WASHINGTON – Today, during a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on mental health reform, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) underscored the need to reform the broken mental health system and pass his bipartisan Mental Health Reform Act – a bill he introduced with U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to comprehensively overhaul and strengthen America’s mental health care delivery system.  Today’s hearing marks the second comprehensive hearing on mental health reform in the Senate HELP Committee this Congress. 

“If we went to the emergency room with a sick child around dinner time, and we sat there all evening, all night, and we didn’t get appropriate care for our child until noon the next day, we would be outraged. But that isn’t the outlier when it comes to people being admitted to the ER with mental health diagnoses. That’s the average. And yet we have accepted it as commonplace,” said Murphy. “We’re going the wrong way on capacity as need is increasing.”

The Mental Health Reform Act will make critical reforms to address a lack of resources, enhance coordination, and develop meaningful solutions to improve outcomes for families dealing with mental illness. Murphy and Cassidy, who are both members of the U.S. Senate (HELP) Committee, introduced the legislation in August after months of collaborating with Connecticut’s mental health professionals, policy experts, consumers, and families.

Excerpts from Senator Murphy’s remarks at the committee hearing are below:

“Thank you Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Murray for putting us on a path to a bipartisan product coming out of this committee and also a path for bringing it to the floor this year. This is one of our opportunities in 2016 to be able to move something substantive, something bipartisan, something that makes a difference to the floor of the Senate.

“If we went to the emergency room with a sick child around dinner time, and we sat there all evening, all night, and we didn’t get appropriate care for our child until noon the next day, we would call for people’s heads at that institution. We would be outraged. That isn’t the outlier when it comes to people being admitted to the ER with mental health diagnoses. That’s the average. And yet we have accepted it as commonplace.

“But there is a reason why that’s happening. We’ve closed down 4,000 mental health inpatient beds since 2007 in this country. In the last two years alone, we went from 91 million Americans living in an area that was designated as a mental health shortage jurisdiction for outpatient services to 97 million Americans. We’re going the wrong way on capacity as need is increasing.

“Another failing of our system is the lack of coordination. We have some many people trying to do good things, but they’re not talking to each other. For complex patients, it’s often not clear who’s in charge.

“If we don’t spend money on mental health, we’re going to spend money somewhere else. The fact is that a diabetes diagnosis alone doesn’t put you in the top 5% of spenders in the Medicare and Medicaid system. And, in fact, a depression diagnosis alone doesn’t put you in the top 5% of spenders. It’s the combination of the two. If you have a mental health diagnosis, you are in frankly much more likely to acquire another major expensive physical health disorder. A little bit of spending on the mental health side could prevent us from spending a lot on the physical health side.” 

A video of Senator Murphy's remarks can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1SxBqDr