On June 4, Representative Tim Murphy (R., PA) re-introduced the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act. He has been trying to get the bill passed since December 2013. It has received significant bipartisan support, and now has 77 Republican and 38 Democrat co-sponsors. My representative Frank Guinta (R., NH) is a co-sponsor. Last month, my wife traveled to Washington, D.C., with E. Fuller Torrey’s Treatment Advocacy Center to lobby for it.

I knew something was wrong when my wife started shaking uncontrollably. “We told you this would happen!” she managed to say into the phone, her voice breaking. It was a few years ago, in late in November. A state social worker had just called her to inform her that her brother had stopped taking his medication for schizophrenia. He had disappeared. No one had any idea where he was.