For Immediate Release: July 9, 2015
Contact: Gretchen Andersen 202.225.2301

(Washington D.C.) – As support builds on Capitol Hill and across the country for Congressman Tim Murphy’s (PA-18) Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, H.R. 2646, top news outlets continue to cover the groundbreaking legislation, including the editorial board at the National Review and a Letter to the Editor at the Washington Post and the Observer Reporter. 

In the July 20^th issue of the news magazine in “The Week” section, the National Review points out how Murphy’s bill is designed to improve treatment and increase options for those who need it most—individuals with serious mental illness. 

Currently, the bipartisan legislation boasts 56 cosponsors. Last month, Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds appeared before a packed three-hour House Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee hearing imploring members of Congress to pass H.R. 2646, describing the critical need for an overhaul of our country’s broken mental health system and the daily challenges families with loved ones in mental health crisis must endure.

Click here to watch Murphy’s CSPAN speech he delivered on the House floor this morning. 

 


 
The Week - July 20, 2015 issue

Among the bill’s proposed reforms: a change of privacy laws so that family caregivers will no longer be shut out of medical decisions and denied basic information about their mentally ill loved ones; a revision in the need-for-treatment standards so people can get help before they harm themselves or others, and before they land in emergency rooms or jail; and a requirement that states authorize court-ordered “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) programs if they are to receive Community Mental Health Services Block Grant funds. – Editorial Board at National Review
 

Mental Illness and Weapons Are a Dangerous Combination
Letter to the Editor
July 2, 2015

The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act introduced by Reps. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) would reduce police shootings of people with mental illness and shootings of police by people with mental illness. It would make it easier to get mentally ill people treatment before they become dangerous. It would also give the mental-health system encouragement to focus its resources on the most seriously ill. – D.J. Jaffe, Executive Director of Mental Illness Policy Org. and Michael C. Biasotti, chairman of the Committee Untreated Severe Mental Illness of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police

Murphy deserves thanks for mental health bill
Letter to the Editor
July 8, 2015 

As someone with a family member suffering from serious mental illness, I thank U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy for introducing the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. It would help the seriously mentally ill get better care and ensure federal funds are only spent on evidence-based treatments. Rather than address how the bill would help the seriously mentally ill while keeping the public, police and patients safer, Paul Denton cast aspersions on Murphy’s motives in a Friday letter by suggesting he introduced the bill because pharmaceutical companies would stand to benefit. Maybe they will. But would Denton have us deny better care for persons with serious mental illness because those providing the medicines would make a profit? - D.J. Jaffe, Executive Director of Mental Illness Policy Org.

###

In his seventh term representing Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district encompassing suburban Pittsburgh including parts of Allegheny, Washington, Westmoreland and Greene Counties, Rep. Tim Murphy also serves as a Commander in the Navy Reserve Medical Service Corps as a psychologist treating Wounded Warriors with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury.