Take action TODAY to protect the rights of Americans with mental health needs!

Please take action to help protect the rights of Americans with significant mental health needs.  Contained within a larger Congressional mental health bill, H.R. 2646, are provisions that would severely limit the role and authority of the only federal program that offers legally-based advocacy for people with mental health needs, called the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness program (PAIMI).  As written, this federal bill would prohibit people with mental health needs from obtaining free legal and advocacy services for issues such as housing rights, access to health care, access to mental health, employment discrimination, establishing services to prevent homelessness, access to Medicaid services, special education, or protecting other disability rights.  If the PAIMI program is prohibited from addressing these significant rights violations, it could lead to the  unnecessary institutionalization of people with mental health needs.  H.R. 2646 also allows a caregiver to have control over the advocacy or legal advice the PAIMI program provides to the person with mental health needs.  The PAIMI program would be prohibited from providing advocacy or legal advice if it is “against the wishes of the caregiver.”  Individuals who have not been adjudicated as having a disability should not lose their rights to a caregiver.

Can you please take action TODAY to protect the rights of Americans with mental health needs?

It takes less than a minute to help.  Click the link below.  At the bottom of that page you simply provide your zip code.   It then pulls up your member of Congress.  You can then send a note asking them to fix this.  Click submit.  That’s it.  It takes less than a minute and you can really help protect the rights of people with mental health needs.  Thank you!

http://tinyurl.com/protectpaimi