Changing Mindset on Mental Health

Floor Speech

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Ms. SLOTKIN. Thank you, Representative Schneider, for your leadership.

I rise today to honor the struggle that so many parents who must do the unimaginable have gone through, to grieve the loss of a child. As an Army wife and a former CIA officer who worked alongside the military on three tours in Iraq, I have watched many parents send their kids off to war, and, unfortunately, many did not return.

For the families left behind, not only does the hole in their hearts never heal, but the ripple effect of that loss is also vast. The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, estimates that for every Active Duty servicemember killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, six family members are significantly impacted. This is the devastating collateral impact of combat.

But our communities in the United States, our high schools and colleges, are not supposed to be war zones. For many of us adults, we look back fondly on those years as a time for liberation and new opportunities for work, study, and play, for learning new things, and for growing up.

So when a parent sends their child into the world full of hopes and dreams for the future, they do so with visions of challenging classes that expand their horizons, friendships that will define their lives, Saturday tailgates, and spring break in sunshine.

Most importantly, they send them off with the full and complete assumption that they will safely come back home.

But what we don't often think about is the incredible crisis of mental illness and emotional turmoil that so many young people today endure.

Our students are struggling. They are fighting internal battles that even their closest friends and their parents do not see until it is much too late.

Even before the pandemic up-ended our lives, we were already facing a mental health crisis for young people. At this point, crisis is not the right word. It is not strong enough.

Mental health experts and researchers use the term epidemic to describe where we are with mental health challenges facing U.S. high school and college students.

According to the National College Health Assessment, the most common mental health issues facing adolescents are depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and intent, eating disorders, and substance abuse.

It is not easy getting help for any of those, navigating scarce mental health resources as a newly independent and struggling young adult.

Even if a student tries to take steps to get help, there is a tremendous lack of services in our community, in our colleges, at our universities. On college campuses, the ratio of certified counselors to students is generally between 1 to 1,000 or 1 to 2,000 for small and moderate-size schools and 1 to 2,000 or 3,000 to 5,000 for large universities.

Far too often, the outcome is tragic as it has been for dear friends and even some of my colleagues here in Congress who have lost their children to mental health issues.

In the past year and a half, one of my superintendents, Dr. Bob Shaner, a Marine veteran, he and his family lost their son in his freshman year of college. More recently, my friend, Steve Sheffey and the Sheffey family lost their beloved daughter, Orli, a young woman who wanted to change the world.

It has become so common for me to get those terrible calls that it is nearly commonplace. It is, therefore, up to us to make sure we do something to change the system so that we honor their legacy. But we need to start early because we know that the problem doesn't just appear in college or after high school.

In my district in Michigan, one county alone has had a 300 percent increase in demand for child psychiatric services in the past 2 years and virtually no inpatient beds to offer them. It is not just the sheer volume of demand that has increased but also the acuity of distress for individual patients.

Right now, in our country when it comes to mental health and young people, there is a tsunami of need and only sandbags to meet it.

You may know the now infamous name of a community in my district: Oxford, Michigan. In November of 2021, Oxford joined the terrible club that no one wants to be a part of, the list of districts where a school shooting has taken place.

Like we have seen so many times in the past, the tragedy in Oxford is rooted in the toxic combination of mental health issues and access to weapons. Because of that, four students are dead and a community, including the police, fire, first responders, and teachers who were in the building that day are forever traumatized.

We must do better for the students of Oxford, for Orli, for every student and every parent. We must train providers in trauma-based care, increase access to mental healthcare services, treat mental illness like physical health so that we understand that the issues and ailments that affect us from the neck up are just as important as the ones that affect us from the neck down.

We must improve insurance coverage for mental health services and reframe the entire conversation around what it really means to be healthy. The tasks are daunting, but the consequences of inaction, the collateral damage of this battle, are even greater.

In closing, I offer a prayer often recited when mourning the loss of a child:

May it bring comfort to the hearts of those who grieve, and may it inspire all of us to keep their memories in the forefront of our work.

A good person, though taken from us too soon, will rest in peace.

For honor in old age, does not come from the length of life.

Honor in old age does not come from the length of years.

Understanding is the gray hair of humanity.

A blameless life is ripeness of age.

Perfection in limited years is like living for many years.

So a good person, though taken from us too soon, will rest in peace.

Let us, then, with peace of mind, let that good soul rest.

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