MURPHY WEIGHS IN ON DR. PHIL'S INTERVIEW WITH SHELLEY DUVALL
For Immediate Release: November 23, 2016
Contact: Carly Atchison 202.225.2301
Washington, D.C. - In a recorded interview that aired last Friday on the Dr.Phil Show, actress Shelley Duvall discussed her mental illness and need for help. Best known for her role in “The Shining” (1980), the actress now displays manifest symptoms of serious mental illness.
Congressman Murphy weighed in:
“I’ve had the opportunity to examine the footage of the Shelley Duvall interview on Dr. Phil and I’m astounded that this was broadcast under the banner of entertainment. It reflects a woman in need of psychiatric medical care who lacked the basic executive functioning to understand the implications of her ‘consent.’ This should not have been pursued nor aired. Clearly she was not capable of consenting to this television experience due to her diminished cognitive capacity. Ms. Duvall has a basic right to privacy and the way in which she was exploited for afternoon entertainment is appalling.
“Our society continues to exploit Americans experiencing mental illness. Even worse, we set them up for public mockery and ridicule. We will only break down the stigma of mental illness by ending the lurid exploitation of the mentally ill and focus on educating the public about brain illness as a medical condition and how patients, when treated at the right time in the appropriate care setting, can and do recover. Unfortunately, our laws, systems and society allow the most vulnerable to end up cycling in and out of emergency rooms, homeless, in jail or in a morgue.
“One of the greatest challenges we face in overhauling our broken system is helping those in psychiatric crisis access medical care. All too often patients, because of their psychosis, refuse to participate in life-saving treatment. This interview highlights the challenge of treating those who don’t understand the critical nature of their illness and often refuse help, but yet are also those very patients who need treatment the most.
“My Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act tackles this challenge head-on by investing and expanding intensive community-based approaches like Assisted Outpatient Treatment for individuals with serious mental illnesses.
“Ms. Duvall’s refusal to participate in treatment reflects the desperate need to advance models of care designed for treatment-resistant patients. These evidence-based, clinically successful programs allow healthcare teams to engage psychiatric patients where they are most comfortable and most likely to follow through with treatment, enabling them to succeed in their recovery. Rather than wait for patients in the midst of a psychiatric crisis to fill up emergency rooms, and often sent out of the hospital without receiving treatment, we need to provide options for getting the treatment to those who need it most.
“It's time that we right the wrongs in our nation’s treatment of the mentally ill and enact the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.”
Congressman Murphy, a practicing psychologist with over 40 years of experience in the field, has authored the most comprehensive crisis mental health reform bill in a half-century, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 2646). Learn more about his bill here.
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