Conservative Indiana will explore psychedelic mental health treatment

Indianapolis Star

30-04-2025

Buried deep in the budget bill is something that might prove to be more than incremental.
| Contributing Columnist
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
I'm no first-rate intellect, but I'm going to do my best to keep functioning anyway, as I try to consider two opposing ideas about how change happens as equally true.
The case for incrementalism
In many of the circles I find myself in these days, it's become fashionable to call for bold action. We say things like, 'We can't afford to take small steps,' or 'This is a time for urgency and big swings.' The thing to be avoided at all costs is 'technocratic incrementalism,' the idea of tackling big problems with small, steady efforts.
I've said these things. I've meant them. Honestly, I still do. But I also believe something else, which sits uncomfortably alongside that belief: Incrementalism is often the best we can realistically do, in a policy world rife with compromises and trade-offs.
I offer this tension as a frame for thinking about Indiana's latest legislative session, especially as it relates to mental health. I began my time as an Indy Star contributor with a piece urging lawmakers to keep their promises and fully fund the overhaul of Indiana's mental health system that began in 2023. I used all the adjectives of the 'bold or bust' movement: words like 'historic' and 'transformational.'
If we're grading on the scale of sweeping change and radical reinvention, then the answer to the question 'Did legislators keep their promises?' is 'no.' This session did not deliver a grand leap forward for mental health.
But I'd argue that it was a win, all the same.
Winning by not losing
In a session marked by a $2.4 billion revenue shortfall and cuts to many high-priority initiatives, the new funding that was secured for mental health last budget session (an additional $50 million annually to build the new system) was not cut.
That may not sound like a big win, but I'm counting it as a meaningful step forward. We didn't get the long-term, sustainable funding that advocates and providers were pushing for, but we did preserve the opportunity to keep building, and early signs suggest that it's already paying off. Sources tell me that Indiana's Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic pilot sites are significantly improving access to care, reaching more people and closing some longstanding gaps.
The work is far from done. Gaps will remain, and people will still fall through them. But if we continue to build smartly and collaboratively, measure what's working, and keep making the case for investment, we'll have another shot at lasting change in two years.
Legislative leaders compared this budget environment to the aftermath of the Great Recession, when former Gov. Mitch Daniels and the legislature gutted most of the Indiana human services field, including mental health. The damage from that earlier era is something the field is only now recovering from. Through that lens, just holding ground this year is no small thing. In a landscape full of hard choices, we protected our progress.
And that's not all.
Indiana will pursue promising mental health treatment
Buried deep in the budget bill is something that might prove to be more than incremental. The legislature appropriated new funding for further study of psychedelic-assisted therapy for mental health and substance use disorder.
Full disclosure: I'm a convert. I could bore you with studies, like the one where two-thirds of veterans with PTSD no longer met the criteria for the disorder after undergoing psychedelic-assisted therapy. It's not yet a gold-standard, fully approved treatment, but it is incredibly promising.
Studies are important, but stories of changed lives are what matter. Consider the story of Colts player Braden Smith, who bravely shared his own mental health journey in IndyStar. He found healing through psychedelic therapy, but he had to go to Mexico to do it. Thanks to this new funding, future Braden Smiths might be able to get help closer to home.
Indiana is a notoriously temperamentally conservative state (we haven't even legalized medical cannabis), and we just took a significant step toward exploring psychedelic mental health treatment. That is something close to miraculous.
I've been (and will continue to be) critical of our leaders when it's warranted. There is plenty in this budget, or about this session, that I don't like. I'll keep being critical when it is called for.
It is important, however, to give credit where it's due. When future Hoosiers look back at mental health in the 2025 session, they might not see the transformational change that some hoped for, but they will see that the legislature preserved hard-won progress, and maybe took a surprising bold step forward too.