Pete Domenici: “I want to talk to the Senate today about a very sad situation. I want to address these remarks at a couple of…”

“I want to talk to the Senate today about a very sad situation. I want to address these remarks at a couple of Republicans, whose names I don't know, but I will soon, who have holds on the most important bill that has to do with mental illness in America. I am very hopeful we can carve out a niche as you desire, to try to give some help to those who are suffering so much that they commit suicide, and all of the various participants in that activity from mothers and fathers to doctors to counselors--everyone. I am hopeful we will get that done. Second, I didn't hear anyone mention, but I will mention to you, Senator, the doctors, the general practitioners who see thousands and thousands of our young teenage men and women who are most vulnerable. Maybe we need an annual crash course for them because they are not seeing the basic signals of mental illness in their patients. I tell you, I am not a doctor and I am not a genius, but I can tell you, because I have already learned, what I would look for in a patient who came to me for anything so I could rule out whether they had depression; so I could rule out whether they were manic depressive, or one of the other serious mental illnesses. But I am afraid we are going to have to start with some system of insisting that our doctors find out about it as the first and biggest clearance mechanism in the United States.”