New report on mental health calls for better federal coordination

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a non-partisan agency that reviews and provides oversight over federal programs, has issued a report emphasizing lack of coordination at the leadership level in the administration of federal programs for children, youth and adults with serious mental illness.

The GAO’s report concludes that there has been poor coordination among the eight agencies and 112 federal programs that provide services to people with mental illness. The report also documents shortcomings in the evaluation of programs serving people with serious mental illness, contributing to the overall lack of information about who these programs serve or what outcomes these services achieve.

One limitation of the GAO’s report is that it did not examine programs administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that administers the Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) programs. Read the full report at http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-375T.