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U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th), whose personal life and political career were incalculably upended by his son’s suicide, is introducing his first major mental health and suicide prevention legislation since Tommy Raskin died on Dec. 31, 2020, at the age of 25.
The Stabilization To Prevent (STOP) Suicide Act would create a grant program at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to expand the use of evidence-based models for stabilizing individuals with serious thoughts of suicide.
The bipartisan bill will be co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).
“We have to intervene to help people who are suffering and provide a long-term stabilization plan,” Raskin said in an interview Wednesday.
Raskin has spoken frequently and eloquently about the loss of his son, a Harvard Law student who had long battled depression, during the loneliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tommy Raskin’s death came less than a week before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a defining moment in his father’s political career. The congressman wrote a highly regarded book in 2022 called “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy,” which examined the dual crises that came to dominate his life.
Raskin was the lead manager of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial and served on the special House committee that examined the causes of the insurrection. He has made the preservation of U.S. democracy a cornerstone of his congressional work and political barnstorming.
But while Raskin has spoken about mental illness and suicide prevention since his son’s illness, and was active in the congressional push to expand the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, the new bill is his first major piece of mental health legislation since his family’s tragedy. The bill, which was several years in the making, is expected to be introduced Thursday or Friday.
“It’s a melancholy event for me,” Raskin said. “The rates of suicide have just been drastically increasing.”
The bill comes as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that suicide rates in the United States increased by about 36% between 2000 and 2022. Almost 50,000 people died by suicide in 2022, the most recent data available. That same year, an estimated 13.2 million adults seriously thought about suicide, and 1.6 million adults attempted suicide.
“It’s almost like we have a Vietnam War every year, with people taking and losing their lives,” Raskin said. “It has been a very stressful and difficult period for people in this country, for young people especially.”
The measure aims to fill a gap in suicide crisis care by providing grants for mental health providers to create or expand programs to deliver outpatient or virtual stabilization services to people experiencing serious thoughts of suicide. The idea is to expand crisis stabilization services for at-risk individuals to better direct care and to relieve pressure from emergency service providers, who are called into action in the most serious cases.
“I wanted to do something that is more sustained and durable,” Raskin said.
Under the bill, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration would provide grant recipients with training and technical assistance and would publicize an evaluation of services supported by the grant program to ensure the dissemination of best practices. Grant recipients would be required to provide a continuity plan for how they will continue to finance the provision of stabilization services when the grant funding expires.
Eligible grant recipients would include community health centers, rural health clinics, certified community behavioral health clinics, primary care and behavioral health providers, state health agencies, and school-based or campus-based health centers.
Raskin’s office said several mental health organizations have agreed to support the Raskin-Bacon legislation, including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, National Council for Mental Wellbeing, National Alliance on Mental Illness, National League for Nursing, Sheppard Pratt, and Trust for America’s Health.
Raskin conceded that with just a few months left in this Congress ― and with both parties once again hurtling toward a budget impasse ― it may be tough to get the legislation through this year.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said. “I’m hopeful that this is something we can bring home quickly. If anything, we’re laying down a marker to pass something in the next Congress.”
And, Raskin said hopefully, “mental health is one of those issues where we still get authentic bipartisan engagement, which is good.”
In 2021, in unanimous votes, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Thomas Bloom Raskin Act, a tribute to Raskin’s son, which established voluntary mental health check-ins from trained and accredited mental health professionals through the state’s 211 system. The law also connects callers with crisis services if needed.
Raskin spent 10 years in the Maryland Senate before being elected to Congress.
Raskin said Bacon, one of the last Republican moderates in the House, who represents an Omaha-based district that President Biden won in 2020, was a good partner for this legislation because he has already worked on mental health issues and entered Congress at the same time as Raskin, in 2017.
“He’s someone I’ve known for a long time and feel comfortable working with,” Raskin said.
