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Massachusetts looks to improve access to mental health services with new community-based centers

Scientists say they're learning more about how to keep stress from damaging mental health.
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Scientists say they're learning more about how to keep stress from damaging mental health.

Referrals are available 24/7 with a call or text

Massachusetts has launched a new initiative to address the growing mental health crisis.

More than two-dozen state-designated Community Behavioral Health Centers have opened with walk-in hours evenings and weekends and counselors available 24/7 with a phone call, text, or online chat.

Springfield-based Behavioral Health Network is one of the new centers.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with BHN’s President and CEO Steve Winn.

The 24/7 help line is 833-773-2445

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.