Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, H.R. 2646, and wish to thank Chairman Upton, Ranking Member Pallone, and the two driving sponsors of this measure, Congressman Tim Murphy and Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who have adeptly navigated this bill through very choppy legislative waters.

The bill takes head-on one of the most compelling and unaddressed health challenges of our society: the suffering, the anguish, the travails, the plight of the seriously mentally ill. The bill will empower parents and caregivers, drive innovation, advance early- intervention and prevention programs, and offer alternatives to institutionalization, and provide the first step in a long time to show respect and real treatment alternatives to Americans living with mental illness.

It is no secret our prisons have become the domiciles for the mentally ill. This bill rings out: ``No more, no more.''

Sadly, psychiatric care has become the responsibility of our prison system. Three of the largest mental health ``hospitals'' in our country are incarceration facilities. Speak to any local sheriff. They will tell you their jails are overcrowded with the mentally ill.

What too often happens is that the ill person in an adult incarceration facility actually began their journey in a child correction facility, and as they matured, essentially, graduated to the adult facility without their underlying mental illness being properly diagnosed, much less treated. What an indictment of our Nation, not just our health and corrections system, this is, but our entire country.

Today's bill calls for a complete overhaul of the current mental health system. It has been needed since the de-institutionalization that sent millions, some to their death when they were sent to the streets.

I want to congratulate, as I conclude, Representatives Murphy and Johnson for bringing this bill to the floor and addressing a crying human need for too long ignored in our country. They are doing something noble for the Nation. The severely mentally ill must be humanely treated.

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