Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Tim Murphy's Fight for Mental Health Reform

Starting point is 00:00:05 Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mayator. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make your laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World, Humanity of a Handcust, the Silent Crisis Special Event. Today we're joined by Tim Murphy, a former American politician and psychologist who represented Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2017.

Starting point is 00:01:12 A lifelong advocate for mental health, Tim authored the Helping Families and Mental Health Crisis Act, a bill that passed the House with an overwhelming 422-2 vote in July 2016. With his wealth of expertise, we're truly honored to have him here to share his insights with us. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, sure, sure. You've served in both the state legislature and the House of Representatives, and throughout your career, you've consistently supported mental health initiatives and efforts to help people. What inspired you to create the bills that you've worked on? Great question. So as a

Starting point is 00:01:48 psychologist, I worked on issues involving mental health for my whole life. Even when I was on the staff at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh, and there I go to Harrisburg and state capital and work on even awareness among legislators. And what I kept finding, I think they wanted to do well, but they just didn't know what to do. Everybody likes the idea of mental health. Quite frankly, it can be kind of scary for a lot and other folks aren't quite sure. There are some folks who just have a prejudice towards it. I'm not talking about stigma. I mean, a prejudice towards it.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Some people think it's a weakness until they start really digging into it and understanding there's a biological, neurological basis for much of this. As a state senator, how did your experience differ between the state senate and the House of Representatives, especially in your goals of improving mental health? What happened was I ran for state senate in the 1990s. There I worked a number of health care reforms, and among them, making sure that, that people could get access to care and insurance would pay for it in a general sense. In Congress, it was a much deeper dive. There I was chairman of a subcommittee of oversight and

Starting point is 00:02:51 investigation in the Committee on Energy and Commerce. An energy and commerce has jurisdiction over mental illness and health in general. But in that, what happened was right after the terrible shooting in Sandhook Elementary School, the majority leader tasked me with the idea that says, we've got to do something about this. I know a lot of the human cry was, let's ban guns or let's restrict guns. I always knew it's not what was in their hand. It was what's in their mind. That was the big issue in this. So we really had a year or two of just investigation. We had many, many witnesses come forth, dozens and dozens of parents, hundreds and hundreds of letters, millions of social media hits, telling us the problems that were occurring when it was on several

Starting point is 00:03:29 levels. We did not have enough trained providers. When you refer to trained providers, Could you provide more detail about what specific qualifications, expertise, or roles you have in mind? No, I don't just mean counselors. I mean providers trained to deal with serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar, and the more severe autism spectrum disorders. We had lots of people who were going to deal with some of the milder things, you know, the people with general angst or anxiety or mild depression, but the more serious ones we didn't have. The second thing is we had restrictions in the law.

Starting point is 00:04:02 Medicaid only pays for two weeks at a time, 15 days stay, or a lifetime limit of, what, 190 days in the hospital? That's a problem. Or they didn't want to have more than 16 beds in a hospital, that's a problem. So it was these artificial limitations on serious mental illness, particularly when you're dealing with schizophrenia and psychosis. 15 days is not enough. I mean, it takes that much time to get off of one medication and stabilize on another one. your time is up before you know it. And this 190-day lifetime limit, I was thinking, boy, can you imagine if we did that with cancer? And said, I'm sorry, we're not going to give you any more days in this.

Starting point is 00:04:37 There's other things with insurance companies more recently come to light, and that is that insurance companies have a tendency when you start to get better, they stop payment. In other words, it says, well, you don't really need this inpatient stay anymore because you're improving, so we're going to stop payment, which means before the person's even stabilized, they're out on the street. Yes, insurance is certainly a challenge. And releasing them back onto the streets often does it.

Starting point is 00:04:57 more harm than good. Were you able to identify or develop any alternative solutions that could better support these individuals? Another aspect we discovered was that there's this concept of this practice called assistant outpatient treatment, different from a sort of community treatment. The community treatment is one where basically services are provided, people can talk to the person with severe mental illness with the belief you can talk to them into getting care. And that can work in a lot of cases that does not work when someone is so compromised with their self. self-awareness with a condition called anosid nozi. They don't even know that they're not sick. They do not have that self-awareness. It's like the blind person who doesn't even know

Starting point is 00:05:36 that they're blind. Those are people who resist treatment, who will become very paranoid about treatment. And of course, in the throes of their psychotic or schizophrenic crisis, they can easily become paranoid because they think, well, you're part of the group that's plotting against them or trying to force them into treatment. What do you do in that case? They need help. They don't want help, yet if they don't get help, they never get better. Add to that, I think I've heard there are groups out there that support them not getting the help. Unfortunately with that, there are groups called the Disability Rights Groups, which in concept make a lot of sense. They say they don't want to force anybody into treatment without their consent. I get that. And there was a time,

Starting point is 00:06:14 50 years ago, 100 years ago, when many people were just put into these asylums. You know, you thought Granny was the law of control. Uncle Bob was a lot of control of the son. You sent them to these asylums. The asylums, by the way, were set up originally to keep people out of homeless and from prisons, to be a more humane place to put people. So they started off with a good concept. But they became overpopulated, understaffed dumping grounds. So the disability rights people who said, hey, you can't just be putting people there. I get it. What happened is they went too far, far, far, far, too far. And assumed everybody was the same. That in itself is such a far-fressed concept in medicine. It's like we give everybody the same medicine and medical. You go see the doctor,

Starting point is 00:06:53 Espans call me in the morning. That's about where we are. And some people you can talk into getting care, but some people you simply cannot, and they can keep it together long enough, quite frankly, to see you and say, I'm fine, I'm not going to kill myself, I'm not going to harm myself, I'm really good. Because they know that they conceptualize at least, if they're paranoid that something's wrong with you, then you're trying to talk them into this care and they don't want it. And they've also probably had a lot of bad experiences anyways where the police have been called and they're afraid of those things. So what happens is the disability rights groups opposed a lot of these things where we were trying to have assisted outpatient treatment over the

Starting point is 00:07:24 judge-fit order using what's basically the black robe effect so you know you need to get care. It's compassionate, but it sure is different from the police grabbing the person handcuffering them and taking the jail. They get into fight with the prison guard. They're given another penalty. They get in a fight with somebody else. They give another penalty. Fight with somebody else. Before you know it, they're in solitary confinement. The worst possible thing you can do in jail with someone there. Jail is not a place to treat schizophrenia. It never was. And eight out of ten people in the jail is get no treatment for that. So, and what is about 40% of people in prison have a serious mental illness, about 90% have something. And among the homeless, the numbers are similar to. Given that there are

Starting point is 00:08:00 numerous hospitals distributed across the country, are there enough facilities with adequate resources to effectively support those in need? How does the availability and the capacity in these hospitals influence the broader situation, particularly in terms of accessibility, quality of care, and overall outcome. So what has happened in America is as we close these hospitals down from 550,000 in 1950,000 to about 38,000 today, we provided nothing else for them in terms of having enough hospital beds. In terms of assisted outpatient treatment, there's people who oppose saying, having a judge say, no, you've got to go in the hospital, you've got to send your medication. And we still have a shortage. And we also have people who are just do not engage families.

Starting point is 00:08:40 HIPAA laws are extremely important to protect someone, but they have gone too far in the sense that doctors are tied up and not being able to communicate with families when they know what's going on. I'll give you an example. Let's say a young woman, maybe in early 20s, he has a suicide threat. She's taking the hospital two in the morning. She's able to tell the doctors, look, I'm not going to kill myself, really. I was just kidding about that. And the doctor's thinking, well, we don't have bed. We don't have a place to put. We don't have a psych ward. What are we going to do? We'll trust to go on the street and say, well, can we call someone, help you out? And if she says, don't call my parents because I don't get along with them. Then that's it. They literally

Starting point is 00:09:11 open the hospital doors and say, go long, find a ride home, do something. But what if the doctors know the family? Or the doctors say, Mary, I know your folks. Come on, we're all in the same community. Let me call them. They'll get your ride. Well, under HIPAA laws, you can't do that. And also under HIPAA laws, when you know someone is in the throats of deep psychosis, and they're in crisis, and they're fighting and they don't want health, if the doctors could call the family and say, we need some background history on this. Can you give us more background? And find out, oh, this person's had multiple times before. They're prescribed this medication. They don't want to take it. Whatever else goes with that, it's important to be able to have that information to

Starting point is 00:09:44 Access to that kind of information could enhance a physician's ability to provide effective care. Are there any exceptions or methods to circumvent those restrictive guidelines, or are the medical professionals bound to adhere to them in all circumstances? Well, that also is something that runs into a barrier, and a lot of doctors operated this ideas as well, the confidentiality of sacrosancta won't do that. You know what, but they don't always do that. For example, if someone has Alzheimer's and is wandering the streets in the snow, it's two in the morning, and grandma's out there in her bare feet. They don't say, let's let her go

Starting point is 00:10:19 because she doesn't want to be picked up and she thinks she's on her way to second grade. They say, let's call the family, let's take care of this. Well, quite frankly, that is a personal an an anisognose, and someone else who we ought to put in the same category of many people with schizophrenia in a crisis to say, we need to get this person help. It's not against their will because they don't have a free and formed will. So where does all this go? When I was doing my investigations in 2014, 2015, we finally introduced a bill. to do several things. Make some tweaks to HIPAA laws, allow what we call compassionate communication.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Lift the 16-bed rule. Expand the number of days someone could get care. Fund assisted outpatient treatment and push states to do more of that. Those sound like really great ideas. Was there anything else that you could add to it or that you did add to it? We also wanted SAMHSA, Subsabuse, Mental Health Service Administration, to shift his focus to look at serious mental illness and mental illness and not just mental health. frankly, it was pretty goofy before Tony. It was funding pictures and artwork and how to make a fruit

Starting point is 00:11:19 smoothie and sing songs and have yoga classes. You know what? All that's good for mental health. It's great of people eat right and sleep right and get involved in social activities. That's not a treatment for mental illness. And again, I go back to my cancer metaphor. Can you imagine if someone was checking into a major cancer clinic? They go into Sloan Kettering and they say, well, can I have chemotherapy and this, this, this, or radio, no, no, no, no. We're going to have yoga class in the morning. Then we're going to teach how to make a fruit smoothie. Then we're going to do finger pain. and send you home. This is how absurd this system is. And that's because people within SAMHSA, quite frankly, don't know what they're doing. Samsa's leadership has been weak, ineffective.

Starting point is 00:11:55 Some years, it has had a lawyer in charge. In the last couple terms, there's been psychiatrists in charge, but in the last four years, it has gone back to mental health and not to work a serious mental onus. And so what we've ended up with is massive increases in homelessness, massive increases in incarceration, more homicides. As you know, 10% of homicides are committed by someone schizophrenia, even though schizophrenia is 1% of the population, and 30% of mass murders are some with uncontrolled schizophrenia. Sometimes people will use this phrase and say, well, a person with schizophrenia is no more likely to murder someone than some without, and that's totally false. That study was done comparing people with schizophrenia in treatment and people who don't have

Starting point is 00:12:34 schizophrenia. And so among those groups, that's pretty similar. But when you have someone without treatment, without care, without wraparound services, without their medication, they can deteriorate and become violent not only in the streets into their family, but also a jail or somewhere else. Earlier you mentioned homelessness and how that overlap with mental health and schizophrenia. Can you expand on that some? What also is occurring in terms of the homeless area, in terms of the number of homeless that have increased dramatically in this country, we've had a system that has been strained far beyond its capacity is already beyond strains.

Starting point is 00:13:06 When you have several million immigrants come to this country and they have no place to go, so they've shoved people out of homeless shelters and put the immigrants in there, which puts a homeless on the street again. Last year in 2024, HUD just released information from a January assessment done, January of 2024. But they didn't release until Christmas week, the Friday after Christmas, in December of 2024, that homelessness actually grew about 18% in the United States. Absurd that they waited 12 months to give that.

Starting point is 00:13:33 Cruel that they waited 12 months to do that. Crew because Congress can't do anything without data. But then they'd say things like, oh, look, someone is, someone's getting better. They've got some cities have reduced homelessness. And that's silly because what happens is they reduce homelessness by helping those who can easily adapt to help. Like some people just don't have an apartment or they don't have the money or they miss payments. All right, we'll get them into temporary housing and they'll move towards getting a job and permanent housing. But even if they reduce homelessness in those towns by 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 percent, well, that's

Starting point is 00:14:00 expected because that's the people who are mentally much better and some of them pretty okay and with some assistance they can do better. But it doesn't address the chronically, seriously, mentally, are people with major problems. And so that gets ignored. Do they have any assisted housing or anything that can help the homeless that might have some mental illness happening to get them off the streets? There's something pretty cool called to, there's a come in assisted housing, where it's not a huge apartment building. Maybe there's only 30 units or something like that. But there's a nurse at the front desk. So as you're coming and going, she'd your chicks. Hey, Bob, do you get your medication? Rebecca, did you get You take your pills today and make sure you got an appointment today.

Starting point is 00:14:38 That little checkup for some people who can function with that is great. But the ones who have more serious problems, it just checking up on them isn't enough. In fact, parents will tell you when they check up on them, it may end up in a violent or heated car altercation. So when I put my legislation in it, as I said it was, to make some of those changes, also to create the position of the Assistant Secretary of Mental Health. I wanted to elevate the issue and have someone in there could do that. And also, we wanted something called ISMIC, which is the interdepartmental, serious mental illness committee. and coordinated committee. And that was to take all these federal agencies from HUD and HHS and everywhere else and say, you have to coordinate your services. Make sure we're evaluating

Starting point is 00:15:15 on a government-wide level exactly what's going on. That seems like it was a real good program. What came from that? Here's where a major problem broke down. The reason we did that is because, as it turns out, when we asked the general accounting office, or we wanted a survey of the federal programs, they said, we really don't know what we spend in this country. What? It said it may be over 100 billion, scattered over 130 programs. We don't know. We just wrote letters to departments. They threw a number at us, but we don't know if it really treats mental illness or if it does any good or what's going on. So that's a pretty amazing amount of money that no one bothers to track. And we wanted SAMHSA to track it. They don't. They don't. There's absolutely no data to say that. In fact,

Starting point is 00:15:53 their last report, which I think was in March of 2024, they spent a few days talking about their colorful logo, how they came with the logo, the symbolism, all those colors. But I didn't tell you a success stores of here's how we have worked innovative programs throughout the federal government got these programs to work together it's not there it's an abject failure it's an embarrassment of the government and because of that more people are dying more people are homeless more people are in prison so try to put these factors in to get accountability there try to put factors in to get assisted outpatient treatment and more treatment options and it just ended up rather disastrous for people with mental illness and their family that's sad to hear so in your opinion what needs to change and how can we help these people

Starting point is 00:16:33 that need the help. I'm hoping that President Trump and RFK appoints someone who's a fighter who will go in there and clean this mess up. This isn't any more time for goofball ideas, no more time for sing-alongs, pads on the back. This is people we need to have someone in there with like a psychiatrist, psychologist, who understands serious mental illness, who understands these problems, who wants to innovate and renovate programs there. We have to do things at work, and we have to track. No one is tracking the billions and billions of dollars spread out around the country, hundreds of billions of dollars, that end up dealing with serious mental illness. And that's just not Medicare and Medicaid.

Starting point is 00:17:08 It's the Veterans Affairs, it's Department of Justice. There's all these things take place. As a matter of fact, I'm on the board of an organization called Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance, S&PAA. And we did a study two years ago, another one we have that's going to come out in another couple months. We're tracking the expenses just as schizophrenia, again, about 1% of the population. And there we look at direct medical costs, direct treatment costs, criminal justice costs, family cost, unemployment costs, costs of not being the workforce, a disability cost, a whole host of

Starting point is 00:17:35 things. And just for schizophrenia, our best estimate of the costs with your 2024 is about $380 billion, $30 billion for one disease entity. That is indeed a ton of money. I guess my next question is, is it working and helping the ones that need the help? Now, that is pretty remarkable, that amount of money, and you think that would shake up the federal government to say, where does it go? Is it doing any good? Well, the money is spent, and governors and mayors will say, well, we're spending money. We have these programs. We have social workers out there. And the question should be, are people getting better?

Starting point is 00:18:08 Are you tracking them? Do you track the individuals or you just tell us how much money you spend? And the answer is they tell you how much money they spend. And they'll give you some general number. But every time there's a mass murder or some other crime committed by someone, you can pretty much bet if it's a person with mental illness, they're not in treatment. Case in point. A couple months ago, the event took place in the New York subway, where the man ended up

Starting point is 00:18:27 who was in crisis ended up being restrained. choke by a former Marine Daniel Penny. So everybody got on Penny and said that he was terrible, cruel, and racist, went to trial for man slaughter. He was acquitted. The sad thing is the victim in this case, wasn't just a homeless street performer that the media tried to portray up as. He was a man with severe mental and his schizophrenia and he wasn't taking his treatment. There was another case from the same time, a man who went through New York with a knife and killed three people, stabbed him. And they called him homeless. Well, he was homeless, but he was also a man of schizophrenia that wasn't in treatment. These are terribly sad stories that are taking place.

Starting point is 00:19:00 When I was in Congress, I tried to wake people up to understand to say, many of these cases are treatable, preventable, but you've got to have someone be the grown-up in the room to say, these are folks who need to get them help. Don't just say, well, if they don't want to help, we're going to leave it at that. We wouldn't do that with a child. He doesn't want to go to school. Let's not let him go to school.

Starting point is 00:19:15 Well, some parents might, but he's pretending he's sick. Let's let him stay home. But we have to understand these are lives worth saving, and they can be saved if we treat them. It's a massive burden on parents. their hearts break every day across the nation. Some groups like mad moms of Arizona, and there's one in Colorado, too, are fighting back.

Starting point is 00:19:32 I love it. Yes, I have them coming on a little later this month. You're right. They're great. Dynamic, wonderful women out there, get in there and kick butt, take no prisoners. But what they do is they teach the legislators. Here's what is really happening.

Starting point is 00:19:45 And they're people of passion and information. And so the legislators thought, well, I was told that we could just talk them into care. No, they won't do that. So it's informing them. And I hope any family member, any parent who's out there and thinks, why aren't things changing? Well, my point is you've got to talk through your U.S. Congressman, your state senator, your state representative, and tell them what's going on.

Starting point is 00:20:04 Why? Because they don't understand. It's not a fault. They just don't know. Nobody can know everything. And people say, well, they're going to read my letter? Well, I'll tell you, they never read the letter you don't write. They never answer the call you don't make. And so it is important you let them know. Absolutely. Reach out to them. What are some of the things you hope they do? We have more things to do. I believe that I hope we get a strong Assistant Secretary of health. I wish I could talk to someone about that, but I hope we do. And I hope we also lift the IMD exclusion, the bed. I hope we lift the limit on a number of days. I hope we change some of the hip-a-laws, allow doctors to get a more accurate history and help the person upon discharge.

Starting point is 00:20:40 I hope that we can have accountability for the states of how much money they spend, where they spend it, and is it effective, and publish that information, make it public, so that states know and taxpayers know where it is going. I want to know what's taking place in prison, what is done with people who are in prison and for crimes associated with or maybe unrelated to mental illness, what money is being spent, what treatment is being provided, what's the outcome? Same with the homeless population. To have all these things we don't have data on, the federal government and state governments are flying totally blind here.

Starting point is 00:21:08 It is a sham. It is cruel. And as a nation, we shouldn't be putting up with this. We wouldn't put up with it anywhere else, but we sometimes think, well, those are mentally illing. A guy named Ron Powers wrote a book and it's called No One Cares About Crazy People. Because that's the attitude amongst people in leadership positions. Nobody cares.

Starting point is 00:21:22 Well, we need to care. We need to say this must be done. We have to handle this. So that's why I'm continuing to fight on these things. That's why I'm going to continue to work on these things. That's why I hope we can make things happen. And that's the story. So if you had the job where you was overseeing this whole thing that's going on,

Starting point is 00:21:39 what would you do to make it smoother? Mental health has such a wide umbrella. And a lot of these organizations, for lack of a better term, they just don't play well together. How can we get these organizations, which aren't coordinating well, to come together with our legislators under a wide enough umbrella, creating a unified force they can't ignore, rather than going it alone,

Starting point is 00:22:04 so this whole effort flows more smoothly? And that's a great question. You know what the answer is? Not everybody's under the same umbrella, multiple umbrellas. So, for example, Nami, a National Alliance for Mental Illness, at one time was really focused on serious mental illness. Now it's all over the place. And when it's too broad and all over the place, it's trying to please so many people that it can't please anybody at all.

Starting point is 00:22:23 And it goes where the money is, and it goes towards government and companies will give money towards mental illness. It's a great sounding organization by name. They have to have the accountability. Are you making a difference with serious mental illness? So Nami has this place in terms of information and talking about stigma. But it's not pushing for innovation within an accountability within serious mental illness. Mental Health America, great organization. They work on issues to make sure people with the serious mental illness can get care.

Starting point is 00:22:47 but they're opposed to assisted outpatient treatment. I agree with them for those who can with a serve community treatment and help them and guide them along and those people are cooperative. Awesome. That's a very important pool, but not everybody is the same. And so disability rights organizations say everybody's the same, same diagnosis, same treatment plan. We have to stand up and say, no, that's not right.

Starting point is 00:23:06 So Samson needs leadership. The assistant secretary needs to lead and say, I get what you're concerned about, but what you're concerned about does not apply to everyone. Everything else it takes place. When your only tools a hammer, everything looks like. a nail. And I tell people, well, gee, if you have a problem in your house with, I don't pick anything, a broken light bulb, you don't send the road crew in to pave your driveway. You know, that's not the same thing. You wouldn't do that. You have to work very refined on that. And in the field of

Starting point is 00:23:32 medicine, we don't treat every diagnosis the same. And with mental illness, we should not treat every diagnosis the same. And the subcategories of diagnosis based upon the symptoms. A lot of what I do now, for example, I work with people with very serious post-traumatic stress disorder. Which can have very, very major consequences from moments, severe depression, severe anxiety, debilitating levels of that, psychotic behaviors from massive stress. But you don't treat them all the same. And what we can do is help a lot of people with PTSD. So two, it is with psychosis, we can help a lot of people. But it's going to take a leader within SAMHSA that assistant secretary coming in and say, no, we're not doing everybody the same way. And two, we're going to

Starting point is 00:24:10 stop the goofy programs. Absolutely stop them. There's no more room for grants for yoga classes or for art classes or anything like that. You want to do that, go somewhere locally for that. Go to your local community center and get people some art classes. It's valuable, but it's not mental illness treatment. And say the money we have, the very limited money we have, we're going to spend on these things. For example, I think this year's cycle of grants,

Starting point is 00:24:30 I think it's something like 15 to 20 million nationwide for EOT. You kidding me? A couple counties could eat that up. In Pennsylvania, they passed a law in 2018 that said the gay counties wherewithal and permission to do AOT. One county is doing it so far, and not very much. major counties like Philadelphia and Alleghenia, they're not doing it. So it is this level that the assistant secretary has to hold states accountable. Say, what are you doing? I want to say,

Starting point is 00:24:54 we need more money. It says, tell me what you're doing. We want to see your plan of action. And give evidence that what you're doing makes sense. Give us some accountability numbers and don't just tell us it's approving by a percent of point. That's in general what has to happen. But it really is going to take someone, the way I word is it has to be the tenacity of Taylor Roosevelt and the compassion of Mother Teresa to combine those two. Neither one of them would take no for an answer. Neither one. And both of them improve the world. Yeah, I think you're right there for sure. I spoke with a lady the other day from Allegheny County about making some changes, and we went through the whole process. It was almost like some of the things you just mentioned. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:28 So I'm wondering, should this start at the federal level or the local level? So many people aren't sure where to begin to push for this change. Well, one has to assess what your area has. If your county is not putting in, for example, EOT, it is important that people become a very strong voice appealing to their county government and accountability. And that is not just a private meeting. That means showing up your county meetings and your local community meetings and city meetings and say, here's a problem, take care of this. And I'll guarantee you at some point there'll be some crisis that occurs that these same parents can go and say,

Starting point is 00:26:00 this murder, this assault, this suicide took place because we don't have the program, the blood's in your hands. Now, that's strong words, but having been in politics for a while, you need strong words. I would suggest that people look at the bad moms model out in Arizona and find out the same thing, but definitely do that. And yes, appeal on the federal government because the federal government is going to pay with Medicare, Medicaid, and other grants. So let your congressman know and understand they may not know what you're talking about. Please all look down them and say, well, we told them they're not doing anything. You have to make a very specific ass. So you can't say, we want you to do more for mental health.

Starting point is 00:26:32 And the person will say, thank you very much. I agree with you. Let's do more for mental health. And one day that member of Congress would say, hey, do we have any mental health bills I can vote on? Well, that's not good enough. You want to say, I need you to specifically do this. Accountability within SAMHSA. Emphasize serious mental illness.

Starting point is 00:26:46 Drop the 16-bed rule. Drop the 15-day one-time admission. Drop the 190-day lifetime admission. Change the HIPPA laws. Put some money into AOT. You've got to punch and punch and punch in those ways. And all of this with that massive accountability, just demand that all the time.

Starting point is 00:27:00 You ask a member of Congress, where does the money go? I think now that Elon Musk is in there with this whole Doge principle to make a government accountability, That could be a real plus here. Don't cut the money out, Elon, but please have it in such a way that the government is asking. What did you do with the money we gave you? What did you do with it? And if that area says, well, we don't know. Well, then you don't get anymore. Well, then we will have a problem. Then you've got a problem. And we're going to publish that information and say, you're wasting your money and you're causing cruel problems. That's boldness. But it's going to need that kind of boldness for us to do.

Starting point is 00:27:31 I mean, it's just like in the Pentagon, if we have generals that are not preparing our military for protecting our nation, it has to be exposed all the way down the line. And these are lives of people with mental illness, so we need to push it there too. So in closing, what's one key thing you think the listeners need to hear about what they should be doing to make things better for all families? Speak up. Do not be silent. Silence doesn't work. It's not a means of getting action in there. And in that, please let your legislators know what your concerns are, what your personal concerns are. Tell them your story. Tell them what you want them to do. Some of the articles I published are at my website, which is Dr. Timmerfey.com, that's Dr.T-Tim-M-U-R-P-H-Y.com.

Starting point is 00:28:13 I suggest people go there. They can read some of these articles because it does have some plans of action in there. But don't give up. Please don't ever give up. I've been fighting this for years, and I know it gets very, very frustrating, very frustrating. We have a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of painful stories to swap with each other. But we can't give up. And sometimes when the only people we have is each other holding us up, that's what it is.

Starting point is 00:28:34 But there's a great saying and says, you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have. And that's what we have here. We don't have any other choice except to be strong, to speak up, to be persistent, not to be mean, but to certainly be assertive in this and say, we want to help Congress and state legislators understand this. But please, you've got to do this. Lives are at stake. Families are at stake. It's not just the law, but it really is quite frankly, even the Bible says, you know, that when you don't visit someone in prison, when you don't feed the hungry, when you walk by the home,

Starting point is 00:29:04 That's sinful too. We've got to be working on all these things on every level and never, ever give up. Yes, absolutely. This has been great, great information, great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. Well, Tony, great. I hope we get to work together again. Yes, me too. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymentor.com, contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask, tell everyone, everywhere, about why not me, the world, the conversations

Starting point is 00:30:02 we're having, and the inspiration our guests give to everyone, everywhere that you are not alone in this world.

Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Tim Murphy's Fight for Mental Health Reform

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