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Dr. David Conley is an assistant professor in UNCW’s School of Social Work working to address issues preventing lawmakers and policymakers from passing mental health-related bills. Earlier this year, Dr. Conley published “Factors Influencing Policymaker Decision Making in the Behavioral Health-Related Legislative Process: A Scoping Review,” an article exploring the influences of legislator voting behavior on behavioral health-related bills.
“Most of the behavioral health related or mental health related bills fail to pass, so I ask, ‘What can we do as social workers and advocates to do better and get bills passed at a higher rate?’ One of the things we need to do first is figure out what actually influences a policymaker’s vote on mental health related bills.” he says.
Conley searched different databases using specific terms related to behavioral health such as mental health, addiction, substance use, and substance abuse.
He found internal and external characteristics that influenced a legislator’s vote. Internal characteristics of the legislator, like their gender, race, educational level, and what specific committees they were on affected their vote on these bills. External characteristics included political party, advocacy coalitions, lobbyists, interest groups, public opinion, and the media.
For Dr. Conley, this research topic is a small part of his broader calling to help and treat those with mental health issues. “Fifty seven percent of people with mental illness don’t get any treatment whatsoever. Therefore, a lot of what I’m trying to do in my career is exploring how we can get more mental health services to people who need them, whether it’s just more services in general, or better access to services. One of the ways we can do that is through policy at the legislative level, whether it’s local, state, or federal,” he said.
Dr. Conley’s interest in this topic first began as a student at Virginia Tech University on April 16, 2007, when a fellow student Seung-Hui Cho opened fire on students and faculty, killing 32 and injuring 17 others. Dr. Conley said, after investigating the tragedy, “If you look at his background, obviously what he did was terrible but there were many instances where he was failed by the mental health system and fell through the cracks. That really got me thinking about what I could do to help fix this problem,” he said. This led to his decision to earn his Master of Social Work and focus his career path on the political side of the mental health system.
Dr. Conley’s research is far from over. Earlier this year, he received a Charles L. Cahill Grant for Faculty Scholarship and is working with social work students to create a data set full of behavioral health-related bills in Congress that were introduced during the last 10 to 15 years. Similarly, they will examine what legislative factors affected the passage or failure of the bills as well as how the factors differ during the Obama and Trump administrations.