To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Let's address the root cause of mass shootings!
Fully fund mental health services as originally intended in Kennedy's deinstitutionalizing Community Mental Health Act instead of perpetually cutting and minimizing the sweeping effects of chronic and severe mental illness.
Why is this important?
The most recent spate of horrific and deadly shootings and people opening fire in public places has spurned a nationwide discussion on how to address this issue which has largely been focused on gun control and has ignored a huge root cause: the devastating mental illness of the shooters.
I have worked in the mental health field for more than a decade and personally have watched those I love struggle with serious chronic mental illness and all the social shrapnel involved including social stigma and underfunded programs to help treat and support the afflicted and those who love them. These programs are historically underfunded since Kennedy's well intentioned and poorly enacted de-institutionalization Community Mental Health policies to help close the barbaric state school and hospitals in favor of more community oriented treatment facilities in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, the funding that was poured into the hospitals was re-routed away from mental healthcare before the community supports could be created and when they finally were, the funding was and continues to be scarce and is cut every year. The results have been devastating: high levels of mental illness in the court systems, jails, homeless on the street and at its most extreme opening fire in public places with little or no resources or recourse for the families and professionals working with these folks.
Everyone knows someone with chronic mental illness. It is a common affliction that is historically demonized and misunderstood. Mental illness does not make BAD PEOPLE, it creates BAD BEHAVIORS which with good programs, interventions and supports can be managed. And until we as a society are ready to acknowledge and deal with this common affliction, we will continue to witness the horrors perpetuated by the bad behaviors caused by mental illness.
I have worked in the mental health field for more than a decade and personally have watched those I love struggle with serious chronic mental illness and all the social shrapnel involved including social stigma and underfunded programs to help treat and support the afflicted and those who love them. These programs are historically underfunded since Kennedy's well intentioned and poorly enacted de-institutionalization Community Mental Health policies to help close the barbaric state school and hospitals in favor of more community oriented treatment facilities in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, the funding that was poured into the hospitals was re-routed away from mental healthcare before the community supports could be created and when they finally were, the funding was and continues to be scarce and is cut every year. The results have been devastating: high levels of mental illness in the court systems, jails, homeless on the street and at its most extreme opening fire in public places with little or no resources or recourse for the families and professionals working with these folks.
Everyone knows someone with chronic mental illness. It is a common affliction that is historically demonized and misunderstood. Mental illness does not make BAD PEOPLE, it creates BAD BEHAVIORS which with good programs, interventions and supports can be managed. And until we as a society are ready to acknowledge and deal with this common affliction, we will continue to witness the horrors perpetuated by the bad behaviors caused by mental illness.