Groups plan rallies against cuts in state mental health services

Supporters of state-sponsored mental health services say they'll be rallying all week at the Capitol to try to stop budget cuts.

Supporters say health bills in the Senate would cut $40 million for things like school-based mental health care, health care for kids in juvenile detention, and mobile crisis teams that help police in the Twin Cities.

"There's kind of a number of factors, and a number of programs that are being either cut or eliminated. Our mental health system is barely afloat now, and these kinds of cuts, it will sink it," said Sue Abderholden, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Supporters say mental health programs help keep people in their homes, and out of expensive hospital care and jails and prisons.

Republicans are trying to close the state's $5 billion budget gap without raising taxes, and have proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to fix the state's finances.

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