Pete Earley

(Updated 11:30 am Thursday)

As expected, Democratic opponents to Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act objected strongly Wednesday to the bill as written and introduced a slew of amendments in what turned into an exhausting hearing.  Those amendments were rejected. (See Shannon Muchmore’s story below)

I will post further reviews and analysis shortly. Meanwhile, you can watch the entire hearing above. Skip the first 36 minutes and 47 seconds in the first video. Yep, that’s all it takes for the  subcommittee to approve several other bills. And then the Pennsylvania Republican’s legislation  is brought before the subcommittee and the arguing starts and continues and continues and continues.

Although these two videos add up to ten hours, they are interesting to watch because viewers get to hear the differing views. From the subcommittee markup, Murphy’s bill goes to a full committee markup where attempts to change it will be made once again. Then, if it passes from the committee to the House floor, it will face more potential changes. From there, it will go to a committee to be merged with the Senate version, where it will face more potential changes.

Meaning, this is simply the first round.

Grab some popcorn,  several drinks, find a comfortable seat and watch our elected leaders all agree that our mental health system is a complete mess, but disagree completely on how to fix it.

Here is a report from Modern Healthcare reporter Shannon Muchmore.

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The House began marking up Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis  Act Tuesday afternoon along party lines, with Democrats attacking the Pennsylvania Republican’s bill.
I’ve posted the entire hearing above, but all you have to do is watch the opening statement by Texas Democrat Gene Green followed by a statement by Murphy to see how the two sides differ.
On Wednesday, the Democrats will begin offering amendments and there was speculation late today that the opponents will add so many changes that  the bill will be withdrawn.

Here’s a list of key players.

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Rep. Tim Murphy discusses his bill at International Bipolar Foundation breakfast (Photo by John David Coppola)

The Washington Post’s lead editorial Monday was a strong endorsement of Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, H.R. 2646, which calls for major changes in how future mental health services would be delivered. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health will begin markup hearings on Murphy’s bill, starting today (Tuesday November 3) at 3 p.m. in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building for opening statements only.  The subcommittee will reconvene on Wednesday, November 4, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn to consider amendments to the bill.

Wednesday’s hearing is important because other committee members will offer specific amendments as the bill is read, one section at a time. This is when critics of the bill have an opportunity to amend the sections they don’t support.  You will remember that Democrats kept Murphy’s bill bottlenecked in committee because of complaints from Curtis Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, the National Empowerment Center, Mental Health America, and the Bazelon Center For Mental Health Law.

With 156 co-sponsors,  H.R. 2646 is being supported by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Treatment Advocacy Center, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association.

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I love talking about the power of an individual to help change our world, which is why I have posted several blogs about Jennifer Marshall, who along with Anne Marie Ames, launched This Is My Brave, a non-profit organization that produces professional quality stage shows that feature men and women talking openly and frankly about their mental disorders and recovery.

So I was thrilled when I saw Jennifer’s smiling face on the Fall 2015 cover of BP (Bipolar Magazine).

After launching their first show here in Virginia, Jennifer and Anne Marie have gone national, most recently producing a successful show in New York City and now moving on to Los Angeles. (My son Kevin, was an original cast member in Va.) Jennifer and Anne Marie are incredible advocates who are fearless in their efforts to fight stigma and increase understanding.

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It didn’t make headlines, but a recent incident shows that positive steps are underway in Fairfax County, Virginia, to divert prisoners with mental illnesses away from the criminal justice system into community care and treatment.

A woman with mental problems was recently arrested for a minor crime and sent to a Virginia state hospital after a judge decided that she was too sick to be put on trial. When she was deemed mentally competent, she was delivered back to the Fairfax Detention Center to await a court appearance.

In the past, this defendant probably would have been found guilty, served time in jail and been released in considerably worse mental shape than when she was arrested. That’s pretty much what happens, not only where I live, but nationally in many  jurisdictions.

Consider the results of a five year study by the University of South Florida’s mental health institute. It’s researchers followed 97 individuals with severe mental illnesses who’d been arrested for petty crimes to see what happened to them. Those 97 individuals were arrested 2,200 times and spent 27,000 days in jail with absolutely no reduction in recidivism or recovery.

Thankfully this revolving door didn’t happen in this woman’s case here in Fairfax.

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We lost, right?

Paul Lee, the head of ABC Entertainment Group, which oversees the television network ABC and its production arm ABC Studios, ignored requests by the nation’s six largest mental health groups to deep six a Halloween episode of Modern Family last night that belittled Americans with mental illnesses.. He thumbed his nose at the tweets, the blogs, and the complaints asking him to not show the episode.

For a fun-filled half hour, viewers got to belly laugh at “nut jobs,” “deranged mental patients,” a “sadistic nurse” and a “demented doctor.” The screenwriters didn’t miss a trick — there were chains on hospital beds, straight jackets and a husband who calmed his “looney bin” wife by giving her a “box of Cap’n Crunch and letting her stare at a fish tank.” 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, which led the campaign to sideline the program, came under criticism. So did I and others who joined NAMI in protesting. “Who appointed you the morality police?” one emailer asked. “C’mon, lighten up. This is comedy.”  Another wrote, “We shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously.” 

Those comments sounded familiar to me. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, racist jokes, anti-Semitic jokes, and gay bashing jokes were common. So were racial slurs, anti-Semitic slurs, and anti-gay slurs. My father was a minister and he told me that those hateful words and jokes dehumanized, stigmatized and belittled people. As a youngster, I refused to utter them and didn’t laugh when I heard them. When I was old enough to speak out, I did. It wasn’t always easy, but I believed it was the right thing to do.

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