Clinical Psychologist Turned Congressman Prescribes Mental Health Fix to Prevent Mass Shootings

The Daily Signal ^ | December 4, 2015 | Philip Wegmann

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., thinks he has a solution for much of the surge in mass shootings. Rather than reacting with new gun control measures, Murphy proposes to overhaul the nation’s mental health system to get at what he believes is the root of the violence.

Recent mass murders have given that reform effort traction. And, in an interview, Murphy told The Daily Signal he hopes to refurbish federal laws to better help those who suffer from mental illness before they can harm others.

“This bill would have some of the most substantive reforms of the last 50 years,” Murphy said.

Although his bill would do little to stop an attack like the one Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., Murphy said, it could prevent another mass murder like the one in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

In most such shootings, Murphy said, law enforcement “usually encounters someone who is untreated or undertreated for serious mental illness.” Early detection of the sickness is essential to prevention, he said.

A clinical psychologist turned congressman, Murphy, 63, sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on health. He began his investigation of federal mental health laws three years ago.

Now the House’s GOP leadership is pointing to Murphy’s bill as a specific solution to an ongoing problem of mass shootings.

“Clearly we can do more, and one common denominator in these tragedies is mental illness and that is why we need to look at fixing our nation’s mental illness health system,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Tuesday, speaking of the Planned Parenthood shooting.

Ryan said members of both parties “should make this a priority to prevent the violence and to protect our citizens.”

Still, getting the bill passed this year, or in early 2016, could prove a long shot.

Although Murphy says his bill enjoys “broad bipartisan support,” the legislation only advanced through the House Subcommittee on Health by a 18-12 vote along party lines. And although 45 of the bill’s 160 cosponsors are Democrats, some critics already call it a one-sided effort.

“That bill, the Murphy bill, has become unfortunately a partisan bill when it could have been a totally bipartisan bill,” Rep Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., told The New York Times. “And that’s unfortunate, because we need to get these done.”

Murphy, in his seventh term, told The Daily Signal that his reform effort transcends party politics. Both opponents and advocates of gun control should be able to support the legislation, he said, because it’s “entirely separate from the gun issue.”

After the Planned Parenthood shooting Nov. 27 in Colorado, President Obama renewed his call for increased background checks before gun purchases. At a press conference Tuesday, Obama said he would push Congress “to act in order to make sure that we’re preventing people who are deranged or have violent tendencies from getting weapons that can magnify the damage that they do.”

His office “has made a number of attempts to get the White House involved” in his reform effort, but “they have not been responsive,” Murphy told The Daily Signal. “I don’t know why.”

However, the Pennsylvania congressman added, that he haa been working closely with Ryan on the measure.

Murphy’s legislation, dubbed the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, would repeal a 1960s-era ban on using federal dollars to pay for residential treatment in psychiatric hospitals.

Currently, states must shoulder the bill for psychiatric care for the poor and homeless. As a result, the number of psychiatric resources is scarce.

The bill also would amend the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to bring a patient’s family into the loop concerning treatment. Murphy maintains that mental health patients do best when families take an active role in treatment.

Only information pertinent to care—such as prescriptions and medications—could be shared, not private conversations between psychiatrists and patients.

Finally, the bill would completely overhaul the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In addition, the legislation would create an assistant secretary for mental health and substance abuse disorders at the Department of Health and Human services.

Murphy said he rejects a Congressional Budget Office report that estimates his bill would cost anywhere between $3 billion and $46 billion over the next decade. He doesn’t know how the CBO arrived at that estimate, he said.

“That number is not accurate,” Murphy said. “I think it will be a small fraction of that.”

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

[NorthMountain]

Mental health has nothing to do with JIHAD.

[BenLurkin]

Islam is a mental illness

[papertyger]

When your only tool is a hammer....

[D Rider]

Lobotomies for Jihadies

[Carl Vehse]

Clueless RINO.

[Blood of Tyrants]

He needs to have Islam declared a mental disorder first.

[FourPeas]

Basically more government bureaucracy and spending is the answer? I think not.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Just ban guns for Democrats and Muslims. Everyone else can have one.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Technically true, but there have been several mass shootings by non-muslim dangerous lunatics. A separate, but also important problem.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Guns aren’t the problem. Scumbags are the problem.

[SpaceBar]

The ‘solution’ end of the hegelian dialectic.

[dp0622]

I think of course a number of mass shootings by mentally ill people could have been prevented IF it was possible to FORCE someone into psych and keep them there as long as necessary, which would be forever in many cases.

Because once out, most people stop taking their meds.

The occasional mass shooting by the mentally ill is one of the prices we pay for living in a free country.

My Uncle Sal was schizophrenic. Would wrestle with demons, talk to the air and laugh out loud at nothing.

His sisters and brothers rented him a room in the city and took care of him. They could NOT get him committed.

Unless he consented.

It HAS to be that way because abuse or that kind of power would run rampant.

[webstersII]

More people on more psychotropic meds.

Yeah that will really help.

[Paladin2]

Aren’t most CongressCritters clinically mentally ill?

[nathanbedford]

If there ever was a dangerous power to invest in the hands of a federal government which is more and more likely to be run by Democrats in the medium to long term future, the power over the individual through ill-defined pseudoscience like mental health is one of the worst.

Assume an extension of the Obama administration in the name of Hillary Clinton for the next sixteen years with the power to define, diagnose and force the treatment and/or detention of those it concludes are unhealthy mentally. This from an administration that cannot even identify Muslim terrorism, this from the administration that calls such terrorism "workplace violence." Give the federal government, especially Democrats running the federal government, the power over the freedom of the individual because they define sanity for that individual and you have a highway to tyranny

On its face the proposal sounds wonderful, the kind of thing that will appeal to leftists who ooze compassion and live with an abiding faith in the power of government. But the science of mental health is hardly that and it is certainly not reliable enough to entrust personal freedom to an elitist group which defines its own world, diagnoses its patients, prescribes for them, forces them into detention, and labels them for life. If Obama could co-opt all huge and wealthy healthcare providers, the federal government should have no problem co-opting hungry psychologists who are inclined toward leftism anyway.

The whole formula smacks of our current unlawful coalition of powers which under the Constitution the should be separated to legislate, adjudicate, and punish. We have coalesced those powers in unnamed bureaucrats at the EPA for example to our sorrow. Let us not commit the same mistakes with respect to our personal liberties. It is bad enough that it is done on the state level and increasingly on the federal level, let us not institutionalize this across-the-board.

[DoughtyOne]

The mental health industry always thinks it’s got all the answers.

Isn’t it a hoot how many of these mass killers are on medication. Where did they get a prescription for it? Oh yes, from the folks who want to convince us they can fix this.

Their fix ain’t workin’ folks!

Frankly, some of these “Fixers” are very screwed up themselves.

I once worked with a woman that was a nice person, but just off the beaten path a bit too much. Social skills zero, good worker, but not someone I’d think was level headed.

Then I found out she got a degree in counseling. She was about to leave and start her new career.

This was the last person I would have picked to straighten someone else out.

I’ve seen a number of psychologists who were shall we say, “Wingnuts”. This is the profession that is supposed to straighten everyone else out.

Nope.

Delusional!

We have a jihad on our hands and these folks think it’s all going to be fixed by a few counseling sessions and more medication.

As I intimated, totally F’d up delusional bunch of fools. Not all of them, but enough to make this a nightmare waiting to happen.

[FourPeas]

It HAS to be that way because abuse or that kind of power would run rampant.

Exactly. Unless a person is clearly a danger to themselves or others, force is not appropriate in a free society.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

As bad as terrorism is, this “cure” would be worse than the disease. Besides, it’s crime/war issue, not a health issue.

Liberals really just have no idea.