NAPPP Condemns Tennessee Bill Allowing Refusal of Mental Health Care for LGBT Patients



Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam today signed HB1840, a bill that will legally allow mental health providers to refuse to treat or provide any MH services to LGBT patients. This is just the latest in a string of discrimination laws passed by Republican led legislators. This latest attack follows a host of bills targeting women and LGBT persons. It appears that these legislatures have real problems living in a world where misogyny, discrimination, and hate are no longer shared social values by the majority of Americans. When a state sanctions legal discrimination based upon personal animosity and outright hate, it is time for citizens, providers and professional associations to take a stand.

Some people argue that this bill is necessary to protect providers who refuse service to a patient based upon their Christian beliefs. Unfortunately, that argument falls flat because Christianity calls for just the opposite: Christians aid those in need. Imagine a gay teenager in a rural town who is suicidal and needs help but is rejected by a therapist because the therapist's Christian beliefs will not allow them to treat that patient. What about a therapist who refuses treatment on the basis that the African-American patient seeking treatment has the "mark of Cain" on them and therefore treating that person would be an affront to their Christian belief. There are many other example if one wants to use biblical justifications to discriminate.

Let's be clear, many therapists are atheist but have no problem treating patients who are highly religious. Jewish therapists treat Christian and Muslim patients. In our prisons, psychologists treat neo-nazis and every other type of person who can challenge every moral tenet held by the average psychologist, let alone the average person. The operative word in the Tennessee bill is the word refuse. Mental health providers always have the right and responsibility not to treat a patient where they lack the expertise to do the job. This is not a refusal of treatment. The definition of the word refusal is: the act of showing unwillingness to do, give, or allow something. Many patients reside in areas where there are few alternatives for treatment.

Every person in need of health services deserves and has a basic right to treatment irrespective of who they are. Gender, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation or, any other factor, must not be a consideration to refuse services.

NAPPP, as a professional association will not accept and does not accept as members psychologists who engage in discrimination. I am sure that truly professional mental health providers in Tennessee are just as outraged by this bill. However, because of this bill, we must now ask our Tennessee members if they intend to refuse services to LGBT or any other class of patients under the terms of this bill. Any member or prospective member who answers in the affirmative will not be afforded NAPPP membership. We also call on every other health care association to do the same. For those who believe that this is a political issue, I agree. The Tennessee legislature and their governor proposed and signed this bill out of political concerns. Our issue is clinically, morally, and ethically based. It is not a liberal or conservative political issue. Those who frame it as one are disappointingly missing the point.