(5-20-20) How important is it for us to tell our personal stories – to put a human face on mental illness?
Six years ago, Senators Bill Cassidy (R. La) and Chris Murphy (D. Conn.) got Congress to pass a major mental health bill, Now they want to improve their legislation by addressing concerns their first bill didn’t cover. In a recent interview on NPR, which consistently covers mental illness, they spoke about their agenda. They also mentioned how my book helped bring them together.
This is why I believe telling our stories is the only way we can make the public aware of how badly we treat individuals with serious mental illnesses and their families in our country. Speaking out can make a difference and you never know who might be influenced by your words.
Two Senators Are Working Across The Aisle To Address The Mental Health Crisis
8 minute listen
Transcript of NPR broadcast 5-19-20
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Mental health care in the U.S. has long been riddled with the same problems – not enough funding, not enough programs, not enough providers. And the pandemic has only worsened this crisis. Rates of depression and other mental illness have soared.
BILL CASSIDY: Everybody has a personal experience with somebody who has had serious mental illness.
CHANG: That is Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. He and his Democratic colleague, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, are working together to renew a mental health reform bill in Congress.
CHRIS MURPHY: So Bill and I kind of found each other six years ago and developed, you know, what, at the time, was really the most comprehensive piece of mental health reform legislation that Congress had seen in a decade.
CHANG: That bill, which was signed into law in 2016, is set to expire this year. Now the two senators are working across the aisle to get Congress to reauthorize what they say is an improved version of the legislation. And this increasingly rare bipartisan partnership, well, Senator Cassidy says it emerged from a well-worn book.
CASSIDY: I was reading a book by Pete Earley called “Crazy,” a journalist who had written about his son’s travails with mental illness and in the criminal justice system. And, Chris, let me turn the story over to you.
MURPHY: Well, so I was interested in working on mental health but needed a partner. And I ran into an advocate on a bus who told me that I should call Bill Cassidy because he saw Bill Cassidy walking into a hearing the other day with this worn out, dog-eared copy of “Crazy.” And that’s what I did. I read the book first. I reached out to him. He had just gotten to the Senate. We found out that there’s a lot of things that Bill and I disagree on.