Thirty-four states cut mental health spending between 2009 and 2011 — a total of $1.6 billion — according to The Hill. But the need for mental health services has not decreased.
As a result, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) – who is also trained as a child psychologist – is now trying to bring together mental health advocates with a new bill in order to to reshape the country’s treatment and prevention systems, hoping to work with those who “are mired in the old ways.”
“We are so disjointed that we have become the Jerry Springer family,” Murphy said at an event hosted by the Treatment Advocacy Center, The Hill reported. “We have to stop being self-serving here, folks, and start serving those in need.”
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The bill would come after the 2013 “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act,” which was developed following the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Murphy said he think this will reach the Senate, with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) taking the lead with support from Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
In theory this sound like a great plan, but the part that makes it controversial is that bill includes a provision that would make it easier to actually require people with mental illnesses (or at least diagnosed as ill) to get treatment and take medication.
Requiring someone to take medication or broadening what it means to define someone mentally ill, in any case, could lead to some complications ethically.
Murphy has a clear problem with government’s current approach through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA) and recent budget requests. He went so far as to compare the situation to the cult classic film “Animal House.”
“It is an agency that doesn’t deserve to continue to be the same thing,” he said. “Their record’s a failure.”
Murphy’s bill had won support from Republican leadership in Congress, who painted the bill as the GOP’s solution to the nation’s intensifying mental health crisis. But the bill’s path forward came into question last session, after the House Energy and Commerce Committee decided to break it in pieces to improve its chances of passage. Advocates say the nation is facing a crisis. As the nation’s healthcare system has shifted away from large mental institutions, many people with mental illnesses are faced with two options: jail or the emergency room.
