Few Legislative Days Remain Before Elections
Congressional Action Is Likely on Key Mental Health
Proposals
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August 20, 2002—With Congress out for its August recess
and Fall election races heating up, advocates have a good
opportunity to highlight the importance of mental health issues to
lawmakers. Few legislative days remain before final adjournment and
a number of bills affecting children and adults with severe mental
disabilities are likely to be debated.
Mental Health Spending Bill
The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved the Labor,
Health and Human Services and Education spending bill that funds the
Center for Mental Health Services’s (CMHS) community mental health
program services. The committee’s bill makes several notable changes
to the President’s budget request.
- The Senate Committee restored funds for community action grant
programs and consumer-run technical assistance centers—important
programs that would have been axed under the President’s proposal.
Community action grants help communities better serve children and
adults with severe mental health conditions, while the
consumer-run centers promote community integration through
investments in self-help recovery and peer-to-peer support. The
President’s plan would have cut about $7 million from CMHS’
discretionary program for the next fiscal year.
- The program to fund grants to divert individuals from jail and
the PATH program to provide mental health services to people who
are at risk of being homeless were both increased ($1 million and
$7 million respectively). Yet jail diversion funds remain
inadequate to significantly reduce the number of people with
mental illnesses inappropriately incarcerated.
- The committee approved a $3 million increase for the
protection and advocacy systems that provide legal assistance to
individuals with mental disorders.
- The committee also provided a $10 million increase above the
President’s request for CMHS’ program on post-traumatic stress
disorders.
Not all programs fared so well. Children’s mental health services
essentially received no new funding. Spending on the seniors’ mental
health, suicide prevention and youth anti-violence programs was
frozen at last year’s levels, and the mental health block grant, on
which states rely heavily to pay for services for adults and
children with mental illnesses, did not receive a much-needed
funding increase.
House Committee to Take Up Spending Bill
House
appropriators are expected to begin work on their version of the
bill soon after Congress returns. With lawmakers facing tight budget
constraints and the cuts proposed in the President’s budget, members
will be tempted to cut corners on funding for mental health,
exacerbating a deepening crisis in the public mental health system
(see the Bazelon Center report, Disintegrating
Systems, for more information on the system’s increasing
financial woes).
Take Action
Ask your Representative to support funding
increases for community-based mental health services. If your
Representative is not a member of the committee that has
jurisdiction over these services (see list below), ask him or her to
contact colleagues on the subcommittee and share your concerns. Urge
Representatives to:
- Support increases to the programs charged with providing
comprehensive community-based mental health services, such as the
mental health block grant and the children’s mental health
services program.
- Support additional funds to the jail diversion grant program,
over the President’s $1 million increase, to help better serve
individuals with a mental illness who come in contact with law
enforcement.
- Reject cuts to the consumer-run technical assistance centers
and the community action grants.
More Information
Database Threatens Privacy, Could Lead to
Discrimination
New legislation would require states to develop lists of people
who have been committed to a mental hospital. The bill is designed
to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System
(NICS), a computerized system managed by the FBI which searches
various records to find whether an individual is prohibited by law
from purchasing a gun. Advocates for the rights of people with
mental illnesses fear that the overly broad definitions used in the
law and its lack of privacy protections may lead to violations of
the rights of people with mental disabilities.
Under the Brady Handgun Prevention Act, gun dealers must obtain a
background check on individuals who wish to purchase a handgun.
Generally, these checks are done through the NICS. Current law
prohibits someone “adjudicated as a mental defective or those
committed to a mental institution” from purchasing a gun. The new
legislation, “The Our Lady of Peace Act” (H.R. 4757 and S. 2868),
would place on the NICS list the names of individuals who in several
categories, including:
- individuals involuntarily committed to a mental institution by
a court, board, commission or other authority;
- individuals committed because they lack the mental capacity to
contract or manage their own affairs; and
- defendants in criminal cases adjudicated as not guilty by
reason of insanity or found incompetent to stand trial.
The list would include individuals who are found to be “gravely
disabled” or otherwise unable to look after their basic needs as a
result of a mental illness—even without any indication that they
pose a danger to themselves or others. The bill’s broad application
would also prohibit individuals with mental illnesses who committed
a minor, non-violent misdemeanor from owning a gun.
The legislation provides substantial funding to enable states to
develop and submit lists of people adjudicated to be mentally ill or
perpetrators of domestic violence -- $350 million each year for
three years.
The majority of these individuals have done nothing
wrong and have no criminal charges against them. Their commitment
could well have nothing to do with even temporary dangerousness.
Since there is no automatic purging of the NICS list after a set
period of time, names could remain on the list of “mentally
defective” persons forever.
Mental health advocates fear that such broad, stigmatizing
definitions of “mentally defective” would erode the rights of people
with mental illnesses and would promote the idea that violence and
mental illness are linked—a notion disproved by studies showing that
people with mental illnesses are no more violent than others.
Advocates also fear that the bill’s lack of strong privacy
protections for sensitive mental health information may encourage
discrimination unrelated to gun ownership. If mental health
information in NICS is shared, people with mental illnesses may face
housing, credit or employment discrimination stemming from knowledge
of their mental illness.
Take Action
Contact Senators on the Judiciary Committee
and urge them to:
- Strengthen the bill’s privacy protections so that the
information on the list is not shared outside the NICS system.
Without adequate privacy protections, the bill could result in
housing discrimination, job discrimination, credit discrimination,
ostracism and other detrimental actions against people with mental
illnesses if the information becomes available to others.
- Eliminate from the bill the inclusion of people with mental
illness. The broad definitions used in the legislation would
further promote stigma and discrimination and discourage mental
health consumers in need of care from seeking help. Funding
related to the bill’s mental health provisions should be
redirected to providing more community-based services to people
with mental illnesses.
More Information
Grassroots Push Needed on Parity
Action is needed to ensure enactment of legislation to provide
parity between mental health and medical/surgical care. The Mental
Health Equitable Treatment Act, H.R. 4066, co-sponsored by
Representatives Marge Roukema (R-NJ) and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), is
supported by 240 members of Congress and more than 230 national
organizations.
A July subcommittee hearing on mental health benefits in private
health insurance recently sparked more interest in the House, where
opposition to providing parity for mental health benefits has long
been a problem. While support for parity is increasing, strong
opposition to full parity for all mental disorders continues.
Take Action
With the Senate likely to bring its
committee-passed bill to the floor in September, the
House leadership must hear about the need to bring a full mental
health parity bill up for a vote from grassroots activists who
oppose discrimination by private insurers. A toll-free Parity
Hotline (1-866-PARITY4 or 1-866-727-4894) has been set up for
supporters to contact the House leadership (see previous page) to
urge them to pass H.R. 4066 this year and to reject efforts to
provide less-than-full parity for all mental disorders.
More Information
Other Bills Under Review
The Bazelon Center is working on a broad array of other
important mental health issues.
Family
Opportunity Act: This bill to expand Medicaid coverage to
more children with severe emotional disturbances could increase
access to needed behavioral health services for families, reducing
the need for families to relinquish custody of their child to obtain
such services. Grassroots action is needed to bring the legislation
up for a vote before the full Senate.
Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families: This legislation to
reauthorize the 1996 welfare reform legislation has special
significance to people with mental disabilities. It is estimated
that adults who receive TANF benefits were three times more likely
to have at least one physical or mental health impairment than
adults not receiving benefits under the program. Studies also show
that TANF recipients with impairments were half as likely to leave
the welfare rolls as those without impairments and that when they
did, they were less likely to be employed. With the current law set
to expire on September 30, now is the time to call your members of
Congress and encourage them to support responsible welfare reform.
Read the July 2002 Action Alert...
More Information
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