Jul 2, 2015 2 min read

When I read the Observer-Reporter‘s recent article, “Congressman Murphy reintroduces mental health bill,” I thought the story should have pointed out U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy’s tight connections with the pharmaceutical companies and psychiatric hospitals that are supporting his bill, Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, and will financially gain from the passage of it.

All you have to do is just look at Murphy’s own campaign donation records that list pharmaceutical corporations, hospitals and nursing home companies as his top contributors, with names like Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, Astrazeneca, Pfizer and many other pharmaceutical companies heading the list. Included also on that donation list is the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, a group representing psychiatric hospitals and residential treatment centers.

It is also interesting that Murphy, in February of this year, was a keynote speaker at the Fixing America’s Mental Health Care System meeting in Washington, D.C., that was sponsored by, you guessed it, the drug companies Lundbeck and Takeda.

What is also missing in your article in that Murphy’s bill will cut funding to community-based services that keep people out of these hospitals by requiring more drug-based treatments and longer hospital stays.

Murphy should be working to solve the mental-health needs of our local communities, not helping the bottom lines of his top funders.

Paul Denton

McMurray