Political Quotes

“I am on the floor today to join my good friend from Louisiana, Senator Cassidy, as we formally introduce to the Chamber the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015. I thank him personally for all the time he has put into this not only as a Member of the Senate but previous to this as a Member of the House of Representatives. This effort is patterned after a bill Senator Cassidy and my namesake, Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, worked on for years in the House of Representatives. I wish to begin by sharing a story with you--that is the way Senator Cassidy ended. I will talk about a woman from Bloomfield, CT, named Betsy. She has a 28-year-old son, John, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder. It is a serious mental illness whose signs began showing when John was 15 years old. He was hospitalized--think about this--15 different times between the ages of 15 years old and 18 years old, generally only for time-limited stays ranging from about 5 days to maybe 2 weeks. Despite the severity of the condition, he was told upon discharge there was really nowhere for him to go, no permanent solution for this young man. He was just an adolescent, but his parents were told there was no place for him to be treated. What resulted was not only John getting to a breaking point but his parents as well. As we know, serious mental illness doesn't affect just the individual person, it also affects family members who are trying to care for them.…”