The Most Important Program You've Never Heard Of Is This Retiring Senator's Legacy

Debbie Stabenow learned about the scarcity of mental health care when she was a child. Her crusade to change that turned into bipartisan, potentially transformative legislation that's already having an impact.

Debbie Stabenow stood in the well of the U.S. Senate a few weeks ago, reminiscing about her half-century in politics as she prepared to finish out her last term in office.

The 74-year-old Democrat from Michigan talked about her first campaign, as a graduate student running for county commission in the 1970s, and the barriers she broke along the way to Washington, like being the first legislator in Lansing to have a baby while in office. She spoke about her pride in Michigan’s natural resources and still-mighty auto industry, and mentioned her work on behalf of small farmers while serving on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

But the most important part of her address was about her father. And while it’s not uncommon to mention family members in a farewell speech, Stabenow’s reference was more than the usual loving tribute. It was a recollection of how his life had influenced her thinking on a key policy area and led, eventually, to her most important legislative achievement ― a program that is among the more potentially transformative domestic policy initiatives in recent memory, even though most Americans have never heard of it.

Stabenow’s father had bipolar disorder, the psychiatric condition known for its dramatic, sometimes sudden swings between feverish euphoria and debilitating depression. It wasn’t until Stabenow was in college, when her father was in his 40s, that he finally got the care he needed. The reasons had less to do with policy than with a lack of scientific understanding of the condition back then. But the experience convinced Stabenow of the need to treat mental illnesses more like we do physical maladies ― to “treat health care above the neck the same as health care below the neck,” as she likes to say.

She spent much of her career trying to make that possible. Eventually those efforts culminated in legislation to create the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) initiative. Funded by Washington, administered by states, the program underwrites comprehensive mental health care — everything from routine therapy to 24-hour crisis response — through public and private organizations that will serve anyone regardless of insurance status or ability to pay. Versions now operate in most states.