Dr Tim Murphy: How A Psychologist In Congress Rewired Mental Health Policy

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one story at a time. Hi, this is Tony Mantor.
Welcome to Why Not May Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
This is our special event crafting justice, embracing autism and
mental health through legislation. Joining us today is Tim Murphy,
a former US Representative for Pennsylvania and a dedicated psychologist
who leveraged his expertise to champion transformative mental health legislation
during his two thousand and three to twenty seventeen tenure.
Fueled by a deep commitment to addressing the challenges faced
by those with serious mental illness. He authored the Helping
Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. This landmark legislation revolutionized
America's mental health system by expanding access to critical care,
improving coordination of federal resources, and prioritizing evidence based treatments
for conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, offering hope and
support to countless families. It's a pleasure to have them
join us today. Thanks for coming on.
Oh sure, no, this is great.
This is something I work on nearly every day of
my life, working on these legislative issues.
So yeah, I think that's awesome. If you would tell
me a little bit about how being a doctor before
you were elected to the House of Representatives helped you
in creating some legislation.
Each one influenced the other.
I mean, yeah, being a psychologist running for state Senate,
running for Congress, and then being back and then taking
that knowledge in because I think when you're doing something
like this and people want to know, you know, a
lot of people think, well, I saw that cartoon.
If I'm just a bill on the hill, can't we
just pass something? It isn't that easy.
And I thought, as part of this, we might discuss
how complex is it and why is it so complex?
Yes, I definitely want that to be part of our conversation.
I think it's very important that people understand. As a legislator,
you have so many people that you represent, and of
course they all want changes. Of course they all think
that their changes are the most important. Then how you
decide on which ones you can put together to create
a bill that helps the masses. So let's expand on
that a bit. Some people, or most people do not
understand what you have to go through in order to
get a bill passed. What's the structure and what do
you have to do in order to do this.
Well, many people have this idea that it starts sort
of individually. Well, this is my good idea, I need
you to create a law or my good idea.
Can't you just do it?
That sounds simple, and certainly that's the way we would
explain it to people in grade school. Someone introduces it,
it passes, it goes to the Senate, it passes, come
back to President signs it. But it's a lot more
complex than that. And when it comes to even dealing
with such things and mental health, what one person sees
is a solution another person sees.
As the problem.
And so as you submit a bill for something like
involving what would be the rules with regarding impatient care?
Or when the judge says you need to have inpatient care?
What needs to be done? You have groups in favor
in groups of posts. Oh, you have to be working
with all these groups and try and find compromise and consensus.
Oftentimes there's two different things.
Can you expand upon the difference between the two.
You may not get consensus from all the parties because
someone dig their feet in and say I don't want
to do this.
But you have to get consensus among people in.
The House of Representatives and sent it on their state
or federal level. And that's what works at So I
know when I a few years ago worked on my
mental health reform legislation and build it started off for
the couple hundred pages long.
You may recall an old story called the Old Man
in the Sea.
Yeah, sure do.
But a man who caught a fish, right, he'd been
trying to get this big fish all his life. He
finally catches the big fish, and he's exhausted from fighting
this fish, and he's growing it to shore.
But In the.
Meantime, a lot of other fish saw his big fish
in the line because it was too big to haul in.
By the time he got it to shore, all that
was left was the head in a book. Sometimes that's
where legislation starts.
Too.
Good ideas are added on in the amendment process, some
great ideas are taken off, and sometimes some not such
good things are added on and taken off. But that's
in order to get ten census. It can be a
long process. And when one does that over multiple years,
one may find that actually a decade or two later
look back and say, you know, what we did or
what someone did actually cause more harm in this system.
And that's actually what happened in the mental health reform
movement that began in the nineteen sixties.
Start off is a good idea, and since then we've
been dealing with a lot of the harm.
And followed of that legislation, Now, was it the Mental
Health Crisis Act that you passed?
Was the Helping Families and Mental Health Crisis Act?
Yes, What were some of the challenges that you faced
in getting that passed?
From the very first time I showed that bill to
my chairman, he said, you know, you're going to have
to compromise, and I said, well, of course, I understand
that process. But I've been working this long time, have
talked to all the interested parties, and I was really
surprised by his statement. Now, I wish you would have said,
you got some great stuff in here, let's.
See what we can do to get this done.
So the challenges were or on some of the content.
For example, I wanted to change the law with regard
to something called assisted outpatient treat This is where a
judge can say you need to get into treatment and
stay in a treatment.
It's an alternative to being hospitalized.
And I thought this is good because research has shown
in multiple states how it has actually improved the lives
of people with severe mental illness. Here I'm talking about
people with schizophrenia, severe psychosists, people who aren't really sure
who they are or where they are.
That condition of antisignols.
Moving forward to this, some people said, well, you should
never have coercive care, you should never force someone to care,
and I said, I get it, but sometimes a person
cannot control themselves, cannot help themselves, what we call gravely disabled.
When they're gravely disabled, then they can't make decisions for themselves,
and in some cases they may think about harming themselves
or harming someone else, and those are the two standards
that have been around for a number of decades.
But as soon as the person said.
You know, I'm not going to hurt myself anymore, I'm
not going to harm anybody anymore.
Then people can't get them into care.
And such persons may also then start with semitic and
then say I don't like that anymore, or I'm healthy,
I don't need anymore, and relapse right back into a
psychiatric crisis. So that was one of the battles we had,
and some people saying you shouldn't do that at all.
That's a real tough situation because most people with lived
experience understands that that is a very valuable tool that
can help a lot of people. Were there any other
obstacles you faced on this bill?
We had another battle with regard to fighting medicaid. Medicaid
has a number of rules they put in place back
when John F. Kennedy was President of the United States.
The very last bill he signed before his.
Assassination was to create the community mental health Care system
in the United States, the idea being we could move
from the inpatient hospital model putting people in there to
having community mental health centers makes a lot of sense
for many mental health or mental illness issues, anxiety, depression,
other crisis where people don't need to be in hospital.
What happened from that is Medicaid made a number of
changes then in the next administration and did the following
They said, if a hospital has more than sixteen beds,
we're not paying for it.
Medicaid won't pay for it.
And the idea with that is, at that time we
had we had about half a million psychiatric hospital beds
in this country for a population of one hundred and
twenty million.
Medicaid says, we're not paying for it.
And that was the way of forcing these hospitals to
close and putting people in community mental health centers. So
that occurred, and what happened was not only did those
hospitals close, these big psychiatric hospitals which were designed to
actually as an alternative to prisons and homeless and the
abuse people got back in the eighteen hundreds, Well, what
happened is those hospitals close, but the community mental health
system couldn't take care of the severely mentally ill, So
we ended up more homeless, more people where families had
to take care of them, a lot of severe problems,
more crime, more in jail. That was one problem we
tried to tackle, and I'm going to add it to
these ones too, but that would also require some changes
in Medicaid. Medicaid is a very bizarre rule that says
for a psychiatter hospitalization, we're not paying for any more
than two weeks in the hospital, And they have another
rule that says lifetime, we're not paying for more than
one hundred and twenty days in the hospital. Now, I
look at the O as a psychologist myself, and say,
that's just bizarre.
There's no scientific merit to it.
In fact, it's anti science because many times to get
a person off of one medication and get them stabilized
on another. Getting off you need a couple weeks stabilizing
another maybe a couple of weeks. In some case you
may see results on a few days. A two week
limit means someone may have to be discharged with a
hospital and then you lose them, or maybe they'll go to.
A different hospital and they do this hospital hopping game.
Not only is that tough for the hospital to keep
up with it, the doctors to keep up with it.
But that makes it really difficult for the family to
navigate and get what their loved one needs for help.
That third thing, one hundred and twenty day limit. Can
you imagine if we did those limits on such things
as cancer, on anything. You don't do that, I'm sorry,
you have a terrible heart problem, Well we can only
keep you for two weeks, even though you have a
heart transplant and it's failing. But psychiatry, psychiatric hospitalizations have
this tremendous or anti science approach towards them. So here's
what happened when we said let's change those three things.
The number of beds overall hospitals stay two weeks at
a time, and lifetime.
The Congressional Budget Office scores bills, that scores the cost
of them, and they said, well, what will happen if
we lift those limits. Every state will put everybody in
the hospital, and that's what they'll do. And we think
it's going to cost sixty billion dollars over ten years.
And I said, where did you get the number from, Well,
we just assumed everybody would be in the hospital.
Well that's you just made that number up, that's not
going to happen.
So they came back and revised it and said, well,
we think it's going to be twelve billion over ten years,
so do the math, you know, one point some billion
per year. We said, okay, But the rule was in
Congress you could not pass a bill that whatever cost
unless you had an offset, and.
The offset had to be in the same field.
So I had to come up with something else in
the realm of medicaid to pay for this. Oh, do
we stop paying for something else? So, because the Congressional
Budget Office controls that, we couldn't pass that, so that
part got peeled off as well. That continues to be
a huge problem for many families.
It seems like I heard about something concerning medicaid and
the prison system. Did that comp at all medicaid?
It also says we're not paying if someone is in prison,
so states have to pick up the tab on that,
and quite frankly, states do not. States do not pay
for psychiatric care. About eighty percent of those with severe
mental illness not only do not get psychiatric care, they
are actually, I don't.
Use these words lightly.
They are abused and harmed in ways that we cannot
imagine it still occurs in the twenty first century. They're
put in solitary confinement for twenty some days. You know,
we use that punishment for the worst of the worst,
serial killers, murderers, and drug dealers. Then with schizophrenia, who
has run in with a guard, gets in a fight
with some prisoners, and that's punishment. They'll put them in
solitary confinement where they're in a small room twenty three
hours a day, and that's it. That causes much worsening.
Is an awful condition for them, and I wish we
could stop that, but no one's forcing states to treat
these people, and so the harm increases.
I think either you mentioned it or I heard it
that there's an issue now with marijuana and the states
because they believe that it creates more psychosis.
Yes, so states are saying, you know, if we legalize marijuana,
not just medical marijuana, but legalize recreational marijuana, won't this
be wonderful. We'll have all kinds of tax revenue and
this will be great.
And we can do all kinds of things. Now, I
was a state legislator. I know how this works.
They say, oh, we have all this money, now, how
would you like something for your district, Oh, jee, I
love it. What do you mean, Well, maybe you need
some new playgrounds, Maybe you need a street paid, maybe
need some water lines going into a rural area. How
would you like cable any of those things? Say gee,
what do we have to do to get that vote
for this bill? So it's used as money for political leverage,
It's uses money to help get votes. It is used
as money for things are useful too. But my point
is that's got nothing to do with marijuana. And here's
the thing. So states may say, look, we may make
fifty or one hundred million dollars a year on this,
but let's look at the cost of marijuana.
As we like to say, this saints you your.
Papa's woodstock marijuana where it was like four percent THHC.
This is seventy eighty ninety percent potent.
So when states legalize this, what happens is we know
that adolescents and young adults to use marijuana a regular
basis increase their chances of psychosis, and as a psychotic
crisis breakdown, they increase it by several percent each year.
It come pounds over time.
Well, now we have new researchs not only that because
that the brain is still developing up to twenty five.
So not only that group, but we recognize now people
over sixty also have this problem because perhaps they're using
marijuana more and more for a number of reasons. If
you think it's legalized and you have people saying, well,
it's a natural substance, must be okay, well always Cyani.
What happens is we have these cases of legalizing marijuana.
But here's what it does. A study done in Canada
after they legalize it, they found that the number of
auto accidents related to marijuana use increased by a few
hundred percent. Alcohol remained the same, but drug from marijuana increased.
So it wasn't only auto accidents and the police have
to respond to those, paramedics respond to those. But emergency
room stays increased by a massive amount, I think by
a coup hundred percent. You had stays, intensive care units,
hospital stays were long. Well who pays for that? Well,
we all paid for it through our insurance.
There is the.
Bills that come from communities for police, environment and paramedic
doing those things too, and the cost of families lost
income because someone was injured.
Whateverwhere else? Now I raise this question, well, if we're
doing all these things, who's.
Paying for it? And the answer is nobody. Well, except
it goes back to the tax payer. So on the
one hand, they say, look at all this tax revenue
and we can use it to have all these projects.
It's nothing compared to the cost of schizophrenia.
Wow, that's very interesting, a lot of great information there.
Did you have a study done or do you know
more about the cost of all this and how it
affects everyone.
The organization which I'm a board member for, called Schizophrenia
and Psychosis Action Alliance, we did a study a couple
of years ago and re repeating it now here is
what we believe the cost of schizophrenia. That's one percent
of the population that this is the cost if you
take direct medical care, psychetric care.
For the disease itself schizophrenia.
If you take the fact that seventy five percent of
people with schizophrenia it was one chronic illness, fifty percent
HEAVI least two, and thirty percent HEAVI least three.
This is everything from cancer, bone.
Disease, gum disease, these skin diseases, whatever else.
It is all those cost money. You look at lost
revenue because they're networking.
You look at families have to pick up the cost
of this because there's other medical bills that medicat or
insurance may not pay for it. You have the whole
justice system where about forty percent or fifty percent of
people in jail have a mental illness. By twenty thirty
percent have a severe mental illness. Of the homeless population,
about forty percent of those have severe mental illness. And
every time states say, oh, we're going to reduce the
homeless population, We'll give them shelter, we'll give them food
cards and things like that, they're always peeling off the
low hanging fruit. People just need little intervention get better.
But states say, oh, look we have these programs that
we dropped homelesses by thirty forty percent. Yeah, but you
didn't get to the problem. So homeless has cost money
and it's not addressed. You add these things together and
the cost per year we have made. The cost last
year in the United States for schizophrenia alone was between
three hundred and forty and three hundred and eighty billion dollars. Now,
you take all the revenue from all the states from marijuana,
and it's not even a fraction of that. So what
happens is you're in increase in the use of marijuana,
increase in the incidence of psychosis, and by the way,
it also increases incidents of problems in their children too.
So you have generation coming up. This look if you're
gonna legalize it, and some thirty eight or forty states
have already done that, dedicate the revenue to treat the
problem you're causing. You have a tax on cars and
your license that goes to pay for highways. You're going
to tax marijuana use it to treat mental health because
no state gives adequate funding to that. Nobody there's something
that spent a lot of money, but it's wasted, and
so this is a way of doing that.
Create the problems, pay for the problems.
We'll recognize it is a problem, including public health campaigns.
I don't see any commercials on television.
I don't see any billboards.
I don't see any things on subways or bus is
saying if you smoke marijuana, your children will have problems
like low birth weight, like a fetal alcohol syndrome, increase
risks for psychiatric problems, attend to disorder, psychos etc.
You're gonna have problems. Stay away from this stuff.
Instead, you have a massive amount of money spent by
lobbyists saying, oh, vote.
For this, we'll give you campaign donations.
I know this is true because I've been to some
campaign fundraisers for members. A huge number of people in
the room are lobby for legalizing marijuana. And even some
of them say, yeah, I know, I don't like it.
It's not a good idea, but they pay well. It's
treacherous ground we're walking in with that.
One of the more important things that you just brought
up is how it affects the families. They see a
person having an issue, first thing they think about is
the treatment at the hospital, But I don't believe they
really think of how it affects the family. I think
the legislation you were speaking about, with more beds and
more abilities to help those will actually not only help
the people that need it, but it will also help
the families.
Deal with it as well. It'll definitely help the family
unit because families are left to do this on their own.
They fight to get their child care the oftentimes adolescents
who don't, they fight to get them the right medication,
and then if there's any kind of crime committed. Many
times it's a small crime, and what other people may
have a prison sentence of maybe weak or two. Because
they have other problems, they end up with longer prison
s days, and so the families all this criminal justice
expense too. And what they're also finding is as they're
in prison and they're in solitaire confinement and they're abused,
and they become more suicidal. These are birds the family
is trying to deal with. Can you imagine if I
don't know, at eighteen nineteen year old, in the throes
of his illucinations and delusions, went into a local store,
stole something, find themselves in jail and next thing you know,
they're in fights with gang members and so for their.
Protection and put in soldair confinement.
This destroys the hearts of many families and they spend
their life savings taking care of this and they still
can't get through. They are the most frustrated in terms
of how they handle this and the burden it places
on them. No wonder if so many families just keep
turning towards they just don't know what else to do.
It's awful.
Yeah, that seems to be one of the most common
things that I hear in talking with people that come
on to my podcast, it's the big unknown. They just
don't know how to handle it when it first happens.
They're overwhelmed and they just don't know what to do.
Then because of the different laws, aot, etc. They don't
have the money, the institutions don't get paid, so they
actually throw them back out on the street. It's a
big cycle of the unknown, and it keeps circling around,
and it seems like they just don't know how to
help these people, and then the cycle just continues.
That's right, and families don't have help, so families are
on their own to try and stop that cycle. I
consistently find families who ask when you first learned the diagnose,
who was there to explain what was going to happen
to you? And they generally say nobody. In the field
of psychiatri and psychology, a very small percent of us
are trained and regularly treat these insidious diseases. Even among children,
we have a higher instance of children diagnosed with autism.
A lot of people don't really know how to diagnose
it and how to recommend properly for that schizophrenia manytimes,
people say this is too much of a problem. I'm
going to find myself testifying in court. I don't want
to deal with these folks. And Medicaid pay so little anyway,
so all across society people are pushed away and pushed
it back on family, and it's a heartbreak of for families.
I have known many a family who has actually been told,
if you want your child to get care, have them
commit a small crime, so we'll put them in jail
and make sure they get care. And then they say, wait,
commit a crime and then in jail, and who knows
what happens. Then, well, at least we can force them
to take medication. That's how sick our system.
Is right now.
Yes, I've heard that many times. And what most people
don't realize is that once their child is put into
the system, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to turn
out the way they thought it would.
Exactly.
Families find once they're in the legal system they've lost
control because what also happens is they want to get information,
and with hippo laws and competent jaility laws, they talked
to doctors, they try and talk to prol offic says no,
your son didn't give us permissions.
We can't tell you anything.
And families say, well, let me tell about medications around Nope,
we can't talk.
Let me give you his history and background to you.
No, no, we're not talking to you, which is tragic
because someone, for example, a new drug being used more
Waschzophrenia's closepine.
The doctors don't know about close pine.
We're working hard to get the FDA to change the
rules on that to make it more accessible. People will
use older antipsychotic drugs which don't work very well.
And just getting information as a problem.
So again it lands on the parents who in all
these things, hearts are breaking where they're trying to make
things happen, and it's the law that stands in the way.
The legislators do not understand talk about wanting to have
them walk a mile on their shoes, spend an hour
in their shoes, and understand all these aspects.
Instead they push it aside.
Because as the words from a book by Ron Powers,
the title of the book is nobody cares about crazy people.
It's actually a quote from someone who is campaigning for
accounting office. So nobody cares about creating people we don't
have to pay attention.
What's your opinion on how we get these organizations to
step up? The more people I speak with, it seems
like the bigger the organization, the less help that they
get from them.
Well, I think some organizations are so big they become
very diffuse and are no longer focused.
National lines from mantal illness.
Great concept, great idea, but as soon as you're saying
mental illness, it expands widely and then you have all
sorts of groups that want their piece to pie no
longer is effective. The Psychiatric Association, when I went before
them to say, will you endorse my legislation, they couldn't
get themselves to do it until the very end last
couple of weeks because they said, we have so many
divisions they can't agree on what needs to be done.
And I said, how about only have the divisions vote
who actually treat psychosis. American Psychological Association. I stood before
an audience and said, how many of you are in
favor of this bill or how many against this bill?
A bunch of hands went up and asked how many
of you read the bill?
No hands, how many of you have actually focused on
dealing with schizophrenia, almost no hands with them. And I said, well,
if you deal with schizophrenia and you've read the bill,
you'll before the bill.
But what we do is be we have these judgments
on ignorant.
Now when it comes to autism and schizophrenia, for example,
autism and spectrum has become very wide.
This spectrum. There's even TV shows. I'll have someone in
a star character role where they want to look like
they're in the spectrum.
They they're flat emotions, they don't interact well socially, but
they can be very bright. That's a stereotype of autism
because it's entertaining, right, want it all to be like
rain Man as Dustin Hoffen, wasn't that movie and it's
not that way. Many people with autism, which are severely
severely disabled, can't communicate, maybe harm themselves along. There's also
some people there who we know that about thirty to
fifty percent of those with autism will later on have
a diagnosis schizophrenia. I think they're about three to six
times higher risk for schizophrenia. Now, those with schizophrenia, about
thirty to fifty percent had a history of autism. Now
what does that mean because that mean, was it really autism?
Was it early signs of schizophrenia in misdiagnosed Is there
are genetic factors, clear genetic links on a similar path
for many people with autism and many people with schizophrenia.
And I believe a lot can be done if these
two groups unite their efforts and say, let's find our
common ground and push together.
But as soon as the group says, yeah, but what
about me and what about me? And what about me?
It says we're not talking about that now. And unless
people focus, you can't get things done. When they do focus,
and this is important. You have to understand we may
not be able to take care of everything right now,
but we do focus, we can get it done.
But if you want us to be all things all people,
nothing gets done.
They say, a giraffe is a bird designed by a committee,
And that's what it comes down to.
Everybody wants a different thing in there, and it doesn't
end up what you want in the first place.
Yeah, we have to do baby steps. Help the first person,
then help the next one. By the time we get
to the last one, we've helped them all. Yes, I've
talked with so many people that have tried to do
so many different things. They've talked with their organizations and
they're quite frankly frustrated because nothing's getting done. So what's
your opinion, legislative wise, that we can take and do
something to get all these people together and ultimately the
people that need the help actually get it well.
One is fine enlists the common grown issues on the
federal level, they need to be done. I believe the
als have to do with the Medicaid payment system. You
have to educate every Senator and every member of Congress.
You need to meet with them on their office, write
them letters, send them emails. And the reason I say
that is they never read the letter.
You don't fight.
People say, well, they should just do it. No, they
don't understand. And I tell folks, you know you're getting
through to your congressman. When he's walking down the street
in the parade, he says, Tony, how you doing? I
remember we talked, that's what you want. We did some
polling on this and found among couple groups suburban women
and families who have someone with mental illness, we found
when you ask the question of suching, how important it
is to have more hospital beds or more funding as
that are huge numbers. But when we ask the question
to say, if you knew a candidate place reform of
mental health high in their platform, what does that do
to increase your.
Likeliness likelihood of voting for them?
It was eighty eight to ninety percent among suburban women
and close to ninety five percent among families who have
someone with schizophrenia in the family.
Yeah, this has all been just tremendous information. So in closing,
what would you like to tell the listeners that you
think is just so important that they need to hear
to better understand what the legislators are trying to do
and to better understan in what they need to do
to work with these people that can help them.
Well, one is look at some organizations I think can
be helpful for you with somewhat severe mental illness. I
mentioned NOMI before, a great organization, but it's become so
wide and God bless them, they're great, but sometimes they're
so big they can't be effective with focusing on that.
So look at some other organizations that can be effective.
I'm a member of Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance. We
work on schizophrenia and psychosis. That's what we focus on
and a lot of families are being part of that
now too as we do this. So look at some
of this laser focus on your issues because, let's face it,
as you mentioned before, families are struggling. They don't have
time to do all this, but their united voice means
everybody does.
A little bit and helps immensely.
If an organization says we have these multi thousand letters
from people who sign a petition.
So be part of an organization is like that. Two,
don't be silent.
It doesn't take a long time to write an email
through your state and federal legislators and county or parish legislators.
It doesn't take a long time just to tell a story.
Please do it. But then they're going to say, what
do you want me to do?
Say, we need more hospital beds, we need more treatment,
we need AOT, we need you to have treatment in jails.
We need you to identify people early in life when
they're in school, we need you to follow up, and
we need you to hold people accountable for this. All
of those things are important. And hit those points over
and over again, eventually something will happen. And I don't
want to see this too. A lot of this happened
in the nineteen sixties. There was something in California called
the Letterman Heater a short Act LPs ACT, and that
was an act that says, let's start closing our psychiatric
hospitals and do community based care. A lot of people say, well,
that's what's caused. The problem is a present baku. Excuse
me as Governor Bagan's fault. But actually the disability rights
community said we shouldn't put them in these institutions.
The ACLU said we shouldn't put people.
In institutions without really grounds, and so they came with
this idea says, well, let's give someone seventy two hours
where they have to be evaluated or released. Well, not
a lot of research went into that, and quite frankly,
as a ridiculous thing, because if you use the standard
of the person that has to threaten someone, that's not
a good scientific standard, not a good medical standard. Well,
the way this bill passed it wasn't the House, Thissembly
and the Senate in California said that's a great idea,
that's passes and have the governor sign it. In the
final hours of the session. A year something called sign
a Die, which means any bills that don't pass die.
They couldn't get it done.
But the Speaker of the House talk members of the Senate, said,
can you find some way of getting this bill done?
Because I want to get it done. There was a
staffer and he admits it. The staffer said that bills.
In order to get voted on, they have a green
sheet on top of them and it's it's a legislative analysis,
says this bill's going to cost this march or not much.
It's green light, it's ready to go.
This bill did not have that green sheet, so he
turned to his another staff member says, does anybody have
some green paper?
And he typed on their effects simile that looked like this.
They called a bill analysis and said this bill won't
cost anything, we'll save Monday, let's pass it. Stuck it
on all the legislative packages for the members, and they
voted on it without reading it because they were lied to.
And he admits, probably I leegal bit of passed. That's
how that was done.
And we've been living with that terribly anti scientific approach,
anti medical care approach, anti psychiatric approach since then, still
staying with a seventy two hour hold or other things
like that. When people hear that, they say, I can't
believe it. Yeah, it was all shechinanigans and illegal action
that took place that put us in this place. And
know what, sixty seven years later, we're still suffering from it.
So united, be vocal, be involved, and don't give up.
Great advice. Well, this has been a great conversation, tremendous information.
I really appreciate you taking the time to join us.
Today, you bet Tony, Thank you for being a strong
way of a catalyst for all these voices for mental illness.
Oh it's my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time
out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today.
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