Federal mental health bill shifts focus to preventing tragedy

Ensuring "treatment before tragedy" while pumping $150 million into national mental health efforts are among the components of a bill being promoted as the most significant piece of legislation in that area since 1962.

The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act comes from an investigation into the state of mental health treatment in America since the shooting of 20 children and 6 adults in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. The bill is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, with 10th District Rep. Bob Dold of Kenilworth as one of the original co-sponsors.

The pair hosted a summit Tuesday at the Lake County Health Department and toured Compass Health Center in Northbrook to pitch the bill to suburban mental health advocates.

The Helping Families act calls for refocusing treatment efforts on serious mental illness instead of what Murphy, a psychologist for 40 years, calls "wellness and happiness" efforts to improve mindfulness or decrease the seasonal blues. This will help address conditions that lead to 350,000 people dying each year across the country from causes directly or indirectly related to mental conditions including suicides, drug overdoses, homicides committed by those with mental illness and hypothermia deaths of homeless people with mental illness, the Republican lawmakers said.

The act would create a new assistant secretary for mental health and substance use disorders to ensure the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration emphasizes use of treatment methods that are proven effective for such conditions as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These conditions, along with major depression, affect 11 million Americans, yet Murphy said millions are unable to find treatment, leading many to experience symptoms for up to 18 months before they see a doctor.

The bill also would tweak health information laws to allow parents and caregivers of mentally ill adults to receive medical information to assist in their care. It also would require Medicaid to pay for up to 15 days a month of inpatient mental health treatment.

"This is like tearing down the Berlin Wall of stigma in mental health - it's going to take some time," Murphy said. "But it has cracks in it, and this is our sledgehammer, this bill."

Murphy has been pushing for mental health reform with versions of this bill since 2013. Dold signed onto the latest draft in June 2015.

"This is a public health issue," Dold said about the epidemic of untreated serious mental illness, which contributes to another problem - heroin abuse. "It needs to be addressed."

Reforms in the bill would move government agencies that address mental health from a "1970s mentality" to a focus on using science to determine what produces the best results, Murphy said.

Community treatment centers that receive funding authorized by the bill would be required to track data about the number of people they treat, the conditions those patients have and the outcomes.

"If it's good, it's replicable," Murphy said about mental health treatment programs. "Every applied use of the funds is a study."

While Murphy and Dold say the bill aims to get people who have mental illness into treatment before any type of tragedy strikes, they say this is not a gun-control effort. It's about improving care for a set of chronic diseases that are often misunderstood and sometimes deadly.

"What this bill does is it says 'Let's focus on what's in their heads not what's in their hands,'" Murphy said. "If we just get caught up in the gun argument, I think that adds to the stigma."