I am a social work graduate student, and I am deeply concerned about how a new federal law will impact individuals struggling with mental health and substance use challenges. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will cut Medicaid spending by 15% — about $1 trillion — through 2034. These budget cuts will leave millions without coverage.
These cuts will directly affect access to behavioral health services. This loss comes at a time when the system is already under strain because of limited availability of services, workforce shortages and an overwhelming demand for care. Because states are not obligated to cover fully mental health and substance use treatments under Medicaid, these cuts will negatively impact underserved populations, including low-income and rural communities. These reductions will likely lead to increased barriers to care, fewer available services and longer wait times.
I have seen the positive impact of Medicaid firsthand. A close family member was only able to access substance use treatment because of this coverage, and today, he is three years sober. Without these services, I can’t imagine where he would be. His story is, unfortunately, not unique; it reflects the reality of millions across the country.
As a future social worker, I deeply urge policymakers to rethink and recognize the value of behavioral health services. Access to these services is not a privilege; it is vital to individual and community prosperity.
— Celeste Lopez, Villa Park
The failures of the system
Mental health care for many Illinoisans continues to be out of reach. Increased awareness has not translated into meaningful access or consistent support for those who need it the most.
It is vital to understand how systems decide who is considered in need and how these services are prioritized. When there is a pattern of individuals repeatedly coming into contact with the system, it is treated as a personal issue; there often is no questioning as to whether the system is failing them. Repeated contact should be a sign that individuals are not effectively getting what they need; we shouldn’t assume that they are the problem.
Even when individuals receive services, access to care does not always equal effective care. If those services are inconsistent or do not fully support them, then their situations are less likely to improve in a meaningful way.
This reflects larger concerns in how mental health care is structured and who it is designed to support. If need is understood as a result of systems not working, rather than personal failure, we can begin to build a more responsive and equitable approach to care that actually supports individuals.
This requires intentional changes in how care is delivered and who it is designed to serve.
— Jarlisia Daguerre, Chicago
Social media harms to kids
These past few weeks, something shifted. Jury verdicts sent a tremor through Silicon Valley by delivering some accountability that many advocates, parents and mental health professionals have long demanded. First, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages for failing to protect young users from predators on Instagram and Facebook. Then, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for damages in a landmark trial over youth social media addiction. That case involved a girl who began using social media platforms at age 6, which led to her suffering anxiety and depression a few years later.
School districts and parents across the nation have alleged that the actions and apps of Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap cause harms to the mental health of teens and children. With the legal landscape shifting, many observers are drawing comparisons to the “big tobacco moment,” when the tobacco industry was made to acknowledge its product was harmful, a truth it tried to cover up.
That reckoning produced regulatory reform, public health campaigns and hard-won cultural change, but it came too late for far too many. We cannot afford to wait that long again; the products being pushed now are engineered for the minds of children.
These verdicts are consequential for the damages awarded and what the evidence reveals about intent. Internal documents show Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives describing efforts to attract and keep kids and teens on the platforms. One document said: “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.” Meta documents also showed how the company decided to allow “beauty” filters that manipulate a user’s appearance despite employees and experts raising concerns that such settings could be harmful. These choices were profit-driven and made at the expense of well-being.
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It is critical that we invest in youth mental health infrastructure in school-based supports, peer programs, accessible outpatient services and community education that helps families navigate the digital world with intention and protection. We should ensure that conversations about screen time, platform design and online safety are as embedded in pediatric care and school curricula as conversations about nutrition and physical health. And we must center the voices of these young people, who have experience with mental health issues and the toxic culture of social media, so that our solutions have credibility and depth.
Courts cannot do this work alone, and it cannot wait.
— Matt Davison, CEO, NAMI Chicago
How to protect animals
While I was growing up in the Netherlands, Easter meant the hunt. My mother hid my painted eggs throughout our apartment, and I climbed on chairs and crawled under cabinets looking for them. By the time I moved to Chicago in 2009, I was more into Easter brunch. It wasn’t until 2018 that I started connecting the eggs and chicks in Easter displays to the real ones.
Each year, more than 300 million male chicks are killed in U.S. hatcheries — ground up alive on the day they’re born — because they can’t lay eggs. Most of their sisters spend their whole lives in cramped cages, unable to spread their wings. Every Easter, we celebrate new life surrounded by symbols of the animals whose suffering we’ve hidden.
You don’t have to give up your favorite traditions, and going vegan isn’t the ultimate answer to this moral catastrophe (though I did that a few years ago). Individual choices, however good, don’t fix a structural problem. The scale of animal suffering is industrial, economic, political. Addressing it requires work at that level — legal advocacy, corporate pressure campaigns and support of animal protection in emerging markets, where factory farming is growing fastest. Giving high-impact donations to organizations doing this work does far more for baby animals than any other individual action — forcing structural change that personal diets alone cannot.
I’m lucky in Uptown: I have delicious plant-based options nearby: Penelope’s, Alice & Friends, Demera and Dong Ky, among others. But in terms of helping animals, I’m more grateful that my U.S. representative, Mike Quigley, opposes the EATS Act, legislation that would protect farm cruelty instead of animals.
On Good Friday, I’ll attend an Animal Law Symposium at Northwestern University to learn about critical issues arising at the crossroads of animal welfare and policy. At Chicago Public Schools, families can request a fully plant-based menu — not an option for many other students. And I’m pleased that Chicago-based McDonald’s no longer uses eggs from caged chickens.
All this positive change happened thanks to the strategic and persistent actions of well-organized animal lovers. It took me 40 years to learn that loving animals and caring for them are different: The first often comes naturally, as we see at Easter, but the second we craft.
If you want to help animals at scale, it’s simpler than you might think. Learn about their lives and what methods work best to help them, then donate accordingly.
— Stien van der Ploeg, executive director, Animal Charity Evaluators
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