#hr2646

if it passes it will

- weaken the privacy of mentally ill people and strip us of our HIPAA rights. it explicitly allows doctors to "disclose the protected health information of a patient with a mental illness" to family members in situations where "the patient does not consent and the patient is not incapacitated or in an emergency circumstance". of course, adults should have a right to privacy even if their parents are great, but keep in mind that this will result in people's private medical information being disclosed to their abusive family members. that's scary.

and

-  require states to pass laws allowing "Assisted Outpatient Treatment" (also called "Assertive Community Treatment") to get mental health grants. that sounds good- I mean, "assist" means "help"- but in this case "assisted" means "forced". "Assisted Outpatient Treatment" allows people to be forced to take meds and accept other forms of treatment even when they are not deemed a danger to themselves or others. I have been forced to take medication that damaged my physical and mental health by doctors who wouldn't listen to me. so have many other people I know. this is terrifying. 

I am scared. my friends are scared. a bunch of people are saying they will be too scared to try and access mental health services if this passes. this has already passed the house, and if we don't do anything it will also pass the senate. but there's good news: this bill has not had a lot of media coverage, which means that your voice really matters.

@Americans with the spoons I highly encourage you to do what you can to oppose this bill.

(More importantly, I encourage you to do what you feel is right. But this post is about why I feel that opposing HR2646 is the right thing to do.)

HR2646 is basically everything bad about the psychiatric system, amplified.

See statements by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and a summary:

It weakens HIPAA regulations so that anyone defined as a caregiver can have access to health records and influence treatment.

...that means providers can, for example, out LGBTQ+ clients to potentially abusive parents.

...and that anyone in a caregiver position can decide whether or not a person gets therapy, and what kind, regardless of what the person actually living it has to say.

Prioritizes long-term hospitalization (i.e., institutionalization) instead of home- and community-based supports.

Requires states to pass laws allowing for what they call "assisted outpatient treatment," which is in reality involuntary, court-ordered treatment. That means if a treatment is useless or even harmful, people will be required to continue unless they go to court and get a judge to agree to change or stop it. Yes, this includes medication.

Are you familiar with the saying, "Nothing about us without us"? This bill excludes the people it claims to protect from decision-making both at the policy level and at the individual treatment level.

From what I can see, people are largely in support of this bill. It has 205 cosponsors, or Representatives who have signed on in support of the bill---that's almost half of the House of Representatives already. This is terrifying.

If you are opposed to this, to the greatest extent that it's feasible I encourage you to get loud about it.

Flood your followers.

If you use twitter, flood the tag #HR2646 and tweet @ your Representative; they largely control their own accounts so there is a really good chance they'll notice! (Don't know who your members of Congress are? whoismyrepresentative.com or contactingthecongress.org will tell you.)

You can even still call or write to your Representative: contactingthecongress.org, all you need is to give it your ZIP code and it will direct you to the contact info.

Now is the time – For a National Conversation about Mental Health

Now is the time for a National Conversation regarding mental health.  With our congressional leaders in Washington, D.C., we may have difficulty getting on the dais.  Why? Because an individual presenting testimony to any committee regarding Mental Health, may not always speak to the same platform as varying members of Congress.

What does that mean?

Most of the members of Congress appear to…