Apr 25, 2017 By J.D. Prose jprose@calkins.Com 3 min read

U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy has said he is “stunned” at President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee mental health and substance abuse programs because she had a similar role under the Obama administration at an agency wracked by mismanagement and poor leadership, in his opinion.

Murphy’s ire was directed at Trump’s decision to have Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz serve as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a position created by Murphy’s signature Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act that was part of the 21st Century Cures Act.

McCance-Katz previously served as chief medical officer in the Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), leaving in 2015. She is now the chief medical officer for the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.

But, Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair Township, said in a statement that SAMHSA lacked focus, ignored the intent of Congress and irresponsibly spent taxpayer money on programs “of dubious quality and effectiveness” that could have prevented care from being delivered.

Murphy, a psychologist, said the “old regime” at SAMHSA “was incapable and unwilling to work with me and my colleagues in Congress to deliver the transformative changes needed at the agency and throughout the federal government to serve families in crisis.”

The newly created assistant secretary position was a critical reform to ensure more accountability and oversight, Murphy said.

Consequently, Murphy said he was “stunned the president put forth a nominee who served in a key post at SAMHSA under the previous administration when the agency was actively opposing the transformative changes” that were in the 2013 original version of his Helping Families legislation.

A year ago, McCance-Katz wrote an essay in Psychiatric Times in which she criticized how the government addressed treating the seriously mentally ill.

“There is a perceptible hostility toward psychiatric medicine: a resistance to addressing the treatment needs of those with serious mental illness and a questioning by some at SAMHSA as to whether mental disorders even exist — for example, is psychosis just a ‘different way of thinking for some experiencing stress?'” she wrote.

McCance-Katz, Murphy said, was at SAMHSA while it was under investigation “for multiple failed practices and wasteful spending.” He charged that she was the ranking medical official when the agency lobbied against changes or increased accountability, conducted “questionable hiring practices,” and took an “anti-medical approach” to serious mental illness and substance abuse treatment, and the increase in suicide and substance abuse deaths.

“We must have someone reliably and resolutely committed in word and deed for these critical changes to our nation’s dilapidated and deadly mental health and substance abuse care,” Murphy said. “The lives of millions of Americans depend on it. And I will be satisfied with nothing less.”