STARKVILLE, Miss. — The community mental health clinic at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., is about to grow. University psychology faculty and staff have landed seven grants worth roughly $14.6 million, the most the department has ever had at one time.
Six of the awards, together topping $13.5 million, come from the Mississippi Department of Mental Health and the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, known as SAMHSA. A seventh federal grant pays for suicide prevention work on campus. The money will let MSU Behavioral Health add staff, open new clinic space off campus and widen care for young people, college students and first responders.
Clinic director Michael Nadorff leads two of the projects. Project BRIDGE, backed by about $5 million over five years, will screen people ages 12 to 21 for substance use at pediatric offices and youth courts in five counties: Oktibbeha, Lowndes, Clay, Monroe and Lee, then offer free follow-up care. A separate $1.1 million project serves people 18 to 24 in Starkville or by telehealth statewide, with no enrollment requirement, and pays for the clinic’s first prescribing provider, a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
Psychology professor Aggie Rieger received nearly $3 million to run the Mississippi Youth Resilience Center, which can serve 660 families with trauma treatment, with a focus on reaching kids who have autism or other developmental disabilities. She expects to begin seeing patients in early 2027.
Two grants focus on first responders. About $3.2 million will train crews in 20 rural counties, including Oktibbeha, to reverse overdoses with naloxone, and a renewed award expands a mental health crisis course that has already trained more than 1,000 responders around the state.
Filed under: Starkville MS Health News
