A sweeping reform of the nation’s $130 billion mental health system — already passed by the U.S. House and headed for the Senate next month — would ramp up the number of psychiatric beds and make it easier for families to access treatment even when their relative does not want it.
U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican and a clinical psychologist, is behind the legislation, the product of three years of research that began after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Murphy, along with U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, was in Colorado on Wednesday to talk about his bill, hoping to boost support ahead of the Senate’s return in September.
“We can’t delay,” Murphy said. “This is an emergency.”
A “top-to-bottom review” of the mental health system, which included public forums, expert testimony and budget reviews, revealed a “chaotic patchwork of antiquated programs and ineffective policies spread across numerous agencies with little to no coordination,” Murphy said. More than 100 federal agencies deal with mental health, and most of the $130 billion in federal spending goes toward disability benefits for people who have mental illness instead of treatment.
As mental institutions began closing in the 1950s, the country failed to provide mental health care in communities, Murphy said. “We replaced that hospital bed with the prison cell, the gurney in the emergency room, the county morgue and the street,” he said at The Denver Post, after talking to mental health experts and advocates at University of Colorado Hospital.
The “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act,” or HR 2646, calls for federal spending to eliminate the 100,000 shortage of psychiatric treatment beds within 10 years. The nation had 550,000 beds in the 1950s, and has just 40,000 today. People with mental illness in this country are more likely to be in jail than receiving treatment in a hospital.
The reforms would save money long-term because treating people earlier costs less than incarcerating them, he said.
The most controversial portion of the bill would make it easier for doctors to share health concerns with family members under a “compassionate communication allowance,” meaning, for example, that a psychologist or physician could alert relatives if a mentally ill patient had a chronic illness such as diabetes that was not being treated, even when the patient did not give permission.
The bill also includes provisions that would help families obtain guardianship of an adult relative who is “chronically incapacitated.” Numerous states, including Colorado, have battled recently about making it easier for families to commit a relative for mental health treatment. Colorado law requires that people pose an “imminent danger” of harm to themselves or others before they can be committed involuntarily for evaluation.
Murphy said the nation’s health care privacy laws have been twisted into the “right to be sick” instead of the “right to be well.”
