Accepting a HIMSS Congressional Leader award here on Thursday, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) joked about how Congressmen are usually noticed for what they don’t do, or what people think they did but they didn’t, adding that not tweeting things directly has helped him.
And then Murphy turned toward the somber Navy Yard shootings from earlier this week – highlighting that event as only the most recent evidence of why mental health data needs to be collected and, when appropriate, shared with law enforcement.
“The focus by some has been on what is in their hands as opposed to what is in their minds,” Murphy said. Amid the more than 60 mass shootings of the last three decades, many Americans are surprised, Murphy continued. But “we know in other ways [the shootings] are quite expected.”
Murphy added that Americans always have to be treading this line between gathering and keeping private personal information and protecting the public overall, particularly when signals exist, such as males between 14-25 years of age, isolated, demonstrating signs of psychosis, breaking away from their parent. They have, on average, 110 weeks before seeking treatment, said Murphy, who practiced and tought psychology in Pittsburgh before entering politics.
“We know those who have mental illness, like any other disease entity, are no more violent than anyone else – but when you see the serious mental illness, a lack of social support, those people not falling between the cracks but crawling into the cracks,” those are the people for whom “law enforcement doesn’t know what to do and often does not have the tools to be effective.”
How do we find out when someone needs help and they're in danger? Murphy asked rhetorically. “We have to go to the medical community.”
Noting that in his state of Pennsylvania 20-25 percent of men and half of the women in jail have some form of mental illness, Murphy called for treating many of them in hospitals rather than prisons and continuing research into effective treatments and medications.
Insisting on the need to also protect people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Murphy continued that we as a society should move away from the images of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," wherein the mental conditions and often the patients are stigmatized.
“Failure to do this,” Murphy said, “will keep us in this situation where people are afraid to seek help.”
See also:
Sen. Whitehouse says HIE will pay back in ways we can't yet imagine
Mostashari says ONC will keep punching above its weight post-HITECH
Monitoring HIE governance 'a wise approach' for ONC
Will providers deny patient requests to email medical records?
