[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9131-9132]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              HELPING FAMILIES IN MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on some of the issues my 
friend from Chicago just stated, I couldn't disagree more. Let me 
explain why, why we have problems with our prisons in America and 
homelessness.
  Nearly 10 million Americans have severe mental illness like 
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. Yet millions are 
going without treatment as families struggle to find care for loved 
ones.
  Over the last 30 years, we have shut down the old asylums and what we 
have seen is an increase in incarceration, suicide, homelessness, 
emergency room visits, unemployment, substance abuse, and substance 
abuse deaths. We have failed on all these metrics.
  Anyone who thinks we are being successful in helping those with 
severe mental illness is delusional. We have traded the old hospital 
bed for the prison cell, the emergency room gurney, the homeless 
shelter, and the cemetery. We have seen horrible and disturbing 
increases of the mentally ill being victims of crime, like sexual 
assault, robbery, and bullying. In fact, we lose 40,000 Americans to 
suicide each year, and there are another 1.3 million suicide attempts.
  These stories are haunting, and the numbers are staggering. Four 
million people with serious mental illness are not receiving treatment. 
There is a shortage of 1,000 psychiatric hospital beds nationwide, so 
there is often nowhere to go when there is a crisis.
  How cruel and tragic it was when Senator Creigh Deeds of Virginia 
took his son to a hospital to be told there were no psychiatric beds, 
and we know the tragic outcome of that story and the thousands of times 
it is repeated every year.
  We have one child psychiatrist for every 2,000 children with a mental 
health disorder. While we know that 50 percent of severe mental illness 
emerges by age 14 and 75 percent by age 24, we don't have a sufficient 
number of professionals to treat it, so it gets worse.
  We have Federal rules to protect privacy, which has frustrated 
countless numbers of doctors and family members, generating 70,000 
official complaints. It was meant to improve patient care, but it acts 
as an impossible barrier to breach because loving family members can't 
connect with someone with serious mental illness.
  We have a mental health agency in this country that the Federal 
Government has that doesn't employ a single psychiatrist. This is what 
the American taxpayer buys for $130 billion a year. Is this success 
from the over 112 Federal programs and agencies meant to deal with 
mental illness?

                              {time}  1015

  We have failed not because we don't know what to do when it comes to 
effectively identifying and treating mental illness, but it is because 
the Federal Government has stood in the way with poorly administered 
policies and antiquated attitudes.
  Our ability to treat serious mental illness is in the 21st century. 
We know more effective treatments for this brain illness. However, our 
beliefs about mental illness are still mired in the 19th century. As 
long as we think that mental illness is an attitude or a difference in 
perception or that hallucinations and delusions are bizarrely labeled 
as nonconsensus reality, we are wrong.
  Quite simply, we have created the most difficult system for those who 
have the most difficulty. Now is the time to change and turn this 
system from top to bottom.
  That is why I have reintroduced the Helping Families in Mental Health 
Crisis Act, H.R. 2646. It reforms Federal programs, removes Federal 
barriers to care, and refocuses research that is updated and innovative 
legislation that will produce a new paradigm of treatment for those 
with serious mental health problems.

[[Page 9132]]

  This bill empowers parents and caregivers to access care before stage 
IV. It fixes shortages of inpatient beds, helps to reach underserved in 
rural populations, expands the mental health workforce, drives 
evidence-based care, provides alternatives to institutionalization. It 
integrates primary and behavioral care. It increases the mental health 
workforce in underserved areas by volunteerism. It increases minorities 
in the mental health workforce. It advances critical mental research 
and brings accountability to mental health and substance abuse parity 
in this Nation.
  If we want to get people treatment, not jail time, not abandonment; 
if we want to help the tens of millions of people affected by mental 
illness and the hundreds of millions of friends and relatives who are 
emotionally strained; if we want accountability, transparency, and more 
effective spending of Federal dollars to get care in the community 
where it is needed; if we want to stop victimization of the mentally 
ill; if we want to prevent the next Newtown, Tucson, Aurora, Isla 
Vista, Columbine, or Navy Yard, we have to do something comprehensive 
and research based, and we have to do it now.
  What we need is not only for Congress to act, but, during these next 
few weeks, we need to hear from every doctor and first responder and 
teacher and parent and patient and judge and consumer that we have to 
act thoroughly and thoughtfully and responsibly and now.
  On every concern, America needs to speak up and speak out. We need to 
start treating mental illness as we do other diseases like AIDS or 
cancer or diabetes, and this legislation, H.R. 2646, gives us the tools 
to do so. We need evidence-based care before crisis; we need treatment 
before tragedy.
  I ask my colleagues to support this bill, the Helping Families in 
Mental Health Crisis Act, because treatment delayed is treatment 
denied, and this legislation marks a new dawn for mental health in 
America.

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