Rep. Tim Murphy said he is “raising a red flag” on President Trump’s nomination for mental health chief, Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz.
The Pennsylvania Republican has led the House charge calling for changes to the nation’s mental health system. He authored the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, which created the position that McCance-Katz would fill, called the assistant secretary for mental health and substance use within the Department of Health and Human Services.
McCance-Katz is a former chief medical officer at the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, an agency Murphy has criticized.
“For years SAMHSA has failed families in mental health crisis,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’m raising a red flag on POTUS pick for assistant secretary for mental health and substance abuse.”
In a statement initially released Monday, Murphy said that during McCance-Katz’s time with SAMHSA there were “questionable hiring practices, no accountability for federal grants, an anti-medical approach to serious mental illness and substance abuse treatment and most importantly, the continued upward rise of suicide and substance abuse deaths.”
McCance-Katz is chief medical officer for the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Health, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals. She has been critical of SAMHSA as well, and in a recent National Review piece said the agency “has supported programs that provide little help to those in greatest need.”
