Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.
The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site: http://revisor.mo.gov/.
You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.
The Ninety-Ninth General Assembly, Second Regular Session, convened on Wednesday, January 3, 2018, and will end on Friday, May 18, 2018.
This time we’d like to discuss several bills which we’d like you to write your legislators about. Please write from your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB661).
Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.
If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.
Very Bad Bills
These are bills that further psychiatric abuses of human rights, and are moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your opposition and opinions about these to your legislators and copy the sponsors.
1) SB661 – Senate Bill 661 – sponsored by Senator Jeanie Riddle (Republican, District 10; Audrain, Callaway, Lincoln, Monroe, Montgomery, & Warren counties). Related to HB1970.
This act provides that after a person accused of committing a crime has been involuntarily committed to the Department of Mental Health due to lack of mental fitness to stand trial, the legal counsel for the Department shall have standing to participate in hearings regarding involuntary medications for the accused.
The subject of this bill had been introduced previously in 2016 and 2017. We think it is very bad because it allows the Department of Mental Health to force psychiatric drugs on involuntarily committed citizens. Both of these actions — involuntary commitment and enforced drugging — are psychiatric abuses of human rights.
2) SB846 – Senate Bill 846 – sponsored by Senator Jill Schupp (Democrat, District 24; St. Louis County). Related to HB1419.
Requires two hours of suicide assessment and prevention training for licensure as a psychologist. Behavior analysts, professional counselors, social workers, baccalaureate social workers, and marital and family therapists must complete two hours of suicide assessment, referral, treatment, and management training as a condition of initial licensure and as a condition of license renewal.
While this sounds altruistic, the current state of so-called “suicide prevention education” is a recommendation for harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs, which are known to cause the very thing they are supposed to prevent, which is violence and suicide.
3) HB1363 – House Bill 1363 – sponsored by Representative Bill Kidd (Republican, District 20; Jackson County).
This bill requires teachers and principals to complete two hours of suicide prevention education each school year.
Again, while this sounds altruistic, the current state of so-called “suicide prevention education” is a recommendation for harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs, which are known to cause the very thing they are supposed to prevent, which is violence and suicide.
4) HB1419 – House Bill 1419 – sponsored by Representative Marsha Haefner (Republican, District 95; St. Louis County). Related to SB846.
This bill requires certain health care professionals to complete two hours of suicide prevention training as a condition of licensure.
More of the same — the current state of so-called “suicide prevention training” is a recommendation for harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs, which are known to cause the very thing they are supposed to prevent, which is violence and suicide.
5) HB1658 – House Bill 1658 – sponsored by Representative Chuck Basye (Republican, District 47; Boone, Randolph, Howard, & Cooper counties).
This bill prohibits any third-party payer for health care services from limiting coverage or denying reimbursement for treatment for emotional, mental, or behavioral symptoms for children with physical or developmental disabilities. This is another attempt to enforce “Mental Health Care Parity“.
Parity is the concept that insurance reimbursements for mental health care must be equal to that for purely medical issues. Mental health parity amounts to a blank check for a mental health industry that cannot police itself, frequently abuses patients and rips off the health care system. Due to mandated mental health insurance parity there is more widespread patient abuse and fraud, as well as increasing insurance premiums and number of uninsured.
6) HB2384 – House Bill 2384 – sponsored by Representative Jay Barnes (Republican, District 60; Cole County). Related to SB1098.
This bill is basically another attempt to expand mental health care parity. See the discussion under HB1658.
7) The following bills refer to something called “Trauma-Informed Care”. Stay tuned for our Big Muddy River Newsletter on April 9th for more about this concept. Think “PTSD on steroids.” It’s really just re-defining words to create a new class of patients who are ripe for psychiatric fraud and abuse.
SB1004 – Senate Bill 1004 – sponsored by Senator Jill Schupp (Democrat, District 24; St. Louis County). Creates a “Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families” Board; a public-private partnership to promote using this style of treatment for children and families.
SCR47 – Senate Concurrent Resolution 47 – sponsored by Senator Jill Schupp (Democrat, District 24; St. Louis County). Establishes the Task Force on Trauma-Informed Care for Veterans.