Senator Marshall: We Must Treat the Root Cause of Mental Health, Not Just Medicate It

Senator Marshall Joins HHS Roundtable on Mental Health

Washington - On Monday, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), joined a roundtable hosted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) focused on mental health and substance use care.

Senator Marshall emphasized the need to address the mental health crisis in farmers and children, advocating for targeted solutions rather than just medication. Drawing on Kansas' leadership, he also highlighted the work of Kansas State Extension, Kansas Farm Bureau, Kansas Corn, and farm credit institutions for helping identify individuals in crisis and reducing the stigma surrounding mental health treatment in rural communities.

Click HERE or on the image above for Senator Marshall's full remarks

Senator Marshall's remarks as delivered:

"Thanks, Dr King, thanks for hosting us."

"We lose more farmers every year to suicide than farm accidents. Let me say it again, we lose more farmers every year to suicide than to farming accidents. At the other end of the spectrum, we have an epidemic of mental health issues in children, and of course, that's going to lead to more abuse as well. We have to get at the root of the problem, rather than just throwing new medication at it."

"I want to just talk about and praise the things that are working on the farmer side of this. Kansas State Extension, Kansas Farm Bureau, Kansas Corn, the Ag lenders, especially the farm credit institutions, they know the at-risk people. They know who the at-risk people are. So, we're trying to identify them and then remove the stigma of getting mental health now."

"How do you do that? Look if I pull up in my Dodge Ram truck, everyone in my hometown knows it's me. So, you know, if I pull up in front of the mental health center, there is going to be that stigma, but if it's embedded within the other primary care clinics, then people are there. Maybe I'm getting my blood pressure checked, you know."

"So, what's working in Kansas are our CCBHCs - certified community behavioral health clinics. We have 28 of them, and they've embedded primary care within those clinics. And it's bringing MAHA to people where they are, you know, bring in the nutritionist, bring in the food bank, bring in WIC, bring in nurse coaches. So, those are working along with our community health centers - we have 32 of those. And I bet there's probably more than that in the number of clinics. And then we have rural health clinics that are subsidized by the federal government as well."

" I have a saying - if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So right now, we have 25 different EMRs and 25 different paths, and how do we bring those all into one entity? It's my belief that we need one EMR and we need one dashboard that works for all of them. I mean, it's got to be so simple."

"Look, I led our hospital through meaningful use one and two, as well as our doctor's clinic the worst chore I've ever had in my life. And the only thing sure about whichever record you've picked as a doctor when the federal government threw money at is that the doctor switched in three months because they didn't like that one. So throwing money at it is not the solution."

"Whether you're a veteran or you're a soldier, or you're an employee of the government, or you're getting health care through a rural health clinic, or through C box or CCBHCs, we need one EMR. They never are going to communicate with each other. The makers of these do not want them to communicate to each other. The federal government has to say this is the one, and if you don't communicate with it, you're done, and you owe us money. That would be my attitude towards this. We can't be a slave to the to the data either. We took nurses off the floor to turn them into data entry people with meaningful use one and meaningful use two. So, it has to be really simple."

"And you know, I've been asking my community health centers for seven, eight years to give me one dashboard. You know, to me, mental illness is one of the nine chronic diseases that drives 85% of the spending on health care. So mental health needs its dashboard just like hypertension needs a dashboard."

"And guess what? People with mental health may also have diabetes, hypertension, and poor nutrition. So, I think that let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's not start another program. Let's accentuate what's working and bring them all together and rely on these beautiful numbers to help guide us. I say, if you've seen one community health center, you've seen one. Some are great, and some aren't busy. But we should be standard metrics that is so simple that the seven-second attention span of a senator, which is even less than an orthopedic surgeon, could look at this dashboard in just a matter of seconds and say this clinic is doing a good job. Thanks."

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