[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 129 (Thursday, September 26, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H5840-H5841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    MENTAL ILLNESS AND GUN VIOLENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, with the tragic mass shooting last week at 
the Washington Navy Yard, our country has again been ravaged by 
preventable gun violence. America must confront these events and their 
causes to prevent future tragedies.
  Since 2007, according to the FBI, there have been 146 reported mass 
shootings. Far too often, a large contributing factor to this recent 
surge in violence is untreated mental illness; and in far too many 
instances, the perpetrators are former members of our military. Our 
Nation must bridge the gaps in our current mental health system to 
avoid more tragedies.
  The President recently unveiled his BRAIN Initiative. It calls for 
$100 million in funding to advance our understanding of the human mind. 
Supporting this proposal will go a long way to furthering our 
understanding of the causes and conditions that afflict those who wish 
to harm others and themselves.
  Further, Congressman McKinley of West Virginia and I have introduced 
H.R. 1615, the Examining America's Mental Health Services Act of 2013. 
The bill requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the 
National Academies' Institute of Medicine to conduct a comprehensive 
study on the gaps in our Nation's mental health services and to explore 
how these gaps increase the risk of violent acts. Experts such as 
former Army Vice Chief of Staff Dr. Peter Chiarelli, Dr. Joseph 
Calabrese of Case Western Reserve University, U.S. Army Colonel Carl 
Castro, and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, head of the Stanley Foundation, would 
be prime candidates to lead breakthrough national initiatives on mental 
health.
  Part of our comprehensive effort should focus on (1) accelerating 
funding for brain research and neuropsychiatric treatment; (2), 
reforming military enlistment, discharge procedures and integrating the 
Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs' medical 
records systems; (3), instituting early childhood behavioral screening 
in schools; and, (4), restricting gun and ammunition access to those 
who have serious behavioral disorders.
  Additional focus on mental illness and gun access is imperative. The 
Navy Yard tragedy resulted in the deaths of 13 of our citizens with 
eight additional people injured. The perpetrator, Aaron Alexis, was 
aged 34, a Navy Reserve veteran and a contractor to the U.S. Navy. He 
joined the Naval Reserve and began experiencing conditions that many 
would describe as related to PTSD, with demonstrable neuro conditions 
such as schizophrenia or paranoid schizophrenia. However, he was 
allowed to purchase a Remington 870 pump action shotgun and two boxes 
of ammunition. Individuals who suffer from these types of ailments 
should not have access to weapons and stockpiles of ammunition.
  Unaddressed mental illness continues to be prevalent in many of our 
Nation's traumatic mass shootings, and they involve perpetrators who 
are private citizens as well.
  We recall so sadly in Tucson, Arizona, when our own former dear 
colleague, Rep. Gabby Giffords, and current colleague, Representative 
Ron Barber, miraculously survived a mass shooting in which six others 
lost their lives after a deranged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, opened 
fire at a meeting at a local supermarket at which Giffords and 
constituents were gathering.
  We saw it at nearby Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, when Seung-Hui 
Cho took the lives of 32 people; and we saw it at Sandy Hook Elementary 
School in December of 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza ended the lives 
of 20 children and seven adults after taking his own mother's life and 
then his own.
  How many more calls for attention--for help?--does America need to 
hear?
  The killing of two Capitol Police Officers over a decade ago, here in 
our Capitol, was perpetrated by a man who had been diagnosed as a 
paranoid schizophrenic who was off his medication, alienated from his 
family and who got access to a gun.
  Congress should be deeply concerned that civilians, as well as our 
brave men and women who serve or who have served in our Armed Forces, 
are not receiving the medical treatment required for diagnosing 
debilitating mental illness and trying to treat it better. An annual 
Department of Defense report on suicide has shown a precipitous 
increase in military suicides over the course of the last 5 years. In 
2012, there were 349 suicides by military men and women from all 
branches of the Armed

[[Page H5841]]

Forces. That is more than all the combat deaths that same year in 
Afghanistan. This is an epidemic and requires more attention and 
investment, including the BRAIN Initiative put forward by the 
President.
  In sum, the common denominator with many of these mass shootings is a 
mentally ill individual with access to deadly weapons who has not been 
treated properly or, many times, whose mental illness has not even been 
evaluated. America must address these deficiencies for the benefit of 
our entire society. We must accelerate research to unlock the mysteries 
of the human brain.
  Mr. Speaker, the only question is: Do America's leaders on behalf of 
the American people have the courage and vision to embark on a serious 
national conversation about mental health and mental illness?

                                                  The White House,


                                Office of the Press Secretary,

                                                    April 2, 2013.

                      Fact Sheet: BRAIN Initiative

       ``If we want to make the best products, we also have to 
     invest in the best ideas . . . Every dollar we invested to 
     map the human genome returned $140 to our economy . . . 
     Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock 
     the answers to Alzheimer's . . . Now is not the time to gut 
     these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now 
     is the time to reach a level of research and development not 
     seen since the height of the Space Race.''--President Barack 
     Obama, 2013 State of the Union.
       In his State of the Union address, the President laid out 
     his vision for creating jobs and building a growing, thriving 
     middle class by making a historic investment in research and 
     development.
       Today, at a White House event, the President unveiled a 
     bold new research initiative designed to revolutionize our 
     understanding of the human brain. Launched with approximately 
     $100 million in the President's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget, the 
     BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative 
     Neurotechnologies) Initiative ultimately aims to help 
     researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent 
     brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and 
     traumatic brain injury.
       The BRAIN Initiative will accelerate the development and 
     application of new technologies that will enable researchers 
     to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show how 
     individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact 
     at the speed of thought. These technologies will open new 
     doors to explore how the brain records, processes, uses, 
     stores, and retrieves vast quantities of information, and 
     shed light on the complex links between brain function and 
     behavior.
       This initiative is one of the Administration's ``Grand 
     Challenges''--ambitious but achievable goals that require 
     advances in science and technology. In his remarks today, the 
     President called on companies, research universities, 
     foundations, and philanthropists to join with him in 
     identifying and pursuing the Grand Challenges of the 21st 
     century.
       The BRAIN Initiative includes:
       Key investments to jumpstart the effort: The National 
     Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects 
     Agency, and the National Science Foundation will support 
     approximately $100 million in research beginning in FY 2014.
       Strong academic leadership: The National Institutes of 
     Health will establish a high-level working group co-chaired 
     by Dr. Cornelia ``Cori'' Bargmann (The Rockefeller 
     University) and Dr. William Newsome (Stanford University) to 
     define detailed scientific goals for the NIH's investment, 
     and to develop a multi-year scientific plan for achieving 
     these goals, including timetables, milestones, and cost 
     estimates.
       Public-private partnerships: Federal research agencies will 
     partner with companies, foundations, and private research 
     institutions that are also investing in relevant neuroscience 
     research, such as the Allen Institute, the Howard Hughes 
     Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation, and the Salk 
     Institute for Biological Studies.
       Maintaining our highest ethical standards: Pioneering 
     research often has the potential to raise new ethical 
     challenges. To ensure this new effort proceeds in ways that 
     continue to adhere to our highest standards of research 
     protections, the President will direct his Commission for the 
     Study of Bioethical Issues to explore the ethical, legal, and 
     societal implications raised by this research initiative and 
     other recent advances in neuroscience.


                               Background

       In the last decade alone, scientists have made a number of 
     landmark discoveries that now create the opportunity to 
     unlock the mysteries of the brain, including the sequencing 
     of the human genome, the development of new tools for mapping 
     neuronal connections, the increasing resolution of imaging 
     technologies, and the explosion of nanoscience. These 
     breakthroughs have paved the way for unprecedented 
     collaboration and discovery across scientific fields. For 
     instance, by combining advanced genetic and optical 
     techniques, scientists can now use pulses of light to 
     determine how specific cell activities in the brain affect 
     behavior. In addition, through the integration of 
     neuroscience and physics, researchers can now use high-
     resolution imaging technologies to observe how the brain is 
     structurally and functionally connected in living humans.
       While these technological innovations have contributed 
     substantially to our expanding knowledge of the brain, 
     significant breakthroughs in how we treat neurological and 
     psychiatric disease will require a new generation of tools to 
     enable researchers to record signals from brain cells in much 
     greater numbers and at even faster speeds. This cannot 
     currently be achieved, but great promise for developing such 
     technologies lies at the intersections of nanoscience, 
     imaging, engineering, informatics, and other rapidly emerging 
     fields of science and engineering.


                 Key Investments to Launch this Effort

       To make the most of these opportunities, the National 
     Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects 
     Agency, and the National Science Foundation are launching 
     this effort with funding in the President's FY 2014 budget.
       National Institutes of Health: The NIH Blueprint for 
     Neuroscience Research--an initiative that pools resources and 
     expertise from across 15 NIH Institutes and Centers--will be 
     a leading NIH contributor to the implementation of this 
     initiative in FY 2014. The Blueprint program will contribute 
     funding for the initiative, given that the Blueprint funds 
     are specifically devoted to projects that support the 
     development of new tools, training opportunities, and other 
     resources. In total, NIH intends to allocate approximately 
     $40 million in FY 2014.
       Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: In FY 2014, 
     DARPA plans to invest $50 million in a set of programs with 
     the goal of understanding the dynamic functions of the brain 
     and demonstrating breakthrough applications based on these 
     insights. DARPA aims to develop a new set of tools to capture 
     and process dynamic neural and synaptic activities. DARPA is 
     interested in applications--such as a new generation of 
     information processing systems and restoration mechanisms--
     that dramatically improve the way we diagnose and treat 
     warfighters suffering from post-traumatic stress, brain 
     injury, and memory loss. DARPA will engage a broad range of 
     experts to explore the ethical, legal, and societal issues 
     raised by advances in neurotechnology.
       National Science Foundation: The National Science 
     Foundation will play an important role in the BRAIN 
     Initiative because of its ability to support research that 
     spans biology, the physical sciences, engineering, computer 
     science, and the social and behavioral sciences. The National 
     Science Foundation intends to support approximately $20 
     million in FY 2014 in research that will advance this 
     initiative, such as the development of molecular-scale probes 
     that can sense and record the activity of neural networks; 
     advances in ``Big Data'' that are necessary to analyze the 
     huge amounts of information that will be generated, and 
     increased understanding of how thoughts, emotions, actions, 
     and memories are represented in the brain.

                          ____________________