Thomas Daschle: “As we discussed last year during the debate over mental health parity, most of us now realize that there is a connection…”

“As we discussed last year during the debate over mental health parity, most of us now realize that there is a connection between mental and physical illnesses. They are not mutually exclusive. Women with serious psychiatric diseases who risk psychotic breaks that would leave them nonfunctional may have physical manifestations of those psychiatric conditions. If such physical manifestations take the form of severely debilitating impairments, they would be covered under the health definition. I do not know if any cases would fall under that strict standard, but we cannot anticipate every medical circumstance.”