Your (Unofficial) Guide to State-Sponsored Therapy in Mississippi

There’s a way to get affordable mental health care that you might not know about. That’s Mississippi’s mental health system.

If you qualify, you can get mental health care at a community mental health center for a small co-pay or a low sliding-scale fee. But even if you don’t qualify for services at a state-funded provider, Mississippi’s system can still give you information, referrals to affordable providers, and other essential help for free.

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If you’re in a hurry and want to get the most important information about what’s available at your local program and who it’s for, you can read our quick start guide below.

To learn more about public mental health services in Mississippi, keep reading. We’ve done the research to uncover essential facts about who’s eligible, what services you can get, when to go, where to call, and how it works so you can decide if Mississippi’s mental health system might be right for you.

Who Is Eligible?

Mississippi’s mental health system can meet many people’s needs, but you should especially consider it if you (or a loved one) are having a mental health crisis, have a severe mental health condition, have Medicaid, or have a limited income.

Everyone in Mississippi can use the state-funded mental health emergency response system. If you or someone you love is in crisis, you can call a state or local crisis line to get the help you need, quickly.

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Public mental health services are usually the best option if you’re having a mental health crisis and need help right away.

State mental health programs are required to provide mental health crisis response services and are one of the fastest ways to get care when you’re having a mental health emergency.

The people who answer state and local crisis lines can provide caring attention and support as they help you determine the best response to a crisis, whether it’s inpatient treatment or an appointment with a counselor.

Even if you’re not in crisis, you can call your local mental health hotline for information about affordable mental health services in your area. When you call, you can find out whether you might qualify for state-funded mental health services, schedule an assessment or intake appointment, or get free information about other affordable local providers.

In general, Mississippi’s public mental health system is pretty accessible. There are no statewide clinical or financial eligibility criteria for public outpatient mental health services in Mississippi.

One of the most important (and only) requirements you need to meet to get services at a CMHC is to be a resident of the region it serves. It’s a great option if you’re a local resident with a public insurance plan. All Mississippi CMHCs accept Medicaid, and it can be hard to find other providers who do. They also accept other insurance plans and offer affordable sliding-scale fees if you don’t have insurance.

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One of the most important things to know about the Mississippi public mental health system is that not all CMHCs work the same way.

Mississippi CMHCs must follow state guidelines, but they can make some independent decisions about which services they provide and what admission criteria they use.

So, if you don’t have a serious mental illness or a limited income, whether you can receive mental health services from a CMHC will ultimately depend on their standard policies and what they currently have the funding to provide. So, it’s important to reach out to your local CMHC to find out what’s available where you live and whether you might be eligible.

Many CMHCs in Mississippi serve people from a wide range of backgrounds and offer mental health care to people with moderate mental health needs as well as to people with serious mental illness. They often only require you to be a resident of the area they serve to access their services. For example, the Region 2 CMHC, Communicare, states the following:

“Communicare offers a variety of services for adults who are having issues related to mental health or emotional concerns. Special emphasis is placed on adults with serious mental illness but we also provide services for individuals suffering from all types of problems, including bereavement, family and marital difficulties, adjustment to medical or physical disabilities, and other life concerns.”

Similarly, the Region 11 CMHC, A Clear Path, states, “We provide behavioral health services to people from all walks of life and all socioeconomic categories. We make our fees affordable to increase the opportunities for persons with limited resources to access our services. Residents of the 9 counties of southwest Mississippi are our primary clients… Persons living outside our region are not eligible for our in-region discounted fees but may be eligible for other discounted fee rates.”

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In general, CMHCs in Mississippi don’t require you to have a serious mental illness (SMI) to qualify for services, but they give you priority if you do. And if you go to a CMHC, you can usually get specialty services that are specifically designed to help people with SMI.

Serious mental illness is usually defined as a condition that causes you severe distress, limits your ability to function, makes it hard for you to live independently without support, or puts you at risk of hospitalization. Conditions that can qualify as SMI include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

If you’re admitted to a Mississippi CMHC, you can usually get the care you need for a very low co-pay or affordable fee. Most CMHCs accept Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance plans. They also usually offer reduced and sliding-scale rates if you don’t have insurance.

Most CMHCs in Mississippi offer therapy and other basic outpatient mental health services like medication and psychiatric assessment. Your local CMHC may be able to provide therapy to you at a discounted rate if you are a county resident and don’t have insurance they accept. You can also get specialty services like case management and day treatment at most CMHCs if you’re eligible for them.

Availability of counseling and other clinical services depends on each CMHC’s funding and staff at any given time. Sometimes, when funding or staffing is low, public mental health programs have to cut or limit particular services. At other times, they may have a long waitlist.

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Community mental health centers in Mississippi are great places to find specialized and intensive mental health services like case management and day treatment that can be hard to find anywhere else. These specialty programs can give you extra help when you’re dealing with severe symptoms.

Mississippi also licenses a few smaller agencies to provide publicly-funded outpatient mental health services alongside the CMHCs. Some of these agencies offer the same array of services as CMHCs, while others are smaller and primarily serve as counseling providers.

You can call your local CMHC or publicly-funded agency to learn more about what’s available, whether you’re eligible, and whether there’s a waitlist. You can find the numbers for local CMHCs, licensed agencies, and statewide helplines and hotlines in the next two sections of this article.

We encourage you to call even if you think your local CMHC might not be the right place for you. Even if you’re not eligible, or if the program doesn’t offer the service you want, they can probably still help you.

People who work at CMHCs are knowledgeable about local resources and will often give you free information or even referrals to other affordable providers nearby, including local non-profits that provide free or low-cost counseling.

Where Do You Call to Get Started?

The easiest way to learn more about state mental health services in Mississippi is to call your local program directly. You can find contact information for all Mississippi CMHCs, licensed mental health agencies, and crisis lines in the directory in the next section.

There are also many numbers you can call for help no matter where you are in Mississippi. You can find the numbers for statewide helplines and hotlines in the information box directly below.

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The statewide Mississippi mental health crisis hotline is 988.

The Crisis Text Line for the state of Mississippi is 741741.

For help and referrals for mental health and many other needs, you can also call 211.

You can get help any time of day, any day of the week, by calling the CONTACT Crisis Line at (601) 713-4357.

You can reach the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Helpline by calling 1-800-950-NAMI (6264).

You can reach the non-emergency NAMI Mississippi Helpline by calling (601) 899-9058 or (800) 357-0388.

If you’re not in crisis, but just need to talk to someone, you can call the Jackson Mental Health Warm Line from 7AM to 7PM Monday through Friday at (601) 586-3073 or (866) 300-7948.

You can get information about public mental health services by calling the Mississippi Department of Mental Health Helpline at (877) 210-8513.

Public mental health services in Mississippi are managed on the state level by the Department of Mental Health. For general information about Mississippi’s system, you can call the DMH Helpline at (877) 210-8513.

However, you’ll probably get the best results by calling your local program directly. You can find the number for your CMHC in the directory below.

Mississippi CMHC Directory

Public outpatient mental health services in Mississippi are provided by programs called community mental health centers. Many CMHCs have been around for decades. They specialize in outpatient as well as intensive community-based mental health services.

Which CMHC you should call depends on which county you live in. In recent years, Mississippi’s mental health system has been updated, so there have been changes to its mental health regions and which CMHCs serve those regions. These updates continue, so the list below is subject to change as well. You can find an updated list of CMHCs and mental health regions here.

The Mississippi crisis response system gives you three ways to get help when you’re experiencing a mental health crisis: the statewide 988 mental health crisis hotline, local mobile crisis teams, and regional crisis stabilization units.

You can find contact information for all Mississippi CMHCs, mobile crisis teams, and CSUs in the directory below.

If you need information after hours or aren’t sure whether you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, it’s okay to call a crisis line for help. The staff who answer are trained to quickly figure out what you need and can tell you what steps you need to take to connect with the right services. You can call either a local mobile crisis team or the statewide 988 crisis hotline if you need help.

Also Consider: Federally Qualified Health Centers

Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) are another great way to get affordable publicly-funded mental health services in Mississippi.

These federally-funded programs provide cutting-edge care in places where good primary healthcare was once hard to find. Most provide integrated care so you can get primary medical and mental health services at the same location. Each FQHC accepts Medicaid and Medicare and offers low sliding-scale fees if you don’t have insurance.

You can search for FQHCs near you by using the online search tool on the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration website.

Troubleshooting Guide

The state mental health system is complicated and can be confusing to navigate. If you’re having any issues, we’re here to help. Here are some of our solutions to common problems you might experience.

If you’ve run into a problem that we haven’t addressed, don’t give up. Call someone at the program (or a state or local mental health hotline) and tell them what’s going on.

You’re much more likely to get the help you need when you advocate for yourself and are persistent. Tell the person you talk to what you need or what problem you’re having.

If they don’t help the first time, call them back and tell them. If you keep calling and keep calm and focused, you should eventually get through to someone who can help you.

Deep Dive: How Does the System Work?

To understand Mississippi’s mental health system, it helps to understand how it started and how it’s changed since then.

Public mental health services have been around for a surprisingly long time. But for over a hundred years in America, the only way to get them was in a psychiatric hospital.

In the 1960s, Americans started thinking differently about mental health care. Conditions in psychiatric hospitals were getting worse and new medications made it possible to provide mental health treatment on an outpatient basis.

In response, new laws were passed that required state and local governments to establish community mental health programs as alternatives to institutionalization for people with serious mental illness. The most important was the Community Mental Health Act, which President John F. Kennedy signed into law in 1963.

DEEP DIVE

To learn more about what the public mental health system was like in the early days—and how psychiatric inpatient care has evolved since then—you can read our article “Do Insane Asylums Still Exist? The Surprising Past and Present.”

To learn more about what inpatient mental health treatment is like now, and the differences between how it works in general hospitals and specialized psychiatric facilities, you can read our article “How Inpatient Mental Health Treatment Works.”

Many state mental health programs trace their origins back to the 1960s when these important changes started to happen. Mississippi is no exception.

Many of Mississippi’s CMHCs were founded in the early-to-mid 1970s using funds from the 1963 Community Mental Health Act. The Department of Mental Health was created by a law passed by the Mississippi legislature in 1974. This law also established Mississippi’s different mental health districts.

Despite this early progress, Mississippi struggled to fully fund its community programs and shift the mental health system’s focus away from institutional care. These problems only worsened over time. In 2012, in response to the ongoing state financial crisis after the 2008 recession, Mississippi cut mental health funding by $42 million—about 15 percent of the state mental health budget.

In 2016, Mississippi was sued by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with its state mental health policies. The DOJ alleged that Mississippi was not providing enough community mental health services and was unnecessarily institutionalizing people who could have been treated in the community.

DEEP DIVE

Public mental health services in Mississippi are managed on the state level by the Department of Mental Health (DMH).

DMH oversees 12 mental health regions, each of which has a designated CMHC. In addition to CMHCs, the state licenses small agencies to provide some state-funded services.

All publicly-funded outpatient mental health providers in Mississippi are independent; the only mental health programs DMH runs directly are the state’s inpatient psychiatric facilities.

In 2019, District Judge Carlton W. Reeves ruled in favor of the DOJ, finding Mississippi in violation of the ADA. A special master was appointed by the court to guide the state in ongoing efforts to shift its mental health care away from institutions.

Mississippi responded by establishing more intensive community outreach teams, launching the statewide 988 crisis line, opening new crisis stabilization units, expanding the capacity of existing CSUs, and adding more mobile crisis teams. (There were no mobile crisis teams in Mississippi in 2011, but there were 14 by late 2022.) Inpatient units have been reopened and expanded, resulting in shorter waits for state inpatient care.

As a result of these efforts, a federal appeals court overturned the 2019 ruling in 2023. Mississippi’s mental health system is now no longer being monitored, but DMH continues to make efforts to expand crisis care throughout the state. You can benefit from these updates by reaching out and calling a state or local crisis line when you need help. They know how the system works and will help you get where you need to go.

Conclusion

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, only 43 percent of people in Mississippi who have mental health conditions get treatment for them. Many of them qualify for public mental health services but don’t know about them.

You can make a difference by reaching out and connecting with local mental health resources to get the care you need. If you’re not sure whether you qualify for Mississippi state mental health services, call your local CMHC or crisis line. You may find out you can get mental health services through your local CMHC or that there’s another affordable option nearby.

The most important thing is to get started—the help you need may be only a call or click away.

Are You Thinking of Online Therapy? Start Here to Get Matched with a Licensed Therapist Right For You.

Therapy with No Waiting Rooms or Driving. Take a quick quiz about your preferences and needs and get matched to a therapist in as little as 48 hours.

Your (Unofficial) Guide to State-Sponsored Therapy in Mississippi

Are You Thinking of Online Therapy? Start Here to Get Matched with a Licensed Therapist Right For You.

Have you been in therapy before?

Quick Start Guide

Who Is Eligible?

PRO TIP

Use the State System When You're in Crisis

PRO TIP

Check with Your CMHC for Accurate Local Eligibility Information

PRO TIP

What Is Serious Mental Illness?

PRO TIP

Check Out the State System If You Need Specialized Services

Where Do You Call to Get Started?

PRO TIP

Important Numbers in Mississippi

Mississippi CMHC Directory

Mississippi Clinics and Crisis Lines

North Mississippi and Delta Region Clinics and Crisis Lines

Central Mississippi and Capital Region Clinics and Crisis Lines

South Mississippi and Gulf Coast Region Clinics and Crisis Lines

Also Consider: Federally Qualified Health Centers

Troubleshooting Guide

Problems and Solutions

Deep Dive: How Does the System Work?

DEEP DIVE

For More Information

DEEP DIVE

What Is the Structure of the Mississippi Mental Health System?

Conclusion

Are You Thinking of Online Therapy? Start Here to Get Matched with a Licensed Therapist Right For You.

Have you been in therapy before?

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