It is a familiar tale by now: a mass shooting alarms the nation, and calls go out simultaneously for a change in our gun laws and a tightening of our mental health safety net. Rarely does lasting change arise from these moments, but we may soon be near a tipping point. One psychologist in Congress – indeed, the only psychologist in Congress – is aiming to change this issue with a new legislative effort. His reasons are simple:

Two years after Newtown, the nearly 14 million Americans with serious mental illness must navigate the same patchwork system that failed the nation on December 14, 2012.

Says Murphy: "I ask members of Congress to look those Newtown families in the eye."

We have long endured a patchwork mental health support system in America, and many are now advocating for something like parity with other health issues. Although funding for mental health service has improved, there remain a number of essential loopholes that allow troubled young people to bounce from social worker to therapist to counselor without any unified system to offer consistent support.

At PPSC, we are advocates for the power of therapy, especially if a patient might benefit from analytic therapy which can surface the issues that underlie many violent outbursts. That’s one of the reasons we try to make it easy for patients to afford quality care, with a number of low cost therapy options for New Yorkers who require some pricing flexibility.

To learn more about how you can find essential psychotherapy within your means, please contact PPSC today.