Why isn't mental health care a bigger issue?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

We can talk gun control til the cows come home (and we should), but one thing should be perfectly clear here - if this person got the help they needed, there's a strong chance that 32 people would still be alive this morning.

We need to improve access to health care AND ensure that mental health care is included in all of this. It's absolutely absurd that we allow ticking time bombs to exist in our society and the only thing we can come up with to solve the problem is to increase security, instead of actually diffusing the fucking bombs.

[Deep13]

1. Here, here!

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

2. Because insanity is caused by demons, silly...

Everyone knows that!

Now to give the serious reply that your question deserves, I think part of the problem is that there is still a strong social stigma attached to mental and behavioral health issues. I have a family member (via marriage) who is bi-polar. His mother confided as much to my father-in-law, but he was sworn to secrecy not to tell the rest of the family -- which he obviously didn't do or I wouldn't know this.

The point here is that even my mother-in-law (who is herself a health care professional) wasn't comfortable with even family members knowing that her son has a health problem. If it was cancer, she would have told us. Diabetes? Heart Disease? But for some reason in this country we seem to feel that mental health problems are somehow the result of a personal failure.

If anything, the opposite is true. Think of how many people have heart disease or cancer that was brought on by their own lifestyle -- which is not to say that these diseases don't strike anyway, but many of our choices (You want fries with that?) are certainly contributing factors. Mental health disorders strike without warning and without regard to persons.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Oh, I know that's the entire reason, but it's fucking ridiculous.

We need a high profile politician with some courage (and it would probably have to be a POTUS) to step up and make this a priority. I know Rep. Kennedy (D-RI) has taken on this issue and is about to pass a bill on this very subject (and I give him the highest praise for that), but it's made very little in the way of news headlines. We need some leadership to end this stigma once and for all.

[Atman]

4. There simply aren't blanket solutions

I hear you, really. But it scares me, hearing all the draconian measures people want to instate because of this. Virginia has several problems on a state level, unrelated to mental health, which helped facilitate this attack, most notably the incredibly easy access to guns. It's one of those states where you can walk into a trade show and walk home with a new gun. Combine that with the fact that this guy was a noob in the country, and he likely wouldn't have been "in the system" anyway. Heck, he was on a Visa -- we probably wouldn't have provided him any services anyway.

It is a fact of life that some people ARE ticking time bombs, and are masters at hiding their rage until they blow. We simply cannot protect ourselves against every situation, because just when we think we've done so, the next ticking time bomb will go do something else horrendous we didn't think about, then we'll be putting up more razor wire and more metal detectors and calling for mental health screenings of EVERYONE (hasn't W already tried that, btw?)...and then the next ticking time bomb goes off someplace else, and the fear grows even more and we come up with even MORE draconian methods to protect ourselves...until we're all nuts with fear.

Sadly, it doesn't appear any mental health system we could have had in place would have stopped this tragedy.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. I'm not expecting a blanket solution.

Which is why I said "perhaps". However, to say that no mental health care system would've stopped this tragedy is flatly false. If we improve access, more people will get the help they need. The more people getting treated, the more the stigma about being mentally ill is diminished. The more the stigma is diminished, the more likely someone like this person would be to come to grips with the idea that he had a problem and seek help.

Furthermore, even if you were right, that's an absolutely atrocious reason to do nothing. There are tens of millions of Americans that need treatment but can't get access to it. Whether or not THIS tragedy could be averted is beyond the point.

[Atman]

6. My point wasn't to "do nothing."

My point was, no matter what we do, the next ticking time bomb is still out there, and we'll just as unprepared for that. I don't think access to mental health care was even remotely on this guy's mind. All that said, of course you're right about the state of mental health care in the United States. The Bush administration has played a significant role in make the situation much worse.

.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

7. One possibility...

Chemical dependency and mental health issues often go hand-in-hand. I volunteered for several years at a shelter for homeless mentally ill persons, and nearly all of them had a drug or alcohol problem to some degree. Now in general, people tend to notice drinking problems (in themselves and others) earlier than they notice mental health disorders.

It would be helpful if every clinic and doctor's office in America screened people for alcohol use the same way that they check your blood pressure and your temperature. Maybe not on every visit, but at least once a year, every patient should answer a few basic questions about their drinking habits. An increase in drinking or a expression by the patient that they are "concerned" about their own drinking could be a trigger event to get that person into an out-patient intervention or treatment program.

Those programs could, in turn, be screening participants for warning signs of mental health issues. Will it be expensive? Yes. But when left untreated, these people often end up in emergency rooms and in jail -- which is infintely more expensive.

[raccoon]

9. It's called "dual diagnosis."

"Chemical dependency and mental health issues often go hand-in-hand."

Often people with undiagnosed and/or untreated mental health issues drink or use to self-medicate.

[waiting for hope]

8. I think at one point or

another, any one of us can become a ticking time bomb - how many of you have begun to feel the stress of this damn war on Terra? Or the constant struggle to keep your head above water while gas prices continue to rise, causing all sorts of other goods and services costs to rise....it's only a matter of time before more people begin to feel the need to explode.

[raccoon]

10. Sadly, I fear you're right about that.

"Or the constant struggle to keep your head above water...it's only a matter of time before more people begin to feel the need to explode."