The US House of Representatives recently voted to pass the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015Â (H.R. 2646). Although disability advocates across the nation worked to make sure that many harmful provisions in the original draft of this bill were removed or modified, this bill still has many parts that would hurt our community by undermining privacy, promoting institutionalization over community-based services, and creating new committees with almost no self-advocate representation. |
But there’s still time to stop this. The harmful parts of H.R. 2646 will only become law if the Senate decides to add them to its own mental health bill, the Mental Health Reform Act of 2016 (S. 2680), or to insert them into some other Senate bill. Contact your Senators and tell them that you don’t want them to put these parts of H.R. 2646 into S. 2680 – or any other bill. We support S.2680 as currently passed and want the Senate to pass it the way it is, without adding language from H.R. 2646. Here are some talking points that you can use. Ask your Senator to keep this language from H.R. 2646 out of the Senate bills: |
 HOW YOU CAN TAKE ACTION  Contact your U.S. Senator’s office and ask your Senator to keep this harmful language out of the Senate mental health bills. We don’t want the Senate to support provisions that would limit the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities and add to stereotypes and misconceptions.Ask your Senator instead to support S. 2680 as it is. |