42 U.S.C. § 294e–1 — Mental and behavioral health education and training grants

(a) Grants authorized: The Secretary may award grants to eligible institutions to support recruiting students for, and their education and clinical experience in: (1) accredited institutions of higher education or accredited professional training programs establishing or expanding internships or field placement programs in mental health — in psychiatry, psychology, school psychology, behavioral pediatrics, psychiatric nursing (including master's and doctoral programs), social work, school social work, substance use disorder prevention and treatment, marriage and family therapy, occupational therapy (including master's and doctoral programs), school counseling, or professional counseling — including programs focused on child and adolescent mental health, trauma, and transitional-age youth; (2) accredited doctoral, internship, and post-doctoral residency programs of health service psychology (including clinical psychology, counseling, and school psychology), to develop and run interdisciplinary training of psychology graduate students in behavioral health services, including trauma-informed care and substance use disorder services, and to develop faculty in health service psychology; (3) accredited master's and doctoral social work degree programs, for the same kind of interdisciplinary training of social work graduate students and faculty development in social work; and (4) State-licensed mental health nonprofit and for-profit organizations, to let them pay for preservice or in-service training in a behavioral health-related paraprofessional field, with preference for training paraprofessional child and adolescent mental health workers, including training to help meet the needs of children and adolescents who have experienced trauma. (b) Eligibility requirements: To be eligible for a grant, an institution must demonstrate: (1) an ability to recruit and place the students described in (a) in areas with high need and high demand; (2) that its programs include people from different racial, ethnic, cultural, geographic, religious, linguistic, and class backgrounds, and different genders and sexual orientations; (3) knowledge and understanding of the concerns of those individuals and groups, especially people — particularly children, adolescents, and transitional-age youth — with mental disorder symptoms or diagnoses; (4) that any internship or field placement program funded by the grant will prioritize cultural and linguistic competency; and (5) that the institution will give the Secretary whatever data, assurances, and information the Secretary requires. (c) Institutional requirement: Among grants awarded under paragraphs (2) and (3) of subsection (a) together, at least 4 of the recipients must be historically Black colleges or universities or other minority-serving institutions. (d) Priority: In selecting grant recipients, the Secretary must give priority to (1) programs, for recipients under paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) of subsection (a), that have shown they can train psychology, psychiatry, and social work professionals to work in integrated care settings; and (2) programs, for recipients under subsection (a)(4), that emphasize the role of the family, the lived experience of the consumer, and family-paraprofessional partnerships. (e) Report to Congress: Not later than 4 years after December 13, 2016, the Secretary must include, in the biennial report to Congress required by section 290aa(m), an assessment of how effective these grants have been at (1) supporting graduate students' experiential training (internship or field placement); (2) recruiting students interested in behavioral health practice; (3) recruiting students consistent with subsection (b)(1); (4) developing and running interprofessional training integrated with primary care; (5) developing and running accredited field placements and internships; and (6) collecting data on the number of students trained in behavioral health care and on available accredited internships and field placements. (f) Authorization of appropriations: For each of fiscal years 2026 through 2030, Congress authorized $50,000,000, allocated as follows: (1) $15,000,000 for grants described in subsection (a)(1); (2) $15,000,000 for grants described in subsection (a)(2); (3) $10,000,000 for grants described in subsection (a)(3); and (4) $10,000,000 for grants described in subsection (a)(4).