ICYMI: 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Rep. Tim Murphy’s long slog for mental health

For Immediate Release: December 19, 2016
Contact: Carly Atchison 202.225.2301

By Ruth Ann Dailey
December 19, 2016

U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy’s crusade to change the nation’s mental health care system began in the days following Adam Lanza’s slaughter of the innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The 20-year-old gunman, who had been diagnosed with multiple psychiatric and physical ailments that went mostly untreated, killed 20 children, his mother and six other adults on Dec. 14, 2012.

On Dec. 12, 2013, after a year of research and hearings, Mr. Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, introduced the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.”

Three more years of hearings, meetings and negotiations ensued. Although the bill garnered impressive bipartisan praise and finally sailed through the House in July on a vote of 422-2, by September observers were calling its chances in the Senate “murky.”

Last Tuesday, just one day before the fourth anniversary of Sandy Hook, President Barack Obama signed Mr. Murphy’s legislation — or an acceptable facsimile of it — into law.

“It was a moment of joy,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview Friday, “but it’s a sobering joy.”

“Sobering” is a good description of the legislative process. If we understood it better, we might have more patience with the men and women who persevere to achieve something positive from Congress’ proverbial sausage-making.

It took Mr. Murphy four years, and if you blinked, you could have missed the grand finale. I nearly did, despite having saved almost 80 news releases issued by the congressman’s office from the bill’s introduction to its passage.

In part, that’s because the bill that reached the president’s desk bears a different name and covers much more territory than what passed the House back in July. It is now known as the 21st Century Cures Act.

The Cures Act, written by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., increases funding for biomedical research and speeds up FDA approval procedures. Mr. Murphy’s bill was basically grafted onto the Cures Act, he said, and it also embraced Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer initiative.

“These three forces were working” simultaneously and creating great bipartisan momentum at the end, he said, but “it was a very long slog.”

And that’s why it was a “sobering joy” he felt last week. In those four years from initial vision to presidential signature, “1.4 million people died [of mental health-related causes],” he said. “I hope to see that trend change.”

His numbers come from a National Institutes of Health estimate of 350,000 deaths per year related to mental health issues. Suicides, drug overdoses, homeless people dying of hypothermia — these are obvious examples, but 75 percent of those with severe mental illness develop other diseases that can be fatal.

Self-medicating with drugs or alcohol can lead to disease, for instance, or mental illness can interfere with the diagnosis and treatment of another ailment.

People with a chronic illness often develop depression, which slows healing and generally doubles the cost of their treatment, Mr. Murphy said. “It’s a very dramatic difference.”

And the social costs of untreated mental illness — in jails, homeless shelters, emergency services, court proceedings, etc.— are enormous.

One big change he hopes will help reverse these ills: the creation of a new assistant secretary for mental health and substance abuse, which will ensure the parity of mental health in the health care system.

And there are myriad less conspicuous changes, because “we have to think of every possible way we can increase access to mental health care.”

There is increased accountability for how mental health care dollars are spent; more training for psychologists (“I wanted more, but it’s still substantial,” Mr. Murphy said); malpractice coverage so psychiatrists and psychologists can now volunteer at community health centers; some reworking of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act laws so doctors and relatives can intervene with more confidence in a patient’s mental health crisis, and money to battle opioid addiction.

“We didn’t get everything we needed, but we needed everything we got,” Mr. Murphy said.

Rather than basking a bit in the glow of a long-hoped-for success, the congressman seems already to have shifted his focus to follow-through and getting the word out. Later this week, as a commander in the Navy Reserve, he’ll be at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, working with service people recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries.

His example makes a strong argument for the citizen-legislator — someone with a specialty in something besides politics who can bring his or her professional expertise to bear on legislation.

In this case, a psychologist has fought diligently for much-needed improvements to the nation’s mental health care system. He won; we win.

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This piece first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Click here to read the original article.

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