On Wednesday morning, Scott Delaney woke up to an email from an address he didn’t recognize. In a hasty 6 a.m. message, the writer explained to have been hearing from contacts at community-based organizations running substance use disorder and harm reduction programs that “their grants were all cancelled.” The stranger wondered: Had Delaney, who leads Grant Witness, an online database tracking federal grant terminations, heard the same?

In fact Delaney hadn’t — yet. By 10 a.m., NPR broke the story that, the previous night, the Trump administration had notified hundreds that their funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) had been terminated, apparently due to misalignment with “agency priorities.” Upwards of 2,100 grants were cancelled, worth a total around $2 billion. Delaney’s Signal threads blew up. Emails and web form submissions reporting specific grant terminations and requesting information flowed in. The Grant Witness team spent the day building a new system to track SAMHSA grants. Come evening, Delaney had put his kids to bed and was settling back down at the computer when he learned the Trump administration had reversed its decision: The cancelled grants are now restored.

In that moment, following the news of reinstatement, silence fell upon the Grant Witness Slack chat. Delaney described a sense of relief, perhaps second only to disbelief: a stomach-clench of mixed emotions no doubt reflecting the experience of mental health professionals across the country. They had spent hours mobilizing, scrambling for answers, only to end up with a new set of questions, among them: Is it over?

This latest instance of federal policy whiplash plays into a larger pattern that makes it difficult for some to completely shake off concerns.

Certain developments on this front have been reassuring. That lawmakers from across the political aisle activated to restore the funding indicates vast support for these programs, which widely focus on suicide prevention and substance use treatment, including for young people. The letter SAMHSA sent rescinding the terminations also seems to promise a quick return to regular programming. “Your award will remain active under its original terms and conditions,” a copy of the email obtained by LearningWell states. “Please disregard the prior termination notice and continue program activities as outlined in your award agreement.” 

But this latest instance of federal policy whiplash plays into a larger pattern that makes it difficult for some to completely shake off concerns. This fall, LearningWell covered the ongoing uncertainty that has weighed on mental health researchers over the fate of federally funded projects. Throughout 2025, mass grant freezes and terminations by the National Health Institute, for example, disrupted scientific research across a range of disciplines. In the case of mental health, the particularly unfunny irony is of course that the stress of these cuts has been damaging to the mental health — and careers and livelihoods — of the researchers themselves. 

“It’s really hard to know and trust, frankly, the information and know how it's going to play out,” said Sara Abelson, the senior director of training and education at The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University. At the junction of mental health and higher education, the ground beneath her has felt shaky for a while now. Amid this week’s cuts, Abelseon paid special attention to one grant that provides funds to colleges and universities: the Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention program. According to research Abelson has been conducting on federal grants for student basic needs, between 2016 and 2024, G.L.S. touched nearly 250 campuses in 45 states and Puerto Rico. These are the kind of wide-reaching “lifesaving supports” she said have been threatened. Will next time be for real? 

Delaney also isn’t quite ready to unwind. Well-versed in the grant cancellation and restoration process, he worries about how long it will take this time. On Wednesday, some grantees shared with him documents, called Notices of Award, they received reestablishing their funding to zero. These NOAs are legal contracts, with the terms offset, in Delaney’s experience, only when a new one is issued. So, he wonders, are the grantees technically owed their original funds at this point? Will some end up pausing their work out of caution? SAMHSA did not respond immediately to a request for comment as to whether revised NOAs will be sent or the expected timeline.

Others worry, because the potential reasons for the original cancellations remain, future cuts may still be coming. Kathleen Ethier, the former director of the division of adolescent and school health at the Centers for Disease Control, believes U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s expressed views on the over-discussion and over-pathologization of youth mental health issues don’t bode well for the future of related initiatives. “I do think that there is an ideological reason why these grants were targeted,” she said, “and I do think we have to remain vigilant about the ways in which this administration is going to support young people's mental health in schools.” 

The continuous federal funding upheaval may have had at least one positive outcome for mental health advocates, though. Now they know how to respond. While Delaney said the initial rush following this week’s terminations — to organize his team and collect new information and field inquiries all at once — felt akin to Whac-A-Mol, previous experience helped him maintain a sense of control. “I think because we've done this before, honestly, I felt ready to tackle this,” he said. “We knew what to do, we knew who to contact, and we were going to be able to put together a database that was going to be really helpful, and we were going to be able to do it really well, really fast.”

“It's really, really energizing to see the vast numbers of folks pull together, the communities activate and mobilize, and you can draw a lot of strength from that,” Delaney said.

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.