Opening Statement of the Honorable Tim Murphy

Subcommittee on Health

Hearing entitled, "Examining H.R. 2646, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act"

June 16, 2015

For Immediate Release: June 16, 2015
Contact: Gretchen Andersen 202.225.2301

Following the tragedy at Newtown, the Oversight Subcommittee undertook a sweeping examination of our mental health system. We convened no less than five hearings, held Member briefings, interviewed hundreds of people, and heard from thousands of families across America documenting the myriad of problems in the federal governments approach to treatment and services for the most serious cases of mental illness. 

Here is what we found:

• Our mental health system is broken. Badly broken. It’s getting worse. And it must be fixed.Not with small, short term, feel good, quick fixes, but something substantial.
• Why?
• 40,000 suicide deaths last year in the US
• 60 million with a diagnosable mental illness, 10 million with serious mental illness like schizophrenia, bipolar and severe depression, half of those without treatment.100,000 new cases of serious mental illness each year.
• A person with mental illness is 4-10x more likely to be a victim of a crime than someone without mental illness
• A person with serious mental illness and in treatment is 15x less likely to be a perpetrator of violence than someone NOT in treatment
• 1.2 million with mental illness in jails and prisons
• 200,000 who are homeless
• Those with mental illness are more likely to be unemployed, or on disability.

According to the GAO reviews done for this committee, we are spending $130 billion a year over some 112 government programs and agencies that don’t work together, have little accountability and in many cases not very good results.

Psychiatry is the only field of medicine where the treatment protocols are written by lawyers and not doctors.  Where family members are considered the enemy to care for an adult child with serious mental illness and are locked out of knowing anything, ANYTHING about the care for their loved one who has no capacity to care for themselves.

I ask every member of the committee to stop and think: Imagine your adult child is hallucinating, schizophrenic and out on the streets and you are told that the law says you have no right to know anything about your child’s location, condition or care. They presume having any information is harmful to your own child. 

Or if your child is brought before a judge with concerns for his delusions, hallucinations and inability to care for himself a judge says “It’s not against the law to be crazy.” 

Are we lacking so much in compassion and are we so ignorant of what serious mental illness is?  Would we say it’s “not illegal to have a heart attack” and walk away from the person with chest pains?

For an 80 year old woman barefoot and in the snow with Alzheimer’s disease we understand her diminished capacity to think for or care for herself and we would step in and care for her with compassion.  But for a person with schizophrenia and symptoms of with delusions the CIA has planted devices in his brain, we write it off as if serious mental illness is just a choice, an attitude, a way of life, that the voices they hear are just a “non-consensus reality”.

Here is the truth: serious mental illness is a brain disorder and we must come to terms with this critically important fact or else nothing we do or say here will make any sense to anyone. 

Let me say that again, mental illness, especially serious mental illness is a brain illness and as such must be seen as and treated for what it is. To believe otherwise is folly, anti-science, an injustice to the person, denies them appropriate treatment, and sentences them to more imprisonment, homelessness, victimization, unemployment, and more barriers to care.

So what are we going to do about it?

I urge Members to embrace this bill – a product of the hard important work of this committee and a bipartisan coalition with one goal to reform our fractured mental health system to provide for better care.  It breaks down federal barriers to care, reforms outdated programs, expands parity accountability, and invests in services for the most difficult to treat cases while driving evidence-based care.

Although this bill is comprehensive, it is a first step. A big first step. It does not fix everything. I wish there was a way we could go even further to build even more comprehensive changes to help fight the plague of substance use disorders, but as you all know the Oversight Committee has undertaken this challenge as we did mental health reform - so we’ll get there. 

HR 2646 sets the stage for more reform.  The assistant secretary will be gathering data, will be reporting to congress, and will tell us each year, what is working and what is not. Congress will then have the opportunity and obligation to take further action based on facts and sound science. 

I am tremendously grateful for the courageous effort of Sen. Creigh Deeds in joining me to advance the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. His powerful testimony on the many system-wide failures in caring for the hardest to treat cases of serious mental illness point to the need for each provision in the bill and will help drive legislative action. I thank all the witnesses who have invested their lives in making change. The make-up of this panel of witness demonstrates that this issue truly transcends political boundaries. Let us be inspired by their courage.

Reforming the mental health system has brought together communities, families, lawmakers, law enforcement from across the political spectrum in a single effort, a single cause: to deliver services to those most in need. We’re going to do just that. I would also like to take a moment to thank and commend Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, who has been a driving force in keeping these critical issues at the forefront of the Committee’s agenda.