Shockwaves rippled through Massachusetts on Wednesday after the federal agency overseeing mental health and addiction treatment abruptly terminated hundreds of grants nationwide, threatening programs that serve children, people with substance use disorders, and some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration made sweeping cuts across the behavioral health field. While the agency has not publicly detailed the full scope, multiple sources told STAT News, the Globe’s sister publication, that as many as 2,800 grants may have been canceled, affecting up to $1.9 billion in funding — more than a quarter of SAMHSA’s total budget. Last year, Massachusetts received at least $195 million in grant funding from the agency, according to the agency’s dashboard.
The move has likely cost private and public programs in Massachusetts tens of millions of dollars, according to a statement from Governor Maura Healey Wednesday. That includes a loss of more than $5 million from the state’s mental health and public health departments. Healey called the cuts, “callous and cruel.”
The cuts imperil scores of programs in Massachusetts that provide support services for people experiencing addiction, homelessness and mental illness. Some programs will pare back or be forced to shut down, nonprofit leaders warned, jeopardizing care for thousands of people who rely on them for addiction treatment and other supports. The cuts also threaten to cripple agencies that provide interventions, such as clean syringes and overdose-reversal drugs, that are designed to prevent overdose deaths, say nonprofit leaders.
State officials said the cuts include $2 million from a program coordinating care for people with mental illness and substance use disorders, nearly $1.5 million from a youth suicide prevention program, and about $500,000 from services for adolescents and young adults experiencing psychosis.
“These programs may be what prevents a parent’s overdose or enables someone’s spouse to experience recovery or helps someone’s child cope with trauma,” said Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, the state’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. ”What we’re losing is grace and compassion in the way we support vulnerable people in our society.”
SAMHSA did not respond to requests for comment. In a document outlining its strategic priorities, the agency said it aimed to be more efficient while reducing mental illness, addiction, overdoses, and suicides, particularly among young people. It also took aim at programs, known as harm reduction, that seek to make drug use safer, saying those programs “only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.”
The grant termination letters began arriving in the email inboxes of nonprofits late Tuesday, and continued into Wednesday. According to nonprofit leaders who received them, the notices made it clear the funding cuts were immediate and provided no rationale for them.
“Lives could be lost,” Julie Burns, chief executive officer of the RIZE Massachusetts Foundation, a Boston nonprofit focused on combating the opioid crisis. “The cuts mean even fewer available appointments, slower adoption of effective treatment services, and even larger gaps in access for people who need care the most.”
The sweeping cuts also affect a broad swath of public agencies — including universities, municipal governments, schools, and local police — and come at a precarious time. Many communities in Massachusetts are still struggling with high rates of opioid-related overdoses and surging homelessness. The grant cancellations also come on top of deep cuts last year by the Republican-controlled Congress to Medicaid, the largest single payer for addiction treatment services in the United States.
“The federal government’s latest attempt to advance its reckless political agenda is dangerous, inhumane, and comes at the expense of real people,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a written statement. “I will do everything in my power to protect Massachusetts from these disgraceful cuts and will see the Trump Administration in court.”.”
Among those affected is Casa Esperanza, a Boston nonprofit that provides supportive housing, outpatient addiction treatment, and other services for more than 1,800 people a year.
At 6:40 pm on Tuesday evening, Diliana De Jesus, chief development officer and deputy director at Casa Esperanza, opened her work email to discover two grant termination letters from SAMHSA. By the next morning, four more termination notices arrived in her inbox. All told, the termination notices affect grants worth $2.68 million, representing 14 percent of Casa Esperanza’s budget, the nonprofit said.
The cuts imperil Casa Esperanza programs that provide peer recovery services, support for pregnant and postpartum women, and medication-assisted treatment for those struggling with addiction, among other services. They also threaten a program, known as the Minority AIDS Initiative, that provides care for minority populations disproportionately affected by HIV, the nonprofit said.
“I was shell shocked,” De Jesus said of the termination letters. “We are in disbelief and angry and fearful of what this all means.... We will have to make some really hard decisions about how to restructure.”
Bob Franks, CEO of Boston-based mental health provider the Baker Center for Children and Families, said the cuts threaten programs that transformed how childhood trauma is treated nationwide.
Franks, who worked for years with children exposed to community violence, said earlier treatments often lasted years with limited progress. Research-backed models developed through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network shortened treatment to months and dramatically improved outcomes. “It’s been transformational,” he said, allowing children from all backgrounds to access care that works.
He recalled treating a young girl who witnessed her sister’s death in a drunk-driving crash. “If I had the tools then that we have now, I could have helped her much more quickly,” he said, calling the federally funded training and treatment models “lifesaving” for families.
Franks said federal grants are essential to keeping community mental health centers afloat, noting that insurance reimbursements rarely cover the cost of care. “These programs are the lifeblood of centers like ours,” he said. “Particularly for children at risk of long-term consequences such as poor educational outcomes, unemployment, substance use, and chronic disease if trauma goes untreated. Ending the funding is counterintuitive and deeply misguided.”
Even law enforcement agencies have been swept up in the federal cuts.
The Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release Wednesday that a five-year, $2.6 million grant for addiction treatment services was abruptly terminated. The money funded a program that helped ensure access to group counseling, recovery coaching and other support services for current and formerly incarcerated people struggling with opioid use disorder, the office said.
“With this senseless cut by the Trump Administration, our streets will be less safe, the jails will be fuller, and the most vulnerable people will be at risk,” said Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley in a written statement. “Addiction treatment during and post incarceration deprives drug dealers of return customers.”
The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program was also notified overnight that a $400,000 federal grant was terminated effective immediately, interim CEO Denise De Las Nueces said. The funding supported its reentry program for people leaving prison who are unhoused and have substance use disorders.
The SAMHSA five-year grant was awarded in 2021 and has supported the program’s multidisciplinary “RISE” team — which includes medical providers, therapists, psychiatrists, and case managers — works with patients before and after release from Suffolk County House of Corrections and Nashua Street Jail to reduce the high risk of fatal overdose.
It came as a complete surprise, De Las Nueces said. “We’re still trying to understand the full impact, but it’s significant.”
The cuts follow Boston Health Care for the Homeless’ September layoffs due to federal cuts.
“I can’t even put into words the impact that this could have on our program,” she said.
In Medway, public schools lost a $200,000 grant aimed at reducing underage drinking among middle and high school students. The program funded staff and prevention initiatives and was two years into the four-year grant.
“That was a hard pill to swallow,” said Ryan Sherman, Medway’s director of wellness, adding that the district is now scrambling to find local funding to keep the work going.
“You work quite hard to receive these grants and to stand out, and then to not have a valid explanation when their main priority is to reduce substance abuse, I think it’s hard to understand,” he said.
The University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine had three federal grants terminated, totaling $6.2 million, all supporting substance use disorder treatment and services for the public. Each grant was operating separately under different researchers and was cut roughly midway through its funding cycle.
Chancellor Dr. Michael F. Collins told the Globe Wednesday, “We’ve reached an unprecedented level of uncertainty.”
One grant was canceled in its second year of a five-year award, resulting in a $3.1 million loss. A second grant, also terminated in year two, accounted for an additional $2 million. A third grant was canceled in its fifth year, eliminating $1.1 million in remaining funding.
“In a time of uncertainty for science, this is further unwelcomed disruption, and the patient populations for which it’s privileged for us to care and to find better treatments is again threatened,” said Collins, who has served as Chancellor since 2008.
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