Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Dr Tim Murphy: How A Psychologist In Congress Rewired Mental Health Policy

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Send us Fan MailWe sit down with former Congressman and psychologist Tim Murphy to show how mental health laws really get made and why “good ideas” often get changed or stripped before they ever help families. We dig into Medicaid rules, treatment access, psychosis risks, and the hard truth that silence is how broken systems stay in place. • the real path of a bill from idea to compromise to final vote • why mental health policy creates intense conflict between groups • assisted outpatient treatment as an alternative to repeated hospitalization • how “gravely disabled” standards shape who can get care • Medicaid payment rules that discourage psychiatric beds and longer stays • why Congressional Budget Office scoring can derail reforms • what happens when severe mental illness is handled in jails • solitary confinement as a driver of worsening symptoms and suicide risk • high potency marijuana and the rising risk of psychosis • the estimated $340B to $380B annual cost of schizophrenia • families left holding the system together without guidance • HIPAA and confidentiality blocking parents from sharing critical history • why large organizations lose focus and stall action • how autism and schizophrenia advocacy can find common ground • practical steps to educate legislators through emails letters and visits If you know someone who has a story to you, tell them to contact us at why notme.world. One last time, spread the word about why not me. INTRO/OUTRO Music: T. WildMantor Music BMIhttps://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)

Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide, hosted by Tony Miatore. Broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, howful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real-life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that, you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time.

Hi, this is Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me, Embracing Autism and MetLife. 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 U.S. representative for Pennsylvania, and a dedicated psychologist who leveraged his expertise to champion transformative mental health legislation during his 2003-2017 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 in my life working on these legislative issues. 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 analogy. Because I think when you're doing something like this and people, want to know, I mean, a lot of people think, well, I saw that cartoon if I'm just a bill on the hill, can't you 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 for 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. The president signs it. But it's a lot more complex than that.

And when it comes to even dealing with such things in mental health, what one person sees as a solution, another person sees as the problem. And so as you submit a bill for something like involving what should be the rules with regarding inpatient care or when you, when the judge says you need to have inpatient care, what needs to be done. You have groups in favor and groups opposed. Oh, you have to be working with all these groups and try and find compromise and consensus. Oftentimes, it'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 Senate on their state or federal level. And that's what it works at. So I know when I, a few years ago, worked on my mental health reform legislation, a bill that started off a couple of 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 a big fish, and he's exhausted from fighting this fish. And he's rowing 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 it was left was the head and a hook. 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 consensus. It can be a long process. And when one does that over multiple years, one may find that actually a decade or two later looked back and say, you know what we did or what someone did actually cause more harm in the system. And that's actually what happened in the mental health reform movement that began in the 1960s. Start off as a good idea.

And since then, we've been dealing with a lot of the harm and follow up that legislation. Now, was it the Mental Health Crisis Act that you passed? It 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. 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 he would have said, you got some great stuff here. Let's see what we can do to get this done. So the challenges were on some of the content, for example, I wanted to change the law with regard to something

called assisted outpatient treatment. 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 psychosis, people who aren't really sure who they are or where they are, that condition of antigenosis. 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 some medication and then say, I don't like it anymore, or I'm healthy, I don't need it 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. 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 crises where people don't need to be in a hospital. What happened from that is Medicaid made a number of changes in the next administration and did the following. They said, if a hospital has more than 16 beds, we're not paying for it. Medicaid won't pay for it. And the idea with that is, at that time, we had about half a million psychiatric hospital beds in this country for a population of 120 million.

Medicaid says, we're not paying for it. And that was their 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 1800s. But what happened is those hospitals closed, but the community mental health system

couldn't take care of the severely mentally ill. So we ended up with 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 psychiatric 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 120 days in the hospital. Now, I look at those 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 weeks. In some case, you may see results on a few days.

A two-week limit means someone may have to be discharged from 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, 120-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 it for two weeks, even though you have a heart transplant and it's failing.

But psychiatry, psychiatric hospitalizations have this tremendous, our anti-science approach towards them. So here's what happened when we said, let's change those three things. The number of beds, overall hospital 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 on a hospital, and that's what they'll do. And we think it's going to cost $60 billion over 10 years.

And I said, where did you get that number from? Well, we just assumed everybody would be in a hospital. Well, you just made that number up. That's not going to happen. So they came back and revised it and said, well, we think that. think it's going to be 12 billion over 10 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 would have a 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 come up at all? Medicaid 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 80% 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 still occurs in the 21st century. They're put in solitary confinement for 20-some days. You know, we use that punishment for the worst of the worst, serial killers, murderers, and drug dealers. Someone's schizophrenia who has run in with a guard, gets in a fight with some prisoners, and as punishment, they'll put them in solitary confinement

where they're in a small room 23 hours a day, and that's it. That cause is much worsening. It's 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'm 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, gee, I love it. What do you mean? Well, maybe you need some new playgrounds. Maybe you need a street paid. Maybe 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 used as money to help get votes. It is used as money for things that 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 $50 or $100 million a year on this. But let's look at the cost of marijuana. As we like to say, this ain't your papa's woodstock marijuana. where it was like 4% THC. This is 70, 80, 90% potent. So when states legalize this, what happens is we know that adolescents and young adults who use marijuana on a regular basis increase their chances of psychosis. And as a psychotic crisis breakdown, they increase it by several percent each year.

It compounds over time. Well, now we have new researches. Not only that, because the brain is still developing up to age 25. So not only that group, but we recognize now people over 60 also have this problem because perhaps they're using marijuana more and more for a number of reasons if they think it's legalized. And you have people saying, well, it's a natural substance. It must be okay. Well, so is cyanide. 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 a 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 couple hundred percent. You had stays intensive care units. Hospital stays will 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 and firemen and paramedics doing those things, too. And the cost of families, lost income because someone was injured or whatever 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 taxpayer. 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? An organization which I'm a board member for called Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance. We did a study a couple of years ago and we're repeating it now. Here is what we believe the cost of schizophrenia. That's 1% of the population. that this is the cost. If you take direct medical care, psychiatric care for the disease itself, schizophrenia, if you take the fact that 75% of people with schizophrenia have one chronic illness, 50% have at least two,

and 30% have at least three. This is everything from cancer, bone disease, gum disease, skin diseases, whatever else it is, all those costs money. You look at lost revenue because they're not working. You look at families have to pick up the cost of this because there's other medical bills that Medicaid or insurance may not pay for. You have the health justice system where about 40% or 50% of people in jail have a mental illness. By 20 or 30% have a severe mental illness of the homeless population. About 40% 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 who just need

little intervention get better. But states say, oh, look, we have these programs. We dropped homelessness by 30 or 40%. Yeah, but you didn't get to the problem. So homelessness costs money, and it's not address. You add these things together, and the cost per year, we asked me the cost last year in the United States for schizophrenia alone was between $340 and $380 billion. 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 increasing the use of marijuana, increasing the incidence of psychosis. And by the way, it also increases incidence of problems in their children, too. So you have generation coming up is, look, if you're going to legalize it and some 38 or 40 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. If 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 the billboards. I don't see any things on subways or buses saying, if you smoke marijuana, your children will have problems like low birth weight, like a fetal alcohol syndrome, increased risk for psychiatric problems, attention disorder, psychosis, etc. You're going to 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 a 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 lobbyists for legalizing marijuana. And even some of them say, yeah, I don't like it. It's not a good idea, but they pay well. It's treacherous ground we're walking out 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 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. These are oftentimes adolescents and new adults. 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 a week or two, because they have other problems, they end up with longer prison stays. And so the families have all this criminal justice expense too. And what they're also finding is,

as they're in prison and they're in solitary confinement and they're abused and they become more suicidal. These are burdens the family is trying to deal with. Can you imagine if, I don't know, an 18, 19-year-old, in the throes of his delusions and delusions, went into a local store or stole something, find himself in jail. And next thing you know, they're in fights with gang members,

and so for their protection, they put in solitary 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 of places on them. No wonder so many families. 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 in 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, et cetera, 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 psychiatry and psychology, a very small percent of us are trained and regularly. treat these insidious diseases. Even among children, we have a higher incidence 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, many times 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

pays so little anyway. So all across society, people have pushed away and pushed it back on family. And it's a heartbreaker for families. I have known many of 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 HIPAA laws and confidentiality laws, they talk to doctors, they try and talk to parole officers, says, no, your son did give us permission so we can't tell you anything. And family say, well, let me tell what medications are on. Nope, we can't talk. Let me give you his history and background so you know, no, we're not talking to you. Which is tragic because someone, for example, a newer drug being used more was schizophrenia is clausapine. The doctors don't know about clausapine.

We're working hard to get the FDA to change some rules on that, to make it more accessible. People will use older antipsychotic drugs, which don't work very well and just getting information is a problem. So again, it lands on the parents who know all these things, a hearts are breaking where they're trying to make things happen. And it's the law that stands in the way. Legislators do not understand. Talk about wanting to have them walk a mile in their shoes. Spend an hour in their shoes and understand all these aspects. Instead, they push it aside because it is 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 a county

office. So nobody cares about creating people. We don't have 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 mental illness, great concept, great idea. But as soon as you say mental illness, it expands widely. And then you have all sorts of groups that want their piece of the pie.

it no longer is affected. The American 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, the last couple of weeks, because they said, we have so many divisions,

they can't agree in what needs to be done. And I said, how about only have the divisions vote who actually treat psychosis? The American Psychological Association, I stood before an audience, and said, how many of you were in favor of this bill? How many were against this bill?

A bunch of hands went up. And asked, how many of you have read the bill? No hands. How many of you have actually focused I'm dealing with schizophrenia, almost no hands with him. And I said, well, if you deal with schizophrenia and you've read the bill, you'll be for the bill. But what we do is we have these judgments on ignorant. Now, when it comes to autism and schizophrenia, for example, autism and spectrum, can become very wide, the spectrum. There's even TV shows. I'll have someone in a star character role

where they want some look like they're in the spectrum. 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? Wanted all to be like Rain Man, as Dustin Hoffman was in that movie. and it's not that way. Many people with autism, which are severely, severely disabled, can't communicate, maybe harm themselves a lot. There's also some people there who we know that about 30 to 50% of those with autism will later on have a diagnosis of schizophrenia. I think they're about three to six times higher risk for schizophrenia. And of those with schizophrenia, about 30 to 50% at a history of autism. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean, was it really autism? Was it early

signs of schizophrenia in this diagnosed? 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? And says, we're not talking about that now. And unless people focus, you can't get things done. When they 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 their 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 is 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 to help actually get it?

Well, one is find and list the common ground issues on the federal level that need to be done. I believe they always 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 in 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 and a 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 a couple groups, suburban women and families who have someone with mental illness, we found when you ask the question of such thing, how important it is to have more hospital beds or more funding, et cetera, huge numbers. But when we asked the question to say, if you knew a candidate placed reform of mental health, high in their platform, platform, what does that do to increase your likelihood of voting for them? It was 88 to 90% among suburban women and close to 95% among families who have some with schizophrenia and a 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 understand. 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 Nami before. 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. 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 signed a petition. So be part of an organization just like that. Number two, don't be silent. It doesn't take a long time to write an email to 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 1960s. There was something in California called the Letterman-Petrus 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 we're going to do. what's caused the problem is President Reagan, excuse me, it's Governor Reagan'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 that says, well, let's give someone 72 hours where they have to be evaluated or released. Well, not a lot of research went into that. And quite frankly, there's 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 that the House, the Assembly, and the Senate in California said, that's a great idea that's passed and have the governor sign it. In the final hours of the session year, something called signed a die, which means any bills that don't pass, die. They couldn't get it done. But the Speaker of the House talked with some members of the Senate said, can you find some way of getting this bill done? Because you want to get it done. There was a staffer, and he admits this. The staffer said that bills, in order to get voted on, they have a green sheet on top of them. And it's a legislative analysis. It says this bill is going it costs this much or not much, it's green light, it's ready to go. This bill did not have that

green sheet. So he turned to another staff member and says, does anybody have some green paper? And he typed on there a facsimile that looked like this. He called a bill analysis and said this bill won't cost anything. We'll save money. 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 a legal but it 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. Still. staying with a 72-hour hold or other things like that. When people hear that, they say, I can't believe it. Yeah, it was all shenanigans and illegal action that took place that put us in this place

and now, what, 60, 70 years later, we're still suffering from it. So be 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. my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at why not me.world. One last thing, spread the word about why not me. Our conversations, our inspiring guests, this show.

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