Leadership Quote by Richard J. Codey

Sweeping something “under the carpet” is the kind of domestic image politicians reach for when they want moral clarity without sounding clinical. Richard J. Codey’s line works because it shrinks a sprawling policy failure into a familiar act of avoidance: you don’t solve a mess, you hide it, then pretend the room is clean. The ellipsis is doing rhetorical labor, too. It creates a pause where the audience supplies the unsaid list of consequences: untreated depression, jails as de facto hospitals, families burning out, emergency rooms filling the gaps.

Codey’s specific intent is less about diagnosing mental illness than diagnosing a culture of governance that treats it as a private embarrassment. The phrase “for too long” casts neglect as bipartisan and generational, inviting agreement without naming villains. “Hoped that they would go away” subtly indicts magical thinking: the belief that silence equals resolution. That’s not just a critique of stigma; it’s a critique of budgeting by wish.

The subtext is political triage. Mental health has historically been easier to sideline than roads or schools because its results are harder to photograph and its sufferers are easier to marginalize. By framing the issue as something intentionally swept aside, Codey signals a shift from charity to responsibility: the state can’t outsource this to families, police, or willpower.

In context, Codey was known for elevating mental health on the public agenda in New Jersey, pushing parity and expanding services. The quote reads like a permission slip for a new kind of public talk: less shame, more infrastructure, fewer euphemisms. It’s a call to stop managing optics and start managing care.