SALEM — Mental health service workers from Service Employees International Union Local 509 and their allies gathered Tuesday afternoon at Riley Plaza to picket in opposition to Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed cuts to the Department of Mental Health (DMH).
Included in Healey’s Fiscal Year 26 (FY26) budget proposal is the shuttering of two state-run mental health facilities and laying off 50% of Department of Mental Health case managers, a move that protesters say will leave some of the most vulnerable citizens without a support system.
“For the most part, we’re not worried about ourselves. We’re worried about our clients,” Sierra Rodriguez, a human services coordinator for the DMH, said. “We help them navigate the systems that are already confusing to those who don’t have mental health services. So now we’re taking away that bridge for them.”
Rodriguez had spent the past two weeks organizing the Salem picket and crafting posters with messages like “DMH Case Manager = Bringing Hope to the Hopeless” and “50% Cuts = 100% Crisis”.
Rally goers were spread throughout the busy intersection, chanting and displaying their signs while passersby on foot and in cars made noise in support of their cause.
Two picketers stationed in the middle of the square even donned inflatable T-rex suits and held signs that compared Healey’s proposed cuts to the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs.
“A couple of individuals are here supporting their case managers and the DMH as a whole,” Jonathan Greene, a human services coordinator with the DMH, said. “That speaks volumes to how much that relationship, the face to face, works. They trust us, and now what they’re doing in return is helping us out.”
Greene also attended a rally last Tuesday at the State House in Boston, where hundreds of health care workers and their supporters gathered to have their voices heard.
Already, the noise being created from the mental health care community has made waves, with Healey pausing the closure of the Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital for Children in Canton and Pocasset Mental Health Center on Cape Cod.
“We were able to contact and speak with many representatives and their staff, and it felt like we were being actually heard,” Greene said. “We got some feedback and feel that a lot of the reps are on our side. We’re trying to push that even further so by the time the budget does have to come out, we’re not on the chopping block.”
The rally goers warned that if the Healey administration goes through with the proposed cuts, the impact of the hundreds of layoffs and lost support systems could be disastrous for an already vulnerable population.
“We’re going to have over 6,000 people who are going to lose services, and there are no other services that can replicate DMH case management,” Jean Calvert-McClure, DMH chapter leader at Local SEIU 509, said. “They’re the backbone of mental health services. And they do things like keep people out of the ER, they help the police and the EMS so that we can minimize when they’re having to respond to some kind of mental health crisis. They help people to stabilize when they’re discharging back to the community.”
Another distressing outcome Calvert-McClure warned about was a spike in suicide rates by those with mental health issues who can no longer access support, something that she says has been seen when DMH case managers have been let go en masse in the past.
A shared sentiment between everyone attending the protest was that the Healey administration’s proposed cuts demonstrated a betrayal where previous messaging of supporting the mental health of Massachusetts residents now seems hollow.
“A lot of people we support don’t even have their basic needs, and that’s what we’re doing. We provide that safe space for them to say, ‘Hey, I need this help,’” Rodriguez said. “We work so hard just to de-stigmatize mental illness, and this is setting us back.”
