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Report of the Presidents New Freedom Commission on Mental Health |
CAMPAIGN FOR MENTAL HEALTH REFORMEMERGENCY RESPONSE: A ROADMAP FOR FEDERAL ACTION ON AMERICA’S MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS
PARTICIPANTS: CHARLES S. KONIGSBERG Transcript by: CHARLES S. KONIGSBERG: Good morning. I’m Chuck Konigsberg, director of the Campaign for Mental Health Reform. I would like to thank all of you for joining us as the campaign releases “Emergency Response: A Roadmap for Federal Action on America’s Mental Health Crisis.” This campaign, this collaboration of 16 national mental health organizations, representing millions of Americans, came together after President Bush’s New Freedom Commission released its report in July 2003. In that groundbreaking report, the commission found the U.S. mental health system fragmented and in disarray leading to unnecessary and costly disability, homelessness, school failure, and incarceration. The commission called for a fundamental transformation of the nation’s approach to mental healthcare. Yet, since the release of the commission’s report two years ago, 63,000 Americans have died by suicide, more than 200,000 Americans with mental illnesses have been incarcerated, more than 25,000 families have given up custody of their children in older to get mental health services, juvenile detention centers have spent $200 million warehousing youth in juvenile justice facilities instead of providing treatment, and the American economy has lost an estimated $150 billion in productivity due to unaddressed mental health needs. In all, there are an estimated 20 million adults and 6 million children and teenagers in the U.S. with serious mental illnesses. The Campaign for Mental Health Reform seeks to make mental health a national priority and to make early access, recovery, and quality in mental health services the hallmarks of our nation’s mental health system. It is appropriate that we meet here in the Senate because our model for action is the bipartisan commitment to combating the crisis of youth suicide embodied in the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, which Congress swiftly enacted and funded last year. In a similar spirit of bipartisanship, the Congress last year passed the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, sponsored by Senator DeWine, who will join us here in a few minutes. As we have emblazoned on our campaign logo, the continuing mental health crisis is real. The crisis affects tens of millions of real people and everyone who is impacted rightfully expects all of us in this room to work together for real solutions. The report released today proposes a number of real and achievable solutions. Among the 28 action items included in the roadmap report are proposals to end discrimination by health insurance plans through enactment of parity legislation this year, to better utilize Medicaid dollars, to allow families to buy into Medicaid to access services for children with disabilities, to end the warehousing of youth with mental disorders, to end discrimination against mental health treatment in Medicare, to provide early identification and effective treatment for returning veterans, to provide early detection and intervention services to mothers and children, to permit presumptive eligibility for benefits for people who are homeless and have serious mental illnesses, and to fund programs to divert people with mental illnesses who have committed non-violent crimes into treatment instead of jail or prison. The full list of 28 action items and the entire text of the report can be found on our campaign’s website at www.mhreform.org. Also on the website are links to each of our campaign’s 16 constituent organizations. It is now my pleasure to introduce Dr. Michael Hogan, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health since 1991, who served as chairman of the president’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. At this time, I would like to also ask anyone else in the room who served on the commission to rise and be recognized. (Applause.) MICHAEL HOGAN: Thanks, Chuck. Good morning. On behalf of the members of the president’s commission administrator, Charley Curie and Dr. Dan Fisher, and others who aren’t here, we really want to thank and applaud the campaign for coming forward with the document and the set of proposals that are presented here today. Those of us in the mental health community, consumers, family members, all the way to state officials, really appreciate the long-overdue attention to this cause that seems to be emerging now. It is really fascinating how this attention is developing to an issue that we think is gravely serious as Chuck has indicated and really is long overdue. To echo this point about the bipartisan nature of the cause, we have been fortunate to have extraordinary leadership in two successive presidential administrations on this issue with the White House Conference on Mental Health and the first-ever surgeon general’s report issued during the Clinton administration, and then followed by President Bush appointing this commission. I also think it was nice that we had a practically oriented commission that could in a sense stand on the shoulders of the broad work that was done by the surgeon general. Just within the last week, Administrator Curie and Kathryn Power, the director for the Center for Mental Health Services, have come forward with an action agenda that is a remarkably broad approach to this problem and a very long list of issues and plans that they have to work on across multiple agencies within the administration. And so things are really coming together here. At the same time, this attention is really long overdue. I have a sense that one of the negative side effects of de-institutionalization, a well-intended effort that resulted in people being moved to communities where too often the resources were not present – an unintended effect was to make the face of mental illness more invisible. There were no longer these simple institutions to focus on the enemy; instead, we had mental illness, as Chuck said, expressed through suicide, expressed through school failure, expressed through unnecessary disability, and expressed through incarceration when treatment would have been much preferable. And somehow now attention is gathering to impact of mental illness, particularly untreated or poorly treated mental illness on Americans of all walks of life. And so we really are happy to see the agenda that is put forward here today to see the complementarity between the action agenda that the administration has developed and what is really in a sense a call for action that the campaign has put together. These are issues that cannot be addressed solely in the States, they can’t be addressed solely within the administration, they can’t be addressed solely by the Congress, but the thing that we’re in the community starting to be really excited about is the confluence of interests and the attention that this cause is finally reaching. We certainly appreciate – and as somebody from Ohio, I have to acknowledge the leadership that is bipartisan and in both branches with my friends Senator Mike DeWine and Congressman Ted Strickland. And what the Congress has done in the last couple of years with the Garrett Lee Smith Act and with the Mentally Ill Offender and Crime Reduction Act are examples of achievable but realistic steps that can really make a difference if we take full advantage of those programs. So on behalf of Dr. Fisher, Administrator Curie, and others, we really appreciate this diverse advocacy community coming together to present an agenda for action that is achievable, and if enacted will make a very substantial difference in the lives of many people struggling to recover from mental illness. Thank you. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Thanks very much, Mike. This has been a very busy week for our next speaker, Charlie Curie, the administrator of SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Last Friday, SAMHSA released the federal action agenda first steps to follow up on the commission’s call for transforming America’s mental health system. The Campaign for Mental Health Reform applauds SAMHSA’s coordination of multiple federal agencies in developing an agenda to follow up on the commission and commends the extraordinary leadership of Administrator Curie and CMHS director Kathryn Power, who is also here as well. We very much appreciate both of them joining us here today and we appreciate their leadership. Charlie? (Applause.) CHARLES G. CURIE: Good morning. AUDIENCE: Good morning. MR. CURIE: And thank you, Chuck, for your very kind introduction. I truly appreciate the opportunity to participate in this special event, this discussion today. And it is always a pleasure to be in the same room with partners in recovery, Congressman Jim Ramstad and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, and the progress that we make together in pressing this agenda. And it is also tremendous to be in this room with so many people I know. I thank you for your work day in and day out, folks from Pennsylvania and folks from across the country here today. As many of you know, last Friday was an historic day in the history of mental health and mental illness in America. We announced, as Mike indicated, that the federal government is aligning its resources in an unprecedented way to help ensure that people with mental illnesses and children with serious emotional disturbances have every opportunity for recovery. In an unprecedented effort, six cabinet-level departments, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration, 20 federal agencies including all of the (optives ?) within HHS, including CMS, AOA, CDC, HRSA, just to name a few, have come together to detail 70 specific steps in an action agenda. And I want to recognize Kathryn Power, the director for the center for Mental Health Services, for being the hands-on leader in terms of helping pull that agenda together. If we could recognize her for a moment I would appreciate it. (Applause.) Thank you Kathryn. Transforming mental healthcare in America, the federal action agenda first steps is the beginning of a multiyear effort to alter the form and function of the mental health system. We also announced the creation of a senior-level federal executive steering committee to guide the work of mental health transformation, which will membered by the principles of these federal agencies. Let me be clear: The action agenda is not a quick fix for the problems that have ailed the mental healthcare system for decades. It is a living document that begins to chart the course for the long-term goal of transforming mental healthcare in America. It is also a document that should be used to hold the federal government accountable for doing what we have said we will do. It also provides a means to leverage our purchasing power. After all, the public sector is the largest payer for mental healthcare: Almost two-thirds of mental healthcare is paid for by federal, state, and local governments. Clearly, the federal government cannot and should not go it alone. Transformation is a shared responsibility. Federal agencies must act as leaders, partners, and facilitators, promoting shared responsibility for change including the private sector. Many private companies do a magnificent job supporting people with mental illness. We need to highlight those companies and learn from those companies, and we can learn from all of them. States – and, Mike, it is always great to be with you and, Mike Dan, the year of the commission was a very intense year but Mike’s leadership in Ohio I think demonstrates what effective state directors of mental health can do. And many states have begun this critical work. State leadership in planning, financing service delivery, an evaluation of consumer and family-driven services, will significantly advance the transformation agenda. And we are counting on consumers and family members to a meaningful central role. After all, consumers and families deserve real and meaningful choices about treatment options and providers. And care must focus on increasing an individual’s ability to cope successfully with life’s challenges, on building resilience, and facilitating recovery. Partnership, true collaboration focused on the common ground will continue to move the nation forward toward a day when all Americans understand and send a message that mental illness is not a scandal. It is an illness. It is a treatable illness. And most important, we need to send the message that recovery is the expectation, not the exception. Let me say that again, recovery is the expectation and that is news to celebrate; that is news to be shared because too many Americans who need help don’t get it. Together, we can continue to support countless Americans and their struggle with mental illness. Together we can invite recovery for countless more. And our work together is a shining example of what individuals can do to build a healthier and more hopeful nation. This is the great story of our country. It is about the power of individuals, such as you in this room, working together to contribute to the common good. Dr. David Satcher, author of the landmark surgeon general’s report on mental health, said at the release of the report, the difference between knowing and doing is fatal. For too long, outdated science, lack of services, outmoded financing, unspoken discrimination, and, yes, even discord within the mental health community have been obstacles to doing what we know. The action agenda sets a course for overcoming these obstacles. It begins to put children and their parents, adults, and older adults with mental disorders at the heart of the healthcare system. Transformation of the mental health system in America is a monumental task, but one that cannot be delayed. People with mental disorders have a vital role to play in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, and our country. The action agenda is this administration’s commitment to providing every American with mental illness the respect it is they deserve and the opportunity for recovery. Thank you and my God continue to bless you in everything that you are doing. (Applause.) MR. KONISBERG: Thanks very much, Charlie, and thank you also Kathryn. It is now my great honor to introduce Senator Mike DeWine from my home state of Ohio. You can read about Senator’s DeWine’s long and distinguished public service career in your press packets – (laughter) – but I want to highlight that he has been an ardent advocate for Americans with mental illness. Most recently in the last Congress, Senator DeWine sponsored the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, which was signed into law on October 30th last fall. Senator, I look forward to the campaign working closely with you and your staff to secure funding for this important new program. We recognize and we very deeply appreciate your ongoing leadership. (Applause.) SENATOR MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): Chuck, thank you very much. Thank all of you for being here and your dedication. This is a very happy day. Thank you all for your great work. Let me thank Mike Hogan, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health. Mike, it’s good to be with you. He led the charge really in putting together the president’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health and this report, a report that has been so very, very valuable. He identified the problems in our mental health system. And today the Campaign for Mental Health Reform is outlining the specific solutions. I thank my colleagues in the House and the Senate who have worked so hard to implement this and the work that we have to do in the future. I want to congratulate SAMHSA for putting together this new action agenda and the Campaign for Mental Health Reform for their commitment to implementing the items in the agenda. We all have our work cut for us. It certainly is no easy task to coordinate – (chuckles) – the efforts of six federal departments. So I applaud of you for working together and for coming together and coming up with a plan for reform and to improve our mental health system. I do want to talk about one of the items in the action agenda, and this is something that Congressman Strickland and I worked on, my colleague from Ohio, in a bipartisan way – bill that we passed. And this is the Mentally Ill Offender Law. I was delighted that it is a part of the action agenda. This is something that really came out of Ted’s background and his experience and my experience as well, my experience as a county prosecutor many, many – (chuckles) – years ago back in the 1970s when I would see police officers come in to the prosecutor’s office and they would have people who they were bringing in for charges. And these sometimes would be the same people that I had seen six months before, or the same files at least, and these were people who had mental health problems. And the police officer knew that we weren’t doing them any good or society any good but we didn’t know what else to do so we locked them up and we filed charges against them. And we knew that the local county jail or our state prison system really didn’t have the ability to do much to help them or anything to help them, but we didn’t have anything else to do with them. And that was just a tragedy. And what I saw was that the criminal justice system and the mental health system just really weren’t working together. There was just kind of a wall there. So that has become to change over the years and we are doing a lot better job. And so what Ted Strickland and I did in this bill is we wanted to help that process, try to break that wall down even more, and to get some federal funds back to the local community in the state to encourage the collaborative effort of the mental health community and the law enforcement community, local sheriffs, the local prosecutors, the local police to work together at the local level, the county level, and at the state level, to help people get mental health services into our prisons, into our jails, and into the – when they come out of jail, and sometimes to keep them out of jail, keep them out of prison, do into probation or do into release, even diversion. So all of these are possibilities under this bill. As Chuck said, you know, the thing that we want to do is to try to make sure we get this funded. The bill has passed, it has been authorized, but as you all know, and we all know around Capitol Hill, it doesn’t do any good to get authorized unless you get funded. And so my plea today is to help us get it funded every year, help us with the appropriators in both the House and the Senate, get some real money in this because it will in fact make a difference. I just again want to thank all of you. We are to the point now where we have an action agenda. I want to be helpful not just with this part of the action agenda, but I want to be helpful with the rest of the action agenda, so call upon me. We are going to work together in Congress, in the House and the Senate to get this to move forward to really make a difference. A lot of progress has been made, a lot of people have done a lot of good work, and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Senator, thank you very much for your time and for your commitment. Our next speaker, Representative Jim Ramstad, was elected to Congress in 1990. He serves on the Health Subcommittee of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and is a co-chair of the Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus and the Addiction Treatment and Recovery Caucus. Jim has championed efforts to provide access to treatment for people suffering from chemical addiction and mental illness. He was named legislator of the year by the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Counselors in 1998 and the National Mental Health Association, one of our constituent organizations, in 1999. Please join me in warmly welcoming Representative Jim Ramstad. (Applause.) REPRESENTATIVE JIM RAMSTAD (R-MN): Thank you. Thank you very much, Chuck. Thank you, Dr. Hogan. Thank you, Administrator Curie and other commissioners. Thank you for your strong commitment to your leadership in uniting the mental health community and in bringing forth this critical agenda. Let me say first, the spirit of Paul Wellstone lives, and we are here today to carry on his legacy. Nobody fought harder for people with mental illness. (Applause.) As all of you know, nobody fought harder for people with mental illness than Paul Wellstone. Nobody fought more passionately for mental health parity, for treatment parity. Nobody fought harder to treat mental illness as the disease it clearly is. Paul Wellstone was our partner, our friend, our champion, our conscience. Now, now it’s time to honor his legacy by passing the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Treatment Act. (Applause.) It is time to end the discrimination against people with mental illness. It is time to treat mental illness like other diseases. It is time for Congress and the president to pass mental health treatment parity. With 26 million Americans suffering the ravages of serious mental illness, the American people can’t afford to wait. With 30,000 Americans committing suicide last year, the American people can’t afford to wait. With untreated mental illness costing our economy $150 billion last year, the American people can’t afford to wait. And I want to thank all of you, all of you at the campaign for mental health reform for your landmark report and your roadmap for federal action on America’s action on America’s mental health crisis. And a crisis it is, and it is time for Congress and the president to take action. Congress needs to pass and the president needs to sign the treatment parity legislation sponsored in the House by my good friend Patrick Kennedy and me. Last year, we had 248 co-sponsors for mental health treatment parity legislation in the House – believe there are 69 co-sponsors in the Senate – and we could not even get a vote. We could not even get a vote. Last time checked, the majority in the House was 218 votes. We had 248 co-sponsors. It is time for democracy to break out in the House on mental health treatment parity. (Applause.) It is time to act because 26 million Americans deserve better. This year we already have 120 co-sponsors of HR-1402 and we need your help to get a lot more. We also need your help to end the absolutely appalling practice of forcing parents to trade parental custody – to trade parental custody for mental healthcare for their children. That is right. The past two years, 25,000 families have been forced to give up custody of their children to get mental health services. Think of that: 25,000 heartbroken families forced to let go to give up legal custody of their kids to get their kids mental health treatment that they so desperately need. Believe me, no government bureaucrat should ever be able to require removal of children from their families as a condition for providing mental health care. Patrick Kennedy, my good friend and colleague, and I have also introduced legislation to put an end to this barbaric practice and to make sure children get the mental health treatment they need and deserve. And thank you to the New Freedom Commission. Thank you for recommending passage of our bill, referred to as the Keeping Families Together Act. It is time for Congress to pass it. So I want to again thank you from the bottom of my heart, in the spirit of our departed friend, Paul Wellstone. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for commitment, all of you in the mental health community. Thank you for your strong support. Thank you for coming together as one voice of federal policy for the mental health community. Thank you for helping us knock down barriers to mental health treatment. Twenty-six million Americans are counting on us. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Our next speaker, Representative Sue Myrick, came to Congress in 1995 after building a successful advertising and public relations business and serving two terms as mayor of Charlotte. She serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the vital Medicaid program, which, as you know, is the single largest funding source for Mental Health Services. Congresswoman Myrick has been a strong supporter of the mental health community and we are very pleased to have her with us today. (Applause.) REPRESENTATIVE SUE MYRICK (R-NC): Well, like everybody else, I want to thank all of you for all you have done and laboring in the vineyards all of these years, and for what you are doing now and coming together. There is definitely strength in numbers and we found that out from other things. I am a cancer survivor and I compare where we are in mental health today to where we were 15 years ago in cancer. You know, nobody could admit they had cancer. You know, you are afraid you lose your job, whatever it may be. And so I see this as brain disease, no different than heart disease or diabetes, and have lived this for many, many, many years. We have a bipolar, drug-addicted granddaughter and I know the destruction and the emotional upheaval and all that families go through, so I have lived it from that side. As a local official, I worked a lot with the homeless and the criminal side of the felons and other things, and the mental health problems that were there. And so it has kind of been a long background in a different way. I asked to go in Energy and Commerce on the Health Subcommittee specifically so I could have some affect on this issue. And so my chairman has graciously agreed for us to hold hearings. We are going to start in September, by the way. And we will do first of all exposure with celebrities who have problems that are functioning beautifully in life because if we all don’t get other people to buy into this – and mean other people in the country and other people here on the Hill – we are never going to get a parity bill passed, let’s face it. Patrick has worked for years on this and other people have too – Jim, as he said. And so we have got to get buy-in to this. We have got to make people understand that this isn’t a problem that is something that is different than anything else that we deal with in the health field. It is a very normal part of life and you can live a normal life. And so we want to take away the stigma, both on the side of the patient and on the side of the communities. And that is what we are about with the hearings. So we are going to start with the celebrities to get people – and we have already got a couple of commitments – who can say, hey, you know, I have a problem but I’m perfectly normal. Look at what I have accomplished with my life. And then get the medical people in their to show the pictures of what really is going on and all of the phenomenal things that are happening. And get the employers in there as was mentioned. A lot of employers have very good programs so they can talk about the benefits to them. Our federal program for us came out with the report that said the increase in cost was only 1 percent, which is what had been predicted. That is phenomenal news. I mean, you know, people are scared to death this is going to cost them an arm and a leg. It is not. And then we are going to talk about the lost productivity and not just the absenteeism but the presenteeism, all the people who go to work and aren’t there every day. It is a big problem. And so not forgetting the person themselves and how it will help them when they feel free to come forward and get the help they need and be able to live a normal life. So we have got a big agenda in front of us but I am determined that we can do this together, and that all of you have been working for years and put all of these pieces together, this initiative that’s going on is wonderful to coordinate everything on the federal side. But I really am encouraged for the first time in a long time that now we’ve got the opportunity to make it happen. And I want to thank all of you so much. I’m willing to help in any way I can with anything you all are doing – all you have to do is let me know – but I really think the opportunity and the timing is right. God bless you all and thanks for being here. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Thank you, Representative Myrick. We very much appreciate your time and your commitment. Our next speaker, Representative Patrick Kennedy, is serving his sixth term in Congress as the representative from the First District of Rhode Island. He has placed improvement of the nation’s mental health system at the top of his legislative agenda. Working with Senator Pete Domenici and others, he has led the fight to pass the Mental Health Parity Bill in the House in order to end discrimination in health insurance coverage. He has introduced legislation to help states respond to the psychological effects of terrorism, to address crisis shortages of children’s mental health providers, and to keep families with severely mentally ill children from being broken up. He has used his position on the Appropriations Committee to push successfully for increased spending on community mental health and mental healthcare for seniors. Recognized as a national leader in mental health, he has received numerous awards for his advocacy on behalf of adults and children with mental illness. Please join me in warmly welcoming Patrick Kennedy. (Applause.) REP. PATRICK KENNEDY (D-RI): Thank you very much, Charles. I just wanted to hold this while I’m talking because I understand C-SPAN is covering this – (laughter) – and, you know, we’ve talked a lot about this is an illness and one that can be treated. Well, the biggest problem to tackling it is the fact that people are ignorant to the fact that it is an illness and it is represented as an illness in this picture, which is basically an x-ray of the brain, which reveals that those who suffer from brain illnesses, mental illnesses, you can see the difference in their brain biochemistry as compared to brains that do not – are not afflicted with mental illness. And as a result you can see how medication can do a great deal to helping address many of the problems that people have. And in fact, we’re living in a great age, because up until now the only kind of mental healthcare people would get is therapy, and they could go for therapy for a long time and think there was something wrong with them if they weren’t getting better. They would think something was wrong with them when in fact now we can actually cut right to the chase, so to speak, and be able to diagnose people without them having to go through years and years of trying to decide what is really their baseline problem. In my own case I was a drug addict and was heavily in to medicating the depression that I had with drugs and alcohol, and I was fortunate to get treatment, but the real treatment I got was when I finally got into therapy and I realized that I could take medications that actually addresses the chemical imbalance that existed in my brain so that I could live a functioning, normal life as everyone else does. In addition to taking those medications this morning I also took my asthma medications, which is also a chronic illness. And often people say that, well, mental illness is something we shouldn’t bother treating because you can’t ever fix it. Well, you know, you can’t fix diabetes. You can’t fix pulmonary disorders like asthma. The fact is you take continued treatment for those chronic illnesses, and the same can be said for mental illnesses as well. I want to thank Charles for the job that he has, and moreover the job he’s going to do. I want to thank all of you for hiring someone who has obviously had a great deal of experience in the area of advocacy, and I want to thank all of you for coming together to realize that you are greater all together than you are as a sum of your parts. I mean, the fact is it really represents a real step forward to have all of you join together in the effort because just take for example the parity issue. If we’re not all together on this, then we all hang separately. You know, we hang together or we hang separately. I mean, the parity legislation can come down to a bunch of negotiations and compromises, and do you want to be on the other side of the cut when that compromise is made? Do you want to be the illness that isn’t as legitimate enough for protection under the parity law? And in essence, if we were to shut out any mental illness because somehow it didn’t wash with public opinion, essentially we would continue to perpetuate the stigma that afflicts all those with mental illness, and only when you all stand together can we ensure that you protect one another because having everybody else on the same sheet of music is going to mean greater protection for you and for the advocacy that you have on behalf of your own constituencies. I also want to mention the fact that I don’t believe this is going to be a zero sum game where somehow you’re going to lose benefactors, contributors and supporters and the like to this broader umbrella instead of your own organization. I am determined to make sure that that doesn’t happen because I don’t think, quite frankly, we’ve even begun to scratch the surface of advocacy, philanthropic activity, and overall financial support in this country or advocacy in this area. The fact of the matter is it shouldn’t have taken two years before we got an action plan from the administration. The commission had their report, and it wasn’t until all of you decided to do this press conference that somehow quickly there was an action plan. And I don’t, by any means, want to cast aspersions to Charlie Curie or Kathryn Power. Kathryn Power, by the way, was director of our mental health in Rhode Island, and Rhode Island is known as having one of the best mental health systems in the country, and we were actually angry at Charlie for taking Kathryn – (laughter) – from us, and to his credit he recognized real talent, and he has done a terrific job, but he’s done it with his – many times with his arms tied behind his back. You know, Jim Ramstad and I obviously reflect the bipartisan nature – he’s a Republican, I’m a Democrat; it’s bipartisan – and then he mentioned the fact that this has gone back to President Clinton, and bipartisan that way. The fact of the matter is nobody has a good track record on this issue – nobody. The fact of the matter is if we think having a little commission here, having a commission report there, getting an offender bill passed here or custody relinquishment bill passed here is a success, we might as well go home because the fact of the matter is, what’s the problem, the base, base problem is stigma, and if we have people in this country fully able to recognize the depth of the problem that is reflected in these statistics, there wouldn’t be any question that we would pass parity. There wouldn’t even be a question whether we’re going to choose to pass custody relinquishment or whether we had 251 signatures or not. The fact that we’re arguing over whether a bill should be heard in committee – I mean, granted, that’s the reality that we’re dealing with, but it reflects a really – you know there was the time warp – you know, you had that other suspended time and that’s what we’re living in now is a time warp, because if people in this country were to really appreciate and understand the full impact of mental illnesses in this country, things would be different. They would recognize it. This action plan would be done in no time. People would demand that it happen. And it wouldn’t be a problem. What is reflected is the American people don’t understand this problem. They don’t understand this problem, and as a result we’re relegated to taking care of the symptoms of the problem, which is overcrowding in our prisons, which is people in drug and alcohol counseling which really don’t belong there if they only got their base, you know, condition diagnosed properly, which is families getting separated from their loved ones in order for parents to take care of their kids, which is senior citizens getting trapped in their own apartments and no wanting to go out because they’re so depressed because of the conditions that they’re living in and the fact that it’s fully understandable and appreciated that seniors are amongst those who are suffering the greatest burden of illness in the way of depression. We wouldn’t have all these issues if at the root cause we all understood mental illness and we understood it as a fully physical illness and one that can be successfully treated. If that was understood, all the rest of these problems would be addressed. And so I want to ask all of you to hang in there together to make this work as an umbrella organization, and I know Senator Smith and Senator Domenici, Senator DeWine, many others and many in the House are ready to go to bat for all of you to make sure this works. We need a strong lobbying arm here in Washington and in our nation’s capital. All the credit goes to all of you to try to do what you can individually, but the fact of the matter is, we need a strong lobbying arm, one that can say when Tom Cruise makes those inane comments on the “Today Show” that reflect a total ignorance of the situation, that we ought to be putting out a blast notice. When Ron Paul introduces a Scientology amendment that denies that fact that children in this country are dealing with very real depression in school, we ought to have a blast fax out that goes out right away. We ought to have people right on the phone right away. The fact of the matter is you as individuals do not have the wherewithal to do those kinds of things that if you were to join together as an umbrella organization. So I can’t underscore enough how significant it is that all of you come together in this campaign. I thank Mike for the commission and the good work that he’s put together helping put us forward. I want to thank Ted Strickland, who’s a psychologist and who comes from an experience when he passed the bill that Senator DeWine was talking about. He worked in the prisons himself and knows all that he’s talking about. And Grace Napolitano is an enormous asset on behalf of this illness and on many of these issues, having really gotten the mental health caucus up and going. So I thank all of you. I want to thank Bill Emmett. You know, from Rhode Island we’re a very small state, and whenever I see a voter, I’ve got to be really nice. (Laughter.) So, please be nice to me, Bill. Thank you very much. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Representative Kennedy, thank you so much for your courage, your passion and your ongoing leadership. Our next speaker is Representative Grace Napolitano, who was first elected to Congress in 1998. She’s currently serving her fourth term representing California’s 38th District. At the beginning of the 108th Congress, Representative Napolitano founded the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, which she now co-chairs with Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania. As co-chair she has hosted a congressional briefing on veterans’ mental health needs and is working on proposals to improve mental health services that the VA gives to veterans. A key priority is mental health parity legislation for the congresswoman. She’s also working to address the mental health needs of adolescents, children, minorities and seniors, and please join me in welcoming Representative Grace Napolitano. (Applause.) REP. GRACE NAPOLITANO (D-CA): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. AUDIENCE: Good morning. REP. NAPOLITANO: What can I say? My colleagues – we all learned that they are really the ones who have carried the torch of mental health. I just came in and revived the mental health caucus because I’ve seen the need not only in my area but throughout the United States in the many areas, and what is happening – and I hope your realize how important your work is. I hope you understand how critical you are to this extent that we have, in the House and in the Senate, to be able to pass legislation, because without your support, without your pushing without your getting other people aware of the importance of speaking up – mental health has always been you don’t see it, you don’t talk about it, and you don’t hear it. It is a stigma, especially in my race, in my own people. It is like – please – it’s complete denial. And we need to understand that there is an illness. It’s a disease and an illness and both can be treated. I have a mental health hospital in my backyard. I’ve lived there 45 years. I started off in health issues when I was at the state level. And let me tell you what I found out at that time was that our esteemed Congress at that time was shutting down mental health hospitals throughout the United States. And so they were closing some of the California ones and I started wondering, well, what’s happening to the people? Where are they going? I was on a city council before that and I knew we had a lot of issues with homeless people because Los Angeles put them on a bus and they’d end up in our communities because we had a real hondo (ph) homeless shelter, and guess what? That’s where they wanted to put them. And these are the people who were obviously not with families, obviously not employed, and obviously – and needed help, but they were then transferred from one city to another without anybody really looking at how you address the issues that these individuals had. And that became one of the causes, if you will, to try to understand what was happening at my local level. The state level, it was like, well, no, shut the Mira (ph) Hospital. It had 10 times the capacity that Norwalk had. It has an Olympic swimming pool for children, it had classrooms for youngsters, bring the forensics to Norwalk out of Folsom because of politics, and that’s what it was. And to me that’s a crying shame because you are not dealing with the issues to help the people address the issues that they have, whether it’s the community, the families, the society itself. And so I kind of became involved – came to Congress and then I heard that Latino adolescents ages nine to 11 have the highest statistical attempted suicide rates in the United States. What? There is one of our areas that we don’t really understand what happens and why. So we started delving into it. SAMHSA was kind enough to allow us to start a pilot project. We started in one high school and three middle schools. And we’re finding out all of the issues, but it wasn’t just addressing Latino adolescents. The proviso for the provider was that they would help every child of any race. And so we asked them one thing, the providers – and by the way, this was direct funding. It wasn’t a state to the county to the provider; it was direct funding to the provider, so the money then would all go to helping the youngsters in the school setting. And what we’re finding out is that the youngsters have a lot of issues. We don’t hear about them until you have a Columbine and other tragedies in schools, and then we say, what’s happening in our schools? Well, we’re not looking at our children – even the teachers tell us as young as preschool they can tell when there’s at-risk behavior. Why are we not checking that out? Why are we not researching to be able to understand how we can help those youngsters become full, productive citizens as they grow up? Not only that, but you’re helping teachers. Then they can really attend to their business of teaching without being – how would I say – trying to deal with at-risk behavior or children who are acting out. Well, a lot of that has taught me many things. Part of it is work collaboratively with everybody. We work with the state, the county, of course the federal and the community – not only the business community – because they need to be partners. They can benefit. They would benefit. And yet we’re not talking to them about it. How many of you have reached out to a business entity and said to them, we can help you understand how you can lower your absenteeism or increase your productivity? We need to include those that can be partners, and that’s what I’ve begun to reach out to a lot of my colleagues on both sides. When we decided to start the – renew, if you will, the mental health caucus, my staff and I sat and we said, okay, we need a bipartisan group, right? So we looked around and said, okay, who on the other side has any background or is interested or will be able? Lo and behold, Tim Murphy, psychologist. Hey, fella, come here. And so we were able to enjoin him because he’s a psychologist. And besides, he was the new individual, never knew what hit him – (laughter) – but he was so wonderful because he immediately said, yes, I’ll willing to work on it. And what we had started doing is trying to figure out who else besides Patrick, who really has opened the door for a lot of us to understand and to be able to move forward, but Tim and I and Sue and others have been dialoguing, how can we begin to turn it around because in this climate, parity doesn’t do it. It’s got to be how does business benefit? How can we then save the community that really puts out the funding – how can we save them money? How can we turn them around to understand the benefits that they can garner by helping us move bills that will benefit mental health patients? So all of that, it’s something that we continue to work on it. The biggest thing is stigma. How do we erase that? How do we ask people to understand that it really is medication that can help stabilize an individual? I had an employee whose child was bipolar. She spent more time trying to figure out how to keep that child in school or find him a school that would take him because the school district refused to have him because of his behavior – ended up sending him to a school somewhere in another state. He got into drugs, and the child still has problems because we have not addressed it the way we should. So to all of you, I ask you – thank you for all your work, but I ask you, continue making inroads in communicating with other groups, other individuals, and join those that you don’t think can be partners because you will find that they too are suffering. They may not show it, be it a friend, an individual, a neighbor. It’s surprising how many people you will find have been afflicted or have somebody they know. And it’s a shame that we hide it, that we don’t continue to talk about it openly. The more we talk about it the more informed we are, the more we can progress. So thank you all, especially Charles – and I hear he’s going to carry the ball. We’ll be talking to him. And we trust that we will have many more of these but a hundred times bigger than this, because you need to bring the whole community together so that we can all work on this together. So thank you and God bless. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Thank you so much. We look forward very much to working with the coalition. Our next speaker, Senator Ted Kennedy, needs very little introduction. He’s well known to all Americans for his more than four decades of public service in the Senate, fighting for the rights of workers and families, immigrants and children, and so many others including the millions of Americans with mental illness. I want to extend our collective thanks to Senator Kennedy and his wonderful staff, especially Connie Garner and Kent Mitchell, for enabling the campaign to meet here today in the Capitol. And this being the week when we’re observing the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we should also give Senator Kennedy our enthusiastic thanks for his leadership in getting that landmark legislation enacted. (Applause.) Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Senator Ted Kennedy, ranking Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. (Applause.) SEN. TED KENNEDY (D-MA): Thank you very much indeed, and thank you for your kind comments about the ADA. We did have the celebration last evening, the 15th anniversary, enormously important time in our nation’s history in terms of progress, and that’s the kind of progress we want to see in areas of the mental health. I can remember, I was visiting with some of those who have been so involved in the legislation, myself included, how we were trying to get the legislation out of committee, not greatly different like we’ve faced with mental health, and there were all those that had opposition to it, just didn’t feel it was the time; there wasn’t the need of it. And we had an objection to the committee meeting, and so we met at the late afternoon and there were those that were so serious about opposition that they started to read the Congressional Journal. And they read the Congressional Journal till 8:00 and 9:00 and 10:00 and then around 11:00 people started showing up in wheelchairs, and the disability community started to fill that room, and by 1:00 in the morning there were 300 people packed into that room, and my colleague, who I’ll not mention here but you can find it in the committee books or the history books – (laughter) – stopped reading and he said, I guess it’s time to vote. And they took the vote that time and eventually got it to the floor of the United States Senate and passed it. Just one other thought, which I think is looking down the road a little bit on so many things that we care about here. We’ve seen remarkable progress in our country in recent times in knocking down walls of discrimination – walls of discrimination. We’ll have also the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Bill in early August – knocked down walls of discrimination. And we’ve knocked down walls of discrimination and race and gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin, on the issues of disabilities, but we haven’t on mental health. We haven’t on mental health. It’s the next great frontier. And it is a continuum. All of these aspects of progress in this country are all deeply rooted in other kinds of anxiety and frustration and suspicion and hostility and prejudice. And they all come from different kind of angles, but they’re also rooted sort of in the same core of suspicion and too often in bigotry and failure to understand or being able to appreciate. And this is the new frontier. This really is the new frontier. It’s an old frontier for all of you. It’s an old frontier. But it is something that this country has to come to grips with, and should, and we’ll be the better country, be a fairer, more just country when we deal with this the way that we have in the area of the physical illness that we’ve tried, I’ve tried over the 40 years in the United States Senate. Since I’ve been in Washington – when I first came here I was known as the brother of the president and then I was the brother of the attorney general, my brother Bob, and in recent years I’ve been trying to make it on my own – (laughter) – and when I’m talking to a mental health group I’m known as the father of Patrick. There you go. (Laughter, applause.) So it just doesn’t end. (Laughter.) Maybe some of you can help me out on that. I’ve got to understand it. But I know Patrick has used this chart, but it’s just so compelling for people that aren’t familiar with understanding the physical aspects and the distinction. What we are talking about is the physical aspect indicator in so many instances in terms of mental health, and we know that as a nation that believes that we ought to address the challenges on healthcare – I don’t need to make the case about how the mental health has been left out and left behind. I was visiting with Patrick just a few moments ago. We were talking about – one of President Kennedy’s first pieces of legislation dealt with mental health, and this was something that he – our family has been interested in the mental retardation but when President Kennedy – one of the first things that he got passed dealt with mental health. And as someone who has been constantly concerned about sort of healthcare in the country, I’ve been as troubled as all of you are, frustrated as much as any of you are by the failure of us as a country, as a nation, as a Congress, as an administration, quite frankly, to deal with the mental health issues. We have bipartisan support: my friend and colleague Senator Domenici, and we have Republicans working with Patrick in the House of Representatives. But now is the time, my friends, now is the time. And what this – (audio break, tape change) – come forward, and with that kind of an implementation and working together we can find the areas of really very, very important progress. Some of those can be done administratively, some is going to have to be legislatively, but we are prepared to do that. And when I say that, I say it in the broad sense. The American people are really prepared to do it and, really, now is the time for us to do it. So I’m very hopeful. We’ve had a small bill on our Family Opportunities Act with Chuck Grassley, and we’ve had Pete Sessions. One of the perhaps most conservative members of the House of Representatives understands the importance of progress in this. This isn’t ideological; it’s really defined of the will. I think at this very moment I find that those who have been hesitant about this, some of the major companies, corporations, industries are taking a second look at it – are taking a second look at it and working with thoughtful people within the administration and with us. So I think this meeting today is just of enormous importance and consequence because it’s a galvanizing time, it’s a coming together in a world where so much is divided, and even a few yards away from we are there’s so much that divides us. But this is a coming together in a very unique and special way, and I just want to pledge to each and all of you that we’re in here for the haul and we hope it’s short haul, but whatever length of the haul we’re in here and we want to work with all of you. We want to work and see these recommendations are implemented and we want to take advantage of the initiatives that have been made – Patrick and others have been made in the House, moving forward in the Senate. We want to bring the administration together with those who have devoted their lives and have focused and made these splendid recommendations, and we want to bring the country along because it’s going to eventually be the country’s understanding about the challenge that we face – is going to ultimately be the key, the unlocking of the door for so many of our fellow citizens who are facing challenges every single day. Congratulations on these recommendations and we’ll look forward to working with you closely to make sure they become a reality for people that need them. Thank you very much. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: Thank you, Senator Kennedy. I’d like first to thank our next speaker for his great patience. (Laughter.) Representative Ted Strickland of Ohio brings to the Congress a unique background, having served as a minister, a psychologist and a college professor. He was the director of a Methodist children’s home and assistant professor of psychology at Shawnee State University, and a consulting psychologist at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. In addition, his wife Frances is an educational psychologist and author of a widely used screening test for kindergarten-age children. Congressman Strickland serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which will soon be considering important Medicaid legislation, as well as the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which this morning at 10:00 a.m. is having a hearing on how the Departments of Veterans’ Affairs and Defense are responding to the problem of post-traumatic stress syndrome. We feel very fortunate that a member of Congress with Ted’s background in mental healthcare is serving on these important committees at this very critical time. Please join me in welcoming Representative Ted Strickland. (Applause.) REP. TED STRICKLAND (D-OH): Thank you. It’s good to be here this morning. It’s good to see my friend from Ohio, Dr. Hogan, who is such a vital leader in our nation in the area of appropriate mental health treatment. A lot has been said today, and I agree with everything that I’ve heard this morning, but I was sitting here just thinking to myself, what is it that you are doing here? Who is it that you are concerned about? Today in America there are people incarcerated, living out their lives in six-by-nine concrete cells in prisons, and their major problem is that they are mentally ill, and that mental illness was never appropriately diagnosed or treated. And so they find themselves wasting away within our jails and prisons. That’s a reality in America today. Another reality in America today is that there are people sleeping under bridges, in homeless shelters, dying in our alleyways because they are mentally ill. There are children who this day in America are contemplating taking their own lives because they are in need of intervention and the intervention is not there. There are veterans, many of them who have recently fought for our country, some who fought for our country decades ago, who are languishing in depression, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, other kinds of mental health problems because they were not appropriately diagnosed and appropriate treatment was not made available to them. That’s the reality that we as Americans must own and acknowledge and accept responsibility for, and that’s why we’re here today. We have an obligation to the people who are depending upon us. And I just want to thank all of the organizations. I understand there are 16 different national organizations who have come together to say that the time is now, as Senator Kennedy has said. We could postpone this work for another decade or two decades or three decades, and in the meantime there is human suffering, unnecessary human misery, and our society is losing the skill, the talent, the contributions that we need from those who need these services. So I just want to thank you more than anything else, to pledge to you my ongoing support. This is a bipartisan effort. There aren’t many issues on Capitol Hill that we can characterize as bipartisan. This is bipartisan effort because mental illness is something that affects every family, every community, every political party, people of every economic situation, religious affiliation. It is a non-discriminatory illness and we need to stop the discrimination against it. So thank you for what you’re doing. Godspeed to all of you. (Applause.) MR. KONIGSBERG: I don’t see Representative Baird in the room so we’ll move on to the next portion of our program. We’re now going to have some very brief remarks on the release of the campaign’s roadmap by three of our campaign leaders: Mike Faenza, president and CEO of the National Mental Health Association, Dan Fisher, executive director of the National Empowerment Center as well as a member of the president’s commission, and Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia, president of NAMI. Each of their bios can be found in your press packets. I’d also like to recognize at this time Bob Glover and Bob Bernstein, the CEOs NASMHPD and the Bazelon Center, who both serve on the campaign’s steering committee. Following the remarks by Mike, Dan, and Suzanne, we’ll move right into a Q&A session for the press to pose questions to all of the campaign’s leadership about the roadmap report. The Q&A session will be moderated by Jerry Reed, executive director of the Suicide Prevention Action Network. Before I turn the podium over to Mike, I want to make special mention of the tremendous help I’ve received in planning this event from staff at each of the 16 organizations that participate in this campaign, but in particular, Andrea Fiero of NASMHPD and Jessica Mikulski of the American Psychiatric Association, who both spent much of the last two weeks assisting with the endless details that go into planning an event like this. Now I’m very pleased to introduce Mike Faenza. (Applause.) MICHAEL M. FAENZA: Thank you, and thank you very much, Chuck. We’re very lucky to have you as a leader of our campaign, and I want to say I appreciate my 15 colleague organizations in the campaign. It’s just really terrific for us to come together. I also really quickly want to recognize, as others have, the leadership of Mike Hogan and commission members. I know we have Larke here and Dan Fisher, and also thanks to Patrick Kennedy and people like Dan Fisher – Tom Leibfried, Joe Rogers, who has been a mentor to me, for standing up and acknowledging their mental disorder, their examples of what recover really is about. And for many years I didn’t speak about my own ADHD, depression and bipolar disorder. A few years ago I became more embarrassed about not speaking about and acknowledging them than not talking about it. (Applause.) The report we released today describes a public health crisis. That crisis demands an aggressive response, as our nation has mounted, to attack other numerous life-threatening issues. And we have a real chance. This is the time, as Senator Kennedy has said, and the stars are lining up. We have the leadership of Charles Curie at SAMHSA that is terrific. And I would say a world-class course of advocacy and vision development by Kathryn Power at the Center for Mental Health Services that is a tremendous leader in promoting that vision and making an action plan a real course of transformation. I appreciate them so much. We use the word “crisis” with care, powerfully aware that mental illness claims 30,000 live each year and is the leading cause of disability in the country. No other illness damages so many children so seriously, and very importantly, we see veterans and their families struggling with PTSD. That shows us even the strongest among us are susceptible to mental disorders. I just want to jump real quickly and reiterate some points about our roadmap for reform that we provide Congress today. I believe it has huge promise, and it leads towards better use of scarce public funds, it opens the door for people’s recovery from mental illness, it provides for fairness and access to needed care, it eliminates widespread human suffering, it increases individual independence and national productivity. Adoption of our roadmap is a good investment for America. Thank you all for being here and the leadership of our elected officials. It’s a really terrific day. Thank you. (Applause.) MR. FISHER: Mike, thank you very much. Patrick Kennedy, thank you. Chuck, your endless work. Fellow commissioners, Larke and Mike Hogan, thank you so much. It’s an historic occasion here, and I as a person who has recovered from schizophrenia and went on to become a psychiatrist never imagined that such a day would occur. Certainly when I was locked in seclusion I didn’t imagine that one day I’d be on a White House commission and play a role perhaps in bringing some of these ideas across to our country. And the main idea that came through on our commission was that people can and do recover from even the most severe forms of mental illness, and that it’s through their own involvement and through being consumer and family driven that our system will and can transform itself. And we have a great opportunity here. I want to mention – I’ve spoken a lot in the last few years all across the country – I’ll never forget a woman in Bedford, Pennsylvania, Charlie’s own state, and she holds up the commission report, and she’s a person who’s been struggling and recovering from her own mental illness, and she points to the commission report and she says, it’s written right in here – it’s written in this commission report that people can recover from mental illness. And that made such a big impression, and everyone in that audience paid attention, and the commission report has given validity to a concept that really can overcome stigma and discrimination. When people across the country realize that no matter how severe your condition, you can become a productive citizen again, you can play a huge role in your life and the life of others, I think that will overcome the discrimination. (Applause.) In order for this to occur, it’s vital that people who are recovering and have recovered can play a central role in this transformation. We are the ones that have most at stake. We are the ones who want to see the system change. We’re the ones that want to have parity, the ones that want to have treatment possible, we’re the ones that can conduct peer support, we’re the ones that can bring treatment into the community. And we and our families have to be at the center of that transformation, and I think we can and we will, and this roadmap really emphasizes that because the roadmap shows that services can move to the community. The roadmap shows that people do have dignity and can be treated with respect, and I just thank you all very much for the opportunity to speak. (Applause.) SUZANNE VOGEL-SCIBILIA: Good morning. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill is pleased to be part of the campaign for the mental health reform. At a time in which we face significant challenges to the progress of vital importance to people with mental illness, a strong partnership among organizations representing consumers, family members, providers, administrative and other key shareholders is particularly important. My name is Dr. Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia and I know firsthand that psychiatric illness does not relegate any person to second-class status or dependency in 2005. I’m a practicing clinical psychiatrist who is also a family member of persons with mental illness and a consumer myself. I have had childhood-onset bipolar disorder with psychotic features and know firsthand that treatment works and recovery is possible for everyone. With proper services and supports, all person with mental illness can recover and contribute in a vital way to our society. Unfortunately, though, most people with mental illness today do not have access to services they need to achieve recovery and dignity in their lives. The recommendations for federal action detailed in this report are designed to help foster housing and employment opportunities and mental health services that are equitable and nondiscriminatory. NAMI and the Campaign for Mental Health Reform are not opposed to changes in mental health programs. In fact, both the New Freedom Commission report and our report today embrace the need for changes. However, these changes should be driven by the need to make mental health systems more effective, treatment more accessible, and outcomes more positive. Changes should never be driven merely by the desire to cut costs. Taking a meat cleaver to federal programs such as Medicaid or HUD housing programs will only cause suffering, death and further disability for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Changes should not entail extremely complex mechanisms of obtaining help since mental health consumers have biologically based brain disorders that impact our ability to negotiate administrative mazes to access treatment and appeals. This report contains recommendations designed to help people with mental illness who are at the greatest risk of falling through society’s cracks, recommendations for effective and efficiently using Medicaid dollars, ending the policies that allow our jails to become primary means of receiving psychiatric treatment in our country and community, and alleviating the chronic isolation and homelessness that many people suffer from these illnesses. We applaud Congress for enacting the Garrett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention Bill and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment Act that substantively benefit persons with mental illness. This report brings forth today a series of next steps that we feel will foster recovery for the Campaign for Reform. I would like to help – and I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge all the supports for mental health services that we’ve received here in Congress. Senator Pete Domenici, Senator Gordon Smith, Senator Mike DeWine, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Collins have been very helpful in the Senate. And on the House side I want to express particular appreciation for Congressman Ted Strickland, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, Congressman Tim Murphy of my home state of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Grace Napolitano. The report released today represents a consensus vision among all these groups of this campaign for steps that must occur in federal policy if the New Freedom Commission’s vision of a transformed recovery-oriented mental health system is to become reality. We want to emphasize that recovery is possible for all persons with mental illness, but it is crucial to have involvement of consumers and family members in all aspects of mental health system design and service delivery. One of the most important recommendations obtained in the New Freedom Commission’s report is that mental healthcare in America must be consumer and family driven. After all, we’re the people with the most at stake. As a person who has survived three suicide attempts and many episodes of severe psychosis, I ask that this roadmap for recovery serve as the federal vision for transformation in the coming years. We wish that all persons with mental illness, including our future generations, benefit from treatment that exists that promotes recovery and is available if we can get access. Please accept this report from us, understating the important matters at hand – nothing about us without us – and hear our desire to assist Congress in every way possible in achieving a mental health system that is effective, efficient and recovery oriented. Thank you very much. (Applause.) JERRY REED: Good morning. My name is Jerry Reed. I’m the executive director of the Suicide Prevention Action Network. I’d like to add my thanks to Chuck and certainly the members of Congress who joined us today, my partners in the campaign, and certainly Administrator Curie and Kathryn Power for their work, and the commission for their efforts. At this point I’d like to open up the discussion to the media, who may have questions. If you have someone you’d like to answer it, please let me know. Otherwise I’ll direct it to one of our partners. Questions? Yes, ma’am? Q: Representative Kennedy mentioned that the administration – (inaudible) – today. Have any of you gotten a chance to look at – (inaudible)? MR. REED: Chuck, do you want to take that one? MR. KONIGSBERG: The plan came out last week. We’re just going through all the details at this time. What I can say is that we are very pleased and very encouraged that SAMHSA has taken the lead in bringing together all of the various departments and agencies that have programs impacting mental health and have brought them together into a coherent and productive plan, and just bringing together all of the departments that are relevant to these issues together into a coherent plan is itself quite a bit of progress. We also think that many of the administrative steps included in the action plan will be very meritorious, and we look forward to sitting down in a very constructive way with SAMSHA to do through their plan, for them to go through ours, and to come up with a common agenda. We are in many ways really at tipping point in the mental health community. The administration has led the way in forming a commission and SAMHSA has subsequently produce the report last week. And now we have 16 national mental health organizations coming together in the campaign for mental health reform. So in many ways this is a tipping point and we can all feel that the situation is changing. We’re moving forward, and it’s a very encouraging time. MR. REED: Other questions? Yes, ma’am. Q: Is there any legislation associated with this – (inaudible). MR. REED: Oh, I’m sorry, I’m going to repeat each question. The question was, is there any legislation attached to this action plan? Bob maybe, or Chuck? Bob Glover? Up here, please. ROBERT GLOVER: The distinction between the action agenda – the first steps coming out of the SAMHSA – that’s an executive branch initiative and we’re supporting kind of the leadership that came out of that. Our focus on the campaign is we see there a real crisis for real people with real solutions. And in fact, we’re worried about some proposed action right now. You heard talk about the Medicaid issue. We’re really worried. Almost 50 percent of the funds that go for people with mental illness that the public sector serves comes from Medicaid, and we’re really worried if they’re going to be vulnerable to the major cuts. Another area we’re concerned about is the HUD Section 8 housing opportunities that people with illness have used up to now, and we’re worried that they may not be available in the future. So, one, we’re kind of looking with cautious eyes at areas that we feel help support people living in the community as part of that. We also anticipate that there may be some reallocation of existing funds, for example, perhaps out of state hospitals in the community programs, and want to support the increased community development as part of that. Initiatives towards decriminalization – we think that needs support, getting people out of our jails and prisons and into productive and hopefully employment over time. So there are a variety of issues that may need funding, but I don’t want to say that this is a plan that requests funding; it’s a roll-back with talks about what can be done at the federal level, some with funding but some just what we need to be doing to better address some of the fragmentation, the silo effects of different departments having mandates that don’t kind of complement what people need, to address people in a whole way to help them in recovery. I don’t know if that answers it but that’s – MR. : But we’re not opposed to additional funding. MR. GLOVER: Oh, no, we’re not opposed. MR. : We’re very in favor of it. MR. GLOVER: We do support and feel there is a need, and parity, we needed the understanding that it is an illness and it is – we can affect recover for that. Thank you. REP. KENNEDY: The commission – two pieces of legislation specifically is the Family Custody Relinquishment Act. Keeping Families Together Act is what we call – but currently what happens is families have to give up custody of their children in order for their children to get the care that they need. That’s a bill we have in Congress now. Congressman Ramstad and I are moving it along to try and pass it. You know, in the Medicaid – my dad has taught me about the work that they’re doing on Medicaid to allow middle-income families to purchase insurance for severely disabled children and family members. And of course what is little noted in the report – it’s kind of tucked in there – is parity. It should be the biggest part of the report, but quite frankly it’s watered down quite a bit. But that is called for in the report and we do obviously have a parity bill. So those are a couple of additional examples of specific bills that we’re working on that come from the recommendations. Q: Is the Medicaid – (inaudible) – part of the legislation now? REP. KENNEDY: Yes, it is. Q: Do you know what bill it’s part of? REP. KENNEDY: I don’t, but I can get it for you. MR. KONIGSBERG: Just to make a very quick comment, in your press packets you have an executive summary of the report, which lists the 28 action items. Most of those action items require legislation to take effect. MR. : What I just wanted to point out that’s very important is we need to get SAMHSA to reauthorize, and I think one of the areas that we can look at implementing some of the major efforts in our action agenda is in the SAMHSA reauthorization process where we can delineated the role of the federal government very succinctly into how these efforts can be made real. MR. REED: Thank you. For the benefit of – that was Bob Glover, the executive director at the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors who answered just a moment ago. Mike Faenza, CEO of the National Mental Health Association, would like to add a comment. MR. FAENZA: Very briefly, because I think that the question about legislation and the action plan, that relationship is key, and I think – I have read the action agenda that’s just come out and I really think it’s terrific. I know the campaign is going to put a lot of energy in studying that in detail, but what’s exciting to me, that it’s very comprehensive. It addresses issues around suicide prevention, children’s mental health, peer support for adult consumers, mental health needs of veterans. It’s a great framework. And one of the things that’s most exciting to us is that SAMHSA and the Center for Mental Health Services under Kathryn Power, is really committed to focusing resources and really using resources well around those different pieces of the action agenda. So I think there’s a real efficiency effectiveness of government that’s there. And it’s up to the campaign members and the rest of the community to identify legislation that really speaks to supporting that action plan and creating further funding to allow CMHS and SAMHSA to move forward in the way that they could if they had the resources. REP. KENNEDY: One of the biggest challenges is Medicaid funding. That is the big enchilada this year, is trying to pull that – (audio break). Mental health services will probably be the first to go, and already we’re seeing a move towards block granting of Medicaid where the entitlements are written at the state level rather than the federal level, which is enormously worrisome for all of us because it essentially means that there’s no guarantee mental health will now be included. In fact, as I said, when competing against other aspects of Medicaid – children’s insurance and senior’s nursing homes – it just isn’t going to compete and it’s probably going to be the first to go. So that’s why the Medicaid battle is so crucial. MR. REED: Thank you, Representative Kennedy. Other questions? Well, hearing none I think that really concludes our event. Chuck, would you like to provide us some concluding comments? MR. KONIGSBERG: Well, we’re actually a little bit over our time now, so I’d just like to thank all of you very much for coming. We’re all very encouraged by your joining us here today and we look forward to working with the administration, with all of our featured organizations, and with everyone in our country who is interested in mental health reform. Thank you very much. (Applause.) (END)
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One of every two Americans who need mental health treatment do not receive it, and the rate is even lower —and the quality of care poorer—for ethnic and racial minorities. |
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