MENTAL HEALTH: President Trump says work needs to be done to address mental health

was presented to the president earlier in the day that we were going to try and with everything going on that maybe he could bring some of you over for a photo opportunity and a brief discussion and he insisted that he come over and say a few words because he cares about this issue so much he was elected to find solutions to difficult problems and fight for Americans who can't fight for themselves particularly in health care many americans confront challenges that have been ignored by both Republican and Democratic administrations in many cases for decades in no area is this more acute than in the treatment and care for our fellow citizens who suffer with serious mental illness we're gathered at this conference at the White House because President Trump knows that Americans with serious mental disease have been cast aside for too long since day one he told his team to develop and implement solutions to treat Americans who suffer from a mental illness with the compassion and care they deserve now it is my honor to introduce you the president of United States of America Donald Trump [Applause] this is a great group I know so many please sit down please so I heard about this actually for a couple of weeks I heard about it and I said we have to do it not much going on around the White House you know we're not too busy but we have the great Ben Carson thank you Ben that's great did you hear who's dr. Joe where is he dr. Joe did I do you show did you have the greatest ratings you've ever we had some good ratings right congratulations everything going well it's been a while right at the beginning of this whole thing right good thank you very much for all you do I want to just let you know how important is the work you do and what you do and I want to thank Joe for the job he's been doing incredible Kellyanne thank you so much the White House mental health summit so important we've done things that a lot of people haven't done but this is one of the things that we have to bring up to date because we're way way behind in our country on mental health and I think we've made a lot of progress in a short period of time we're grateful to secretary Alex azar done an incredible job his son is with him today Alex where's your son look how handsome he is now by the way speaking of Ben Carson the job he's done at HUD with some concepts that if you were only in the real estate business to head up HUD you'd definitely be able to do what Ben is doing because he's brought some things into the fore that have been really fantastic Ben so thank you very much incredible job you're doing and I'm not surprised my administration is strongly committed to helping Americans suffering from mental illness in the 1950s there were over 250,000 but it really 550,000 could be probably you know there's no really accurate way of figuring it out but they're looking at 610 they have numbers that are all over the place but these were people in mental hospitals and mental hospital beds in the u.s. by 2016 this number declined to 37,000 679 they had a much more accurate number the first they didn't really know and the second they knew 37,000 but it was anywhere from 550 down to 37,000 beds of the 11 million Americans living with severe mental illness four million received no mental health service of any kind four million people there are more than 100 and if you look at it over a hundred thousand homeless individuals and I think that number has to be much much higher than that Alex wouldn't you think they say over a hundred thousand you look at some states they have over a hundred thousand one in particular homeless individuals with serious mental illness and we must give major consideration to building new institutions you know when I was growing up in Queens in New York we had a number of mental institutions and I'd look and I'd see these big buildings and all of a sudden you go and you don't see them anymore and you see what happened to all of those beds what happened to all of that work and where are those people and in many cases those people are living on the streets it's much different and somebody made a decision a long time ago and they did it for budgetary reasons but we have to take care of our mentally ill we have to help people than having problems but I see it so many areas of in Queens and other areas New York City you saw these massive buildings in some cases they did great work I guess not in all cases but you don't have them anymore dr. drew you don't have them the gun and you say and these are thousands tens of thousands of rooms and you say well we have more population now and yet we have far less beds and rooms so we're doing something about it at the same time we need to keep very dangerous people off our streets we want to take care of the mental illness but we have a lot of very dangerous people on our streets this week's funding bill provides 3.9 billion for mental health programs 3.9 billion an increase of 328 million dollars and my administration is focused on early detection evidence-based programs stopping the opioid epidemic which is an incredible problem just the drug epidemic period you could say opioid but you could just say drugs there has never been anything like it and not only in this country in all countries in almost all countries and supporting our new law enforcement professionals who are doing such a fantastic job we're also doing screening for our vets for mental illness which is something they haven't done our vets are being taken care of now better than ever before we had choice passed this was something they've been trying to get for close to 50 years they've been trying to get at veterans Choice where if you don't see a doctor fairly quickly you can go outside get a wonderful private doctor and we pay the bill it's made such a difference you don't see the problems that you were seeing at the VA so that's a tremendous thing but we have to work on a lot of different things in that world it's a big world between drugs mental illness that's all it all comes together as one big problem and we're working on it very hard and many of the people in the room of the leaders on that and I just want to thank you that's why I wanted to come over and say hello and thank you because you do a job you really are fully appreciated you feel you're underappreciated because you don't see it but I'll tell you the people of this country respect you so much you have one of the toughest professions anywhere in the world even tougher than Ben and Ben's this tough Ben's is called housing that stuff you've got housing and plenty of other things on top of it you sort of have everything but I just want to thank you personally for the job it's really fantastic and thank you very much all of you thank you thank you very much appreciate it [Applause]

Channel: LiveNOW from FOX

Views: 14,565

Keywords: President Trump, Mental Health, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., Donald Trump, Mental Health Summit, The White House, Trump

Id: I23XedYXl8o

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019