addiction grants that are estimated to be worth roughly $2 billion, according to NPR. The news organization reported many of these grants went directly to private nonprofit organizations.
Melody Madaris, executive director of the North Mississippi community mental health center Communicare, said the cuts had also severely impacted organizations like hers. Four of Mississippi’s 12 community mental health centers had federal cuts to their organization totaling $8.7 million.
About $3.7 million of those terminations are coming from grants for Communicare, Madaris said. Most of her organization’s cuts were for efforts to prevent addiction-related overdoses and to connect children with mental health services.
Madaris said Communicare had consistently shown through measures such as job and housing placement data that it had used these types of federal grants to improve Mississippians’ mental health.
“This was completely shocking,” she said.
With this cut, Madaris said she is nervous about how Communicare and other mental health centers will address needs in their communities.
“I am terrified, to be honest,” she said. “We’re going to figure it out, we always figure it out. But it’s definitely going to be hard.”
Melody Madaris poses for a portrait at Communicare in Oxford, Miss., on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayMadaris said the cuts would completely change how Communicare can help children in schools get mental health services and whether North Mississippians can access naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversing medication. It could also mean Communicare may have to reduce its staff.
“We’re going to have to make some pretty significant changes across the agency,” she said. “It will include programs being stopped and reduction in some of the services that we have been providing for years now through the help of the SAMHSA funding.”
Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, said cuts to the other three public mental health agencies were also mainly for services related to children and addiction.
Unlike most private facilities, community mental health centers are expected to treat Mississippians regardless of their ability to pay. Cole said that model creates financial challenges that are furthered by SAMHSA’s cuts.
“Even minor or surface-level cuts go very deep with regard to our long-term sustainability and being able to continue our mission,” she said.
Mississippi Department of Mental Health spokesperson Adam Moore said the federal government terminated an additional roughly $440,000 from the agency that had been intended to help law enforcement respond to mental health emergencies. The department is aware of the community mental health center grant cancellations and is “still assessing the total impact of the cuts to the state,” he said.
The SAMHSA letter Madaris and the dozens of other organizations received says the federal agency is terminating the contracts to align its grant spending with its priorities. The priorities it lists — addressing mental illness, addiction, suicide and other societal challenges — are similar to what the community mental health centers told Mississippi Today they were doing with their now-terminated grants.
The letter said the terminations are final. Spokespeople for the federal agency did not respond before publication to a Mississippi Today email asking how much money SAMHSA is canceling from Mississippi organizations, how the grants didn’t align with its priorities and whether new funding would replace these terminated funds.
Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, speaks during the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council meeting at the Carroll Gartin Justice Building in Jackson, Monday, Oct. 3, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodaySen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and a member of the state’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council, lives in Lafayette County — a region served by Communicare. She said the organization does a fantastic job of addressing mental health problems in North Mississippi.
“It’s devastating,” she said of the cuts. “They have been really aggressive and proactive in addressing mental health issues and concerns in our community.”
Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, said it’s been difficult to keep up with what the federal government does on a day-to-day basis. He said he and other lawmakers would have to see how the federal mental health cuts play out.
“Obviously, it’s not good news,” he said after his committee met Wednesday. “But in order to know exactly what to do about it or what we might do about it, just have to wait until we get the details.”
The federal government also cut funds directed to private, nonprofit Mississippi mental health centers, but neither community mental health nor Department of Mental Health officials who spoke to Mississippi Today knew of any as of Wednesday. An executive with one Mississippi nonprofit that received a SAMHSA subgrant administered by the University of Mississippi Medical Center said over $100,000 of its funding was cut Tuesday.
Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, right, listens as Katiee Evans talks about her recovery at the Fairland Center in Dublin, Miss., on Monday, April 28, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayThe executive asked not to be named because they had not spoken about the cut with UMMC yet. Patrice Guilfoyle, communications director for the medical center, said she had not heard about any cuts as of Wednesday but would look into them.
Madaris said SAMHSA also cut nearly $3 million from Hinds Behavioral Health Services, the community mental health center that serves Jackson. Nyaband Buong, the Hinds Behavioral executive director, said one of her canceled federal grants was $1 million to help navigate a complicated mental health system.
In March, SAMHSA cut about $4.1 million from Mississippi community mental health centers, saying the funds were initially to address the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the centers and their patients told Mississippi Today that those cuts would have life-or-death effects, such as eliminating ways for people recovering from addiction to sustain long-term sobriety.
In the aftermath of the cuts last spring, Cole said she wasn’t expecting another round this year.
“I thought we were past any more cuts,” she said. “I was really shocked by this.”
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