Why don't we have state run psychiatric hospitals anymore to lock these potential shooters up in?

[madville]

This latest shooter had so many warning signs and people seeing them that he easily should have been committed for some length of time but the States don't have the resources or facilities anymore to secure and evaluate these individuals.

Then that takes care of being able to legally buy a firearm, one of the questions asks if you have ever been involuntarily committed for mental health reasons, now they can't buy firearms if they are ever released.

Decades ago these crazy bastards would have been committed and medicated. Now they are just allowed to roam free and put all the rest of us in danger.

[redstatebluegirl]

1. It is nearly impossible to get someone care who is over 18 without their consent.

I have a nephew who scares the hell out of all of us. We have tried in vain to get him into inpatient care to no avail. The state won't take his guns either. Thankfully I think he is more of a danger to himself than others, but who the hell knows. We have done our best. He doesn't think he has an issue. I have blocked him on every single platform, FB, pintrest, linked in, and text messaging due to his angry nasty posts. Does he need serious help, yes, can we get it for him, no.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. Not in Florida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Mental_Health_Act

The "Baker Act"

[redstatebluegirl]

9. It is in Illinois.

[NutmegYankee]

18. The criteria of Baker, as it has to be, is very strict.

Given that this youth was voluntarily seeking counseling and didn't meet the definition/criteria of an immediate danger, he wouldn't have fallen under the act. It's written for people that attempted suicide or have schizophrenia or similar.

[A HERETIC I AM]

20. Does that qualify as "nearly impossible"?

[NutmegYankee]

23. Depends on the symptoms.

A generally morose person who makes potentially hyperbolic statements is probably nearly impossible. It takes more evidence than this kid provided in person. We are all looking at it with 20/20 hindsight.

[NCTraveler]

2. What should the person have been committed for?

And why "some length of time"?

[madville]

13. Displaying a potential for mass violence maybe?

They should be evaluated and treated until they can be trusted to be in society on their own.

[NCTraveler]

16. Yeah, I'm not on board for that.

Not enough to even formulate an opinion.

[Voltaire2]

31. Marvelous hindsight you got there.

This wasn’t a mental health management issue, nor was the problem that we’ve shutdown many of the state mental health institutions, almost all of which were appalling nightmares when they were operational,

THE PROBLEM IS GUNS.

Everything else is an irrelevant distraction.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. A lot of them were terrible hellholes that warehoused people without treating them.

Many mental institutions were closed down during the Reagan administration, but not to improve the treatment of the mentally ill. Regan established block grants for the states to care for the mentally ill instead of hospitalizing them, but mostly people were turned loose with little support or access to treatment, which led to an increase in the homeless population. What should have happened is providing more money to improve institutions and housing for the mentally ill.

[Wellstone ruled]

22. How many of us rememeber when that happened.

And there are some of these folks still living in Homeless Camps all over the Nation.

Out of sight,out of mind attitudes.

[GP6971]

4. We can blame Reagan n/t

[Cattledog]

5. One word: Willowbrook

[loyalsister]

28. Exactly

It was not Reagan. People were being treated brutally, their health and well being was ignored. The conditions were inhumane and it was happening across the country.

If people were placed in institutions and treated the way the general public talks about them, we would have a resurgence of those conditions.

[TwistOneUp]

6. Because

Because President Ronald Rayguns, having bought into the Lafferty "Trickle Down" curve bs, decided to balance the budget by terminating public funding of psychiatric institutions (among other things). And the rethuglicans, now seeing Rayguns as prescient and an icon, have now instituted a tax cut based on the trickle down theory. So history does repeat itself...

This is why there are so many homeless peeps with psychiatric issues.

The only thing that trickles down, imo, is the 1% peeing on the rest of us. No wonder Cheetolini likes it so much!

[marylandblue]

8. When closing the hospitals was first proposed

The idea was to replace them with group homes. It wasn't Reagan's idea, but he knew a way to cut services when he saw one. We closed the hospitals but never built enough group homes, due to cost and NIMBY.

[MattP]

10. They will lock you up till your insurance won't cover you

Had a relative the Dr said they needed to keep him another week at least got a phone call from insurance while we were talking to him and he said good news he's going home today

[vlyons]

11. you can blame Ronald Reagan for that

Back when he was Calif gov, he just turned them out on the street, as a means to cut taxes. GOP across the nation followed suit.

[mnhtnbb]

19. Indeed. Reagan used psychiatrists who advocated a community services model in California

(which also was sold as a civil rights issue) when he was Governor to transfer treatment of many patients who had been hospitalized to community
clinics where they would be treated on an outpatient basis. Problem was, no budget was allocated for the treatment.
And in our world of employment based health insurance which usually had lousy coverage for mental health care, very
few people who had been hospitalized were able to find treatment.

It was Ronald Reagan.

[ismnotwasm]

12. It takes a lot to get someone committed

Plus we do not take care of our people with even fairly benign mental illnesses.

Potential Murderers with guns are able to lose themselves in sub-cultures of guns. Lots of these people are a bit strange, so they aren’t going to recognize someone dangerous, is one thing I think.

[RKP5637]

14. America is a very cruel place if one falls off the tracks. Many of the hospitals were cruel pits.

If it costs money in the US it's often neglected, as were many of the hospitals. Then some of the staff including drs. were often strange and some were demented. It's a serious issue in this country that brags about itself to other nations. Now they are thrown in jails or wander the streets. When you dig into America, some of it's damn ugly.

[hlthe2b]

15. Ronald Reagan shut 'em all down and threw the mentally ill on the streets

all under the guise of moving them to "community mental health centers" and restoring their civil rights/dignity. The latter were laudable goals, of course, and sold those on the Left but of course the RW just wanted the $$ for tax breaks.

Of course he never funded the community mental health centers so this just meant the mentally ill were farmed out to the streets, jails, homeless shelters, frequently without care or any supervision of meds.

Of course there were some horrific mental hospitals here (think Willowbrook) and abroad, but we surely did not end up with a workable, compassionate solution.

[Nevernose]

17. You cant lock ppl up for warning signs

The difference between now and decades ago is AR-15s.

[madville]

26. That's the popular firearm at the moment

But we have seen that past legislation is ineffective in banning specific models of firearms because the manufacturers just design something different. There are many other models of firearms with the same capabilities.

Virginia Tech was just two handguns and killed almost double the number of people. Cho had also been ordered by the courts to seek outpatient mental health treatment prior to the incident among many other warning signs that no one really had the power to report or enforce.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. What "warning sign" would you have "committed" him for?

[madville]

24. Posting that he wants to be a

"professional school shooter" under his real name and it being reported to the FBI could have been a good starting point.

[Turbineguy]

25. According to a friend who's married to a Psychiatrist,

10% of the population is clinically depressed, 1% is bi-polar and 1% is schizophrenic.

That's about 40,000,000 people to lock up.

Most of us feel lucky to not be one of "these crazy bastards", or a least should.

[WhiteTara]

27. Why? We have Guantanamo!

[marylandblue]

29. In this case, as in so many others, domestic violence was the tipoff

Police had come to his home 30 times due to threats or violence against his mother. I don't think he should have been locked up, but people who commit domestic violence should not be allowed guns.

[Stinky The Clown]

30. In answer to the OP question, two words: Saint Ronald