The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

[Yurt]

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

Next time there's a mass shooting, don't jump to blame the National Rifle Association and lax gun laws. Look first at the shooter and the mental health services he did or didn't get, and the commitment laws in the state where the shooting took place.

Strengthening gun control won't stop the next mass shooter, but changing our attitudes, the treatment options we offer and the laws for holding the mentally unstable and mentally ill for treatment just might.

Opinion: The real gun problem is mental health, not NRA - CNN.com

she is spot on

 

[shart_attack]

And as much as I hate to say it, the bigger picture with regard to America's current mental health dilemmas pretty much started in the 80s, when my hero President Reagan started mass wholesale closings of mental health institutions across the country.

That essentially turned the asylums loose, in a very bad way.

 

[crpravens82]

Agreed, we need to blame the shooter not the gun

 

[shart_attack]

Here's a pretty nice read from back in the day which chronicles the Reagan Administration's opening of the American asylums.

HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN, By Richard Lyons, The NY Times, Oct. 30, 1984—THE policy that led to the release of most of the nation's mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure. Sweeping critiques of the policy, notably the recent report of the American Psychiatric Association, have spread the blame everywhere, faulting politicians, civil libertarian lawyers and psychiatrists.

But who, specifically, played some of the more important roles in the formation of this ill-fated policy? What motivated these influential people and what lessons are to be learned?

A detailed picture has emerged from a series of interviews and a review of public records, research reports and institutional recommendations. The picture is one of cost-conscious policy makers, who were quick to buy optimistic projections that were, in some instances, buttressed by misinformation and by a willingness to suspend skepticism.

Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society.

The records show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought sight unseen.

'They've Gone Far, Too Far'

In California, for example, the number of patients in state mental hospitals reached a peak of 37,500 in 1959 when Edmund G. Brown was Governor, fell to 22,000 when Ronald Reagan attained that office in 1967, and continued to decline under his administration and that of his successor, Edmund G. Brown Jr. The senior Mr. Brown now expresses regret about the way the policy started and ultimately evolved. ''They've gone far, too far, in letting people out,'' he said in an interview.

Dr. Robert H. Felix, who was then director of the National Institute of Mental Health and a major figure in the shift to community centers, says now on reflection: ''Many of those patients who left the state hospitals never should have done so. We psychiatrists saw too much of the old snake pit, saw too many people who shouldn't have been there and we overreacted. The result is not what we intended, and perhaps we didn't ask the questions that should have been asked when developing a new concept, but psychiatrists are human, too, and we tried our damnedest.''

Dr. John A. Talbott, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said, ''The psychiatrists involved in the policy making at that time certainly oversold community treatment, and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it.'' He said the policies ''were based partly on wishful thinking, partly on the enormousness of the problem and the lack of a silver bullet to resolve it, then as now.''

The original policy changes were backed by scores of national professional and philanthropic organizations and several hundred people prominent in medicine, academia and politics. The belief then was widespread that the same scientific researchers who had conjured up antibiotics and vaccines during the outburst of medical discovery in the 50's and 60's had also developed penicillins to cure psychoses and thus revolutionize the treatment of the mentally ill.

And these leaders were prodded into action by a series of scientific studies in the 1950's purporting to show that mental illness was far more prevalent than had previously been believed.

Finally, there was a growing economic and political liability faced by state legislators. Enormous amounts of tax revenues were being used to support the state mental hospitals, and the institutions themselves were increasingly thought of as ''snake pits'' or facilities that few people wanted.

One of the most influential groups in bringing about the new national policy was the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health, an independent body set up by Congress in 1955. One of its two surviving members, Dr. M. Brewster Smith, a University of California psychologist who served as vice president, said the commission took the direction it did because of ''the sort of overselling that happens in almost every interchange between science and government.''

''Extravagant claims were made for the benefits of shifting from state hospitals to community clinics,'' Dr. Smith said. ''The professional community made mistakes and was overly optimistic, but the political community wanted to save money.''

'Tranquilizers Became Panacea'

Charles Schlaifer, a New York advertising executive who served as secretary-treasurer of the group, said he was now disgusted with the advice presented by leading psychiatrists of that day. ''Tranquilizers became the panacea for the mentally ill,'' he said. ''The state programs were buying them by the carload, sending the drugged patients back to the community and the psychiatrists never tried to stop this. Local mental health centers were going to be the greatest thing going, but no one wanted to think it through.''

Dr. Bertram S. Brown, a psychiatrist and Federal official who was instrumental in shaping the community center legislation in 1963, agreed that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were to some extent misled by the mental health community and Government bureaucrats.

''The bureaucrat-psychiatrists realized that there was political and financial overpromise,'' he said.

Dr. Brown, then an executive of the National Institute of Mental Health and now president of Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, stated candidly in an interview: ''Yes, the doctors were overpromising for the politicians. The doctors did not believe that community care would cure schizophrenia, and we did allow ourselves to be somewhat misrepresented.''

''They ended up with everything but the kitchen sink without the issue of long-term funding being settled,'' he said. ''That was the overpromising.''

Dr. Brown said he and the other architects of the community centers legislation believed that while there was a risk of homelessness, that it would not happen if Federal, state, local and private financial support ''was sufficient'' to do the job.

Resources Vanished Quickly

The legislation sought to create a nationwide network of locally based mental health centers which, rather than large state hospitals, would be the main source of treatment. The center concept was aided by Federal funds for four and a half years, after which it was hoped that the states and local governments would assume responsibility.

''We knew that there were not enough resources in the community to do the whole job, so that some people would be in the streets facing society head on and questions would be raised about the necessity to send them back to the state hospitals,'' Dr. Brown said.

But, he continued, ''It happened much faster than we foresaw.'' The discharge of mental patients was accelerated in the late 1960's and early 1970's in some states as a result of a series of court decisions that limited the commitment powers of state and local officials.

Dr. Brown insists, as do others who were involved in the Congressional legislation to establish community mental health centers, that politicians and health experts were carrying out a public mandate to abolish the abominable conditions of insane asylums. He and others note - and their critics do not disagree - that their motives were not venal and that they were acting humanely.

In restrospect it does seem clear that questions were not asked that might have been asked. In the thousands of pages of testimony before Congressional committees in the late 1950's and early 1960's, little doubt was expressed about the wisdom of deinstitutionalization. And the development of tranquilizing drugs was regarded as an unqualified ''godsend,'' as one of the nation's leading psychiatrists, Dr. Francis J. Braceland, described it when he testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1963.

Dr. Braceland, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association who is a retired professor of psychiatry at Yale University, still maintains, however, that under the circumstances the widespread prescription of drugs for the mentally ill was and is a wise policy.

''We had no alternative to the use of drugs for schizophrenia and depression,'' Dr. Braceland said. ''Before the introduction of drugs like Thorazine we never had drugs that worked. These are wonderful drugs and they kept a lot of people out of the hospitals.''

Testimony to Congress

His point is borne out repeatedly by references in Congressional testimony, such as the following exchange at a House subcommittee hearing between Representative Leo W. O'Brien, Democrat of upstate New York, and Dr. Henry N. Pratt, director of New York Hospital in Manhattan, who appeared on behalf of the American Hospital Association.

Mr. O'Brien: ''Do you know offhand how much New York appropriates annually for its mental hospitals?''

Dr. Pratt: ''It is the vast sum of $400 million to $500 million.''

Mr. O'Brien: ''So you see that, through a real attempt to handle this problem at the community level, the possibility that this dead weight of $400 million to $500 million a year around the necks of the New York State taxpayers might be reduced considerably in the next 15 or 20 years?

Dr. Pratt: ''I do, indeed. Yes, sir.''

He then told the subcommittee that ''striking proof of the advantages of local short-term intensive care of the mentally ill was brought out'' in a Missouri study.

Dr. Pratt's testimony and the Missouri study were repeatedly cited in subsequent Congressional debates on the community centers bill by such politicians as Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and Representative Kenneth A. Roberts of Alabama.

The Missouri study, which compared a group of 412 patients in two intensive treatment centers with patients admitted to five mental hospitals, showed that the average stays for patients in the large hospitals were 237 days longer than for similarly diagnosed patients at the treatment centers.

But Dr. George A. Ulett of St. Louis, the psychiatrist who directed the study as head of Missouri's Division of Mental Diseases, now says the numbers cited, though correct, were misinterpreted. ''We did have dramatic numbers, but the initial success of the community centers in Missouri hinged on the large numbers of psychiatrists and support personnel who staffed the centers at that time,'' Dr. Ulett said.

The centers were two pilot projects that were given special staff and attention to demonstrate what could be accomplished, he said. By linking the community centers to large teaching hospitals in major cities and providing adequate funds for their maintenance it was possible to attract the quality of staff that all but guaranteed better results than the old state hospitals, he said.

''Unfortunately,'' he said, ''over the years the budgets were progressively reduced, the professional staffs were cut, and the program regressed to right back where it started.''

Dr. Frank R. Lipton and Dr. Albert Sabatini of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in Manhattan, who have done research on the problems of the homeless, say one of the major flaws in the concept of deinstitutionalization was the notion that serious, chronic mental disorders could be minimized, if not totally prevented, through care provided within the local community.

''This philosophical and ideological shift in thinking was not adequately validated, yet it became one of the major conceptual bases for moving the locus of care,'' they said in a recent study.

Value and Danger in Drugs

Some problems have actually been brought on for mental patients by long-term use of drugs. This condition has been considered by Dr. Loren Mosher of the Uniformed Services Medical University in Bethesda, Md., who says that from 15 percent to 40 percent of such mental patients develop uncontrollable movements of the mouth and neck that can only be cured by taking people off the drugs.

The consensus seems to be that the more intelligent approach to the overall problem is to realize both the limitations and value of the drugs, the importance of combining drug treatment with proper care - either in hospitals or local clinics, depending on the individual case - and that mental illness is a sociological fact that cannot be ignored simply out of a desire to save tax dollars.

Jack R. Ewalt, who directed the staff of the Joint Commission when it was founded in 1955, says now that he remains ''a great believer in the use of drugs, but they are just another treatment, not a magic.''

''Drugs can help people get back to the community,'' he said, ''but they have to have medical care, a place to live and someone to relate to. They can't just float around aimlessly.''

Dr. Ewalt said the 1963 act was supposed to have the states continue to take care of the mentally ill but that many states simply gave up and ceded most of their responsibility to the Federal Government.

''The result was like proposing a plan to build a new airplane and ending up only with a wing and a tail,'' Dr. Ewalt said. ''Congress and the state governments didn't buy the whole program of centers, plus adequate staffing, plus long-term financial supports.''

HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN - NYTimes.com

 

[JFK_USA]

Yes the stigmatization of mental health has lead to a lack of mental health services which in turn leads to a lack of care for those type of people. However, easy access to guns and the lack of cohesiveness in ensuring the proper authorities are notified of said mental issues are also an issue.

It's a multi-layer problem.

 

[RDD_1210]

From your article.

we've got to connect the dots between mental health records and National Instant Background Check. In 2014, Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a report calling for states to close this gap. It found that 11 states and the District of Columbia have no reporting laws, and another 12 states have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the national background check system.

But connecting the dots won't help unless every gun sale is subject to an instant background check imposed on all licensed gun retailers.

And finally, the police need tools as well. They need training and the discretion to ask about and remove guns from any household where there is a domestic dispute, a call for a "well-being check," or a person who exhibits violent or unstable behavior. They also need a mental health professional on call for such checks.

Connecticut, Indiana and, yes, even Texas have firearms seizure statutes aimed at dangerous persons. Laws like these enable the police to temporarily remove guns from someone who is exhibiting dangerous behavior until a judge can make a final determination on fitness for gun ownership based on evidence presented at a hearing.

These sound like steps in the right direction. Do you agree?

 

[Lakhota]

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

Yes, the "mental health" of the NRA.

 

[M14 Shooter]

But connecting the dots won't help unless every gun sale is subject to an instant background check imposed on all licensed gun retailers.

This won't do a thing as a background check will not generate a "stop' due to mental issues unless someone has their right to arms taken away by a judge.

But then, universal background checks are all about universal registration not stopping crime.

 

[RandallFlagg]

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

Next time there's a mass shooting, don't jump to blame the National Rifle Association and lax gun laws. Look first at the shooter and the mental health services he did or didn't get, and the commitment laws in the state where the shooting took place.

Strengthening gun control won't stop the next mass shooter, but changing our attitudes, the treatment options we offer and the laws for holding the mentally unstable and mentally ill for treatment just might.

Opinion: The real gun problem is mental health, not NRA - CNN.com

she is spot on

It's not "gun control", Rather the LACK of mental health treatment in the United States. Look at ANY of these mass shooters. What's the first thing that sticks out about each and every one of them? Nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake.

Rather than putting these nut bags into institutionalized care - we allow these monsters to roam our streets - waiting for the next time they go off their meds (if they are even on medication) and kill innocent babies.

There WAS a time in this country when we locked up these monsters and kept them at bay - for the good of society. Then, the liberal Nazis began having their way. Yet another example of their "governance" over us.

 

[RandallFlagg]

And as much as I hate to say it, the bigger picture with regard to America's current mental health dilemmas pretty much started in the 80s, when my hero President Reagan started mass wholesale closings of mental health institutions across the country.

That essentially turned the asylums loose, in a very bad way.

Reagan had little to do with the "changing" of the American Psychiatric Association and their decisions change the way the nut bags were "cared for".

Reagan merely fell for their bullshit and began to fund other programs in the interim.

It's more or less like the wholesale "ritalin" epidemic that these nut job Psychiatrists foisted on our children.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Yes the stigmatization of mental health has lead to a lack of mental health services which in turn leads to a lack of care for those type of people. However, easy access to guns and the lack of cohesiveness in ensuring the proper authorities are notified of said mental issues are also an issue.

It's a multi-layer problem.

Indeed. The onus, however, is on the mental health "professionals" who fail to report these monsters to the states (as required by law). If they did their JOBS - there would be no access to the "evil gun" that 99.98 percent of the American law abiding public use safety each year.

 

[williepete]

Just this morning, I was reading an article about bringing back mental institutions. After a brief search, I see this topic has been simmering on the back burner for quite some time. Several years ago, PBS's Frontline ran a story on the topic of Deinstitutionalization and the use of antipsychotic drugs. Much of the presentation was from the 1995 book Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.

Here's a snippet:

Deinstitutionalization is the name given to the policy of moving severely mentally ill people out of large state institutions and then closing part or all of those institutions; it has been a major contributing factor to the mental illness crisis.

Deinstitutionalization began in 1955 with the widespread introduction of chlorpromazine, commonly known as Thorazine, the first effective antipsychotic medication, and received a major impetus 10 years later with the enactment of federal Medicaid and Medicare. Deinstitutionalization has two parts: the moving of the severely mentally ill out of the state institutions, and the closing of part or all of those institutions. The former affects people who are already mentally ill. The latter affects those who become ill after the policy has gone into effect and for the indefinite future because hospital beds have been permanently eliminated.

The magnitude of deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill qualifies it as one of the largest social experiments in American history. In 1955, there were 558,239 severely mentally ill patients in the nation's public psychiatric hospitals. In 1994, this number had been reduced by 486,620 patients, to 71,619, as seen in Figure 1.2. It is important to note, however, that the census of 558,239 patients in public psychiatric hospitals in 1955 was in relationship to the nation's total population at the time, which was 164 million.

Much more here:

Deinstitutionalization - Special Reports | The New Asylums | FRONTLINE | PBS



-----------------------------------------

 

[Moonglow]

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

Therefore we need to make guns smarter than the users....

 

[RoadVirus]

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

Therefore we need to make guns smarter than the users....

You totally missed the point.

 

[Pennywise]

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

Therefore we need to make guns smarter than the users....

You totally missed the point.

Yeah, no shit.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

And as much as I hate to say it, the bigger picture with regard to America's current mental health dilemmas pretty much started in the 80s, when my hero President Reagan started mass wholesale closings of mental health institutions across the country.

That essentially turned the asylums loose, in a very bad way.

Wasn't it the ACLU that sued to get those facilities shutdown ?

 

[Pennywise]

The root of the problem is more pervasive and less controllable than mental health, it's the culture of the world today. We live n a hyper-sexualized, narcissistic toilet, where parents don't feel the slightest guilt in dumping infants into daycare.

We treat the young ones like they mean less to us than our earthly possessions, and we are surprised when the chickens come home to roost.

Guns were far more available in generations past, but the psycho mass shooter was almost unheard of until that day in Texas in the year 1966 when Charles Whitman went bonkers. He was the first but it took decades for such acts to become part of the cultural norm, as they horrifically seem to be now.

 

[Pennywise]

And as much as I hate to say it, the bigger picture with regard to America's current mental health dilemmas pretty much started in the 80s, when my hero President Reagan started mass wholesale closings of mental health institutions across the country.

That essentially turned the asylums loose, in a very bad way.

Wasn't it the ACLU that sued to get those facilities shutdown ?

I know they took up for that nut in NY in the 80's, some bat-shit crazy black lady, Billie-something. She was homeless and the Koch administration tried to institutionalize her, rightfully so. Yes, the ACLU wanted the mental freaks freed.

 

[RandallFlagg]

The root of the problem is more pervasive and less controllable than mental health, it's the culture of the world today. We live n a hyper-sexualized, narcissistic toilet, where parents don't feel the slightest guilt in dumping infants into daycare.

We treat the young ones like they mean less to us than our earthly possessions, and we are surprised when the chickens come home to roost.

Guns were far more available in generations past, but the psycho mass shooter was almost unheard of until that day in Texas in the year 1966 when Charles Whitman went bonkers. He was the first but it took decades for such acts to become part of the cultural norm, as they horrifically seem to be now.

Indeed, when coupled with the society we currently live in, is it any wonder that these nut bags are becoming more and more prevelant?

Let one of these nut jobs play "Call of Duty" for 18 hours a day for 30 days and then ask yourself "what happened with this young man?" as he slaughters a dozen people......

 

[shart_attack]

And as much as I hate to say it, the bigger picture with regard to America's current mental health dilemmas pretty much started in the 80s, when my hero President Reagan started mass wholesale closings of mental health institutions across the country.

That essentially turned the asylums loose, in a very bad way.

Wasn't it the ACLU that sued to get those facilities shutdown?

Prolly so, yeah. Sounds about right.

When has the NY Times (see post #4 in this thread) ever given us the full story?

I think what Randall Flagg and williepete have said on page one of this thread is pretty much spot-on accurate.