Patrick J. Kennedy is marshaling a movement to support the rights of Americans with mental illness.
President John F. Kennedy signs a bill authorizing $329 million for mental health programs at the White House in Washington. The last law President John F. Kennedy signed — the Community Mental Health Act — was meant to enable people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities, like his sister Rosemary, to receive care outside of institutions. They would,, “need no longer be alien to our affections or beyond the help of our communities.” That was in October 1963.
“It is a scandal that this rich nation has so many of its fellow citizens citizens dying like dogs on the streets. It should be an indictment of all of us and our political system,” he said in Boston last week at the launch of the public-private collaboration called the Alignment for Progress. “This is not the purview of the mental health community any longer. This is the purview of all of us.”
In attendance were White House domestic policy director Neera Tanden, Labor Department assistant secretary Lisa Gomez and the directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Mental Health. “We’re trying to get the word out that people have rights and insurers have obligations to them,” Gomez told me.The cause is personal for Kennedy, who is proudly 12 years sober.
It’s rare for families to be untouched by trauma, mental illness or substance misuse. Biological, environmental, psychological and genetic factors can make people sick. Power and profit-driven systems and policies can make it worse. It doesn’t have to be this way.
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