Michigan
Our View: Michigan must stop exporting its mental health crisis
Mobile crisis units roll out to help Detroiters in mental health or substance abuse need.
Mobile crisis units roll out to help people in need with mental health or substance abuse problems in Detroit.
Michigan is sending some of its most vulnerable children hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away for mental health treatment because it has failed to build the capacity to care for them at home.
Michigan once had roughly 1,200 residential treatment beds for children. Today, there are fewer than 400.
That’s because facilities have closed, staff have left and costs have risen.
The falling apart of the system is impactful, especially given the increased amount of attention on this issue for nearly half a decade — since COVID wreaked havoc on youth and adult mental health in this state on top of what was already a social-media-induced mental health crisis among adolescents.
A growing number of children in severe mental health crisis or with complex psychological disorders are being placed in out-of-state facilities because there is nowhere for them to go in the state.
As of 2025, at least 152 Michigan youth were living in out-of-state placements — more than double the 74 in 2023, and up from 122 in 2024, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).
Children suffering from severe mental health challenges typically need the support of family and friends. They don’t often require isolation from their natural support structures. Parents should be able to access and help their children who are suffering. That’s harder to do when the child is housed in another state.
The related costs for the arrangement was $13 million last year shared across state and federal funding streams.
Michigan must reinvest in its mental health system, especially for children and adolescents who were particularly affected by pandemic lockdowns and other policies.
By the time many of these kids enter the system, they are already in crisis. They are demonstrating concerning behavior, interacting with police, cycling through emergency rooms or entering the juvenile justice system. That is the most expensive, least effective point to intervene.
Rather than operating at the back end of the problem, Michigan must invest aggressively on the front end by expanding in-state residential capacity and strengthening and integrating community mental health services, so fewer children ever reach the point of needing institutional care.
Bipartisan lawmakers have pushed hundreds of millions of dollars into school safety and mental health funding. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has overseen an increase in funding mental health services and some important reforms, like the crisis hotline and a measure that allows mental health care to be covered as critically as physical health care.
But more is needed. Michigan must aggressively increase capacity and create incentives to attract and retain staff.
Instead, MDHHS is pushing a proposal that critics say would shift some patients with significant needs into categories typically handled by private insurance, blurring the lines of responsibility between Medicaid and community health programs and complicating the exhaustive bureaucracy for patients and providers.
“Hospitals and providers across the state have already warned that the framework’s training, billing and operational requirements could slow access to treatment,” the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan warned in a recent op-ed. “The impact would be a new strain on an already overextended behavioral health workforce.”
Fixing Michigan’s comprehensive mental health strategy is an urgent need that will require funding and a coordinated strategy that aligns state dollars, insurance coverage and community-based services so that care is continuous and effective.
The goal should be to build a system that assures Michigan children are treated in Michigan.