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APA Welcomes National Focus on Mental Health, Urges Evidence-Based Approach and Continued Focus on Access to Care
Washington, D.C., May 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The American Psychiatric Association (APA) today issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Health and Human Services Administration Secretary’s announcement regarding mental health treatment.
“APA welcomes the attention placed squarely on the nation’s mental health crisis and is committed to advancing solutions that improve access to high-quality evidence-based care. We are supportive of the Administration’s plans for further investment in research and clinician training on the issues of prescribing and deprescribing.
“We also want to underscore an important point the Secretary made: there are many people for whom medications are important and lifesaving, and patients should not take themselves off medication without first consulting their physician.
“That being said, while APA supports efforts to improve the quality, safety, and evidence base of mental health treatment, we strongly object to framing the nation’s mental health crisis as primarily a problem of ‘overmedicalization’ or ‘overprescribing.’ That characterization oversimplifies a complex crisis and ignores the larger reality: too many patients cannot access timely, comprehensive care, while care remains unevenly distributed across our health system. It also fails to account for persistent workforce shortages, limited psychiatric beds, inadequate visit time, barriers to psychotherapy and social supports, insufficient integration of psychiatric expertise in primary care through the Collaborative Care model, and the lack of a true continuum of care.
“Deprescribing alone is not a sufficient response to this crisis. In psychiatry, as in all areas of medicine, prescribing and deprescribing occur every day as part of individualized, evidence-based treatment planning between physicians and patients. The solution is not to stigmatize psychiatric medication or impose broad assumptions on clinical care, but to ensure that patients have access to the full range of evidence-based treatments and that decisions are guided by the best available science and each patient’s needs.
“The APA continues to:
- Be firmly committed to ensuring that patients have access to the full range of evidence-based treatments, including medication when clinically appropriate.
- Strongly support shared decision making between physicians and their patients to make individualized treatment decisions guided by the best available science.
- Support consistent standards for informed consent across all areas of medicine. Imposing a higher bar for informed consent for mental health treatment is stigmatizing and harms patients.
- Support an evidence-based approach to prescribing and deprescribing and better support for patients who are starting, continuing, changing, or stopping psychiatric medications.
“APA stands ready to work with the Administration and Congress to address the nation’s mental health crisis.”
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association, founded in 1844, is the oldest medical association in the country. The APA is also the largest psychiatric association in the world with more than 40,400 physician members specializing in the diagnosis, treatment, prevention and research of mental illnesses. APA’s vision is to ensure access to quality psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. For more information, please visit www.psychiatry.org.
Erin Connors American Psychiatric Association 202-609-7113 econnors@psych.org
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