Well, Like so many Americans,
my family and my friends have faced mental health challenges.
And so, you know, I think that there's very few families
and very few workplaces or communities that can't say that.
And I think one of the things that I've seen is even as we've made
advances in the ability to treat mental health,
the actual delivery of that treatment,
the affordability and the accessibility has often lagged behind.
And so one of the things I've been really focused on is trying to make sure
that insurers, that providers are actually delivering on mental health care.
When I moved to Orange County ten years ago,
there were no pediatric mental health beds in the entire county.
And as I said, you might think, well, it's just a county.
Orange County is bigger than like 20 some states,
and yet we had no pediatric mental health beds.
And so although that's changed with leadership of our children's
hospital over time, it really goes to show you how difficult it is
to be able to find mental health care as well as afford it.
And so when I talk about people being healthy,
I mean healthy in every aspect of their lives.
Both physical and mental health.
Well, talking to different people about their experiences, one of the great
things about being a congressperson is people share their life stories with you.
They share their frustrations with you.
And I think one of the amazing things that we've seen the disability community
do, over my lifetime, as I was born in the era of the ADA.
I grew up in Iowa.
Tom Harkin was my senator,
I can remember what a big deal it was to have the ADA pass.
As we've seen the stigma reduced and more and more people feel like
they can talk about their frustrations and their challenges,
what they could accomplish, what they couldn't get,
in terms of wellness, and what they often are falling short on.
And so, you know I started talking to different people.
I started looking at things,
you know talking to psychiatrists in our community, psychologists,
social workers, schools, teachers, and hearing about their challenges.