At last, Congress is moving on mental-health reform. On Wednesday the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health will mark up the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 (H.R. 2646). This bill -- spearheaded by Representative Tim Murphy (R., Pa.), a child psychologist, and Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Tex.), a former psychiatric nurse -- has garnered bipartisan support with 156 co-sponsors and is the most far-reaching and serious attempt at mental-health reform in recent memory.
Unfortunately, advocacy groups opposed to all involuntary mental-health care are putting up strong opposition. This small but vocal faction has the ear of some committee Democrats. Well-meaning though they may be, these critics, and the lawmakers who are receptive to their claims, don’t seem to grasp the vital difference between serious mental illnesses -- conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar illness, and severe depression, which are marked by psychosis, high risk for suicide, or both -- and other, less disabling psychiatric conditions. The sad clinical reality is that some severely ill patients have periods, ranging from months to years, when they are too lost in delusions, hallucinations, and apathy to care for themselves.
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