As saddened as I was by reports of the shooting in the Naval Yard the other day, I was equally saddened by the reports I heard later that the shooter had tried to get help for his mental illness, and nothing happened.
What most everyone seems to ignore or downplay in these shooting situation is that to go to a public place and start shooting people indicates MENTAL ILLNESS.
I don't want to get into a debate on gun control. I believe in gun control. I also believe in the 2nd Amendment. No, those aren't opposing beliefs.
But just as forks don't make people fat, guns don't make people crazy. A lot of skinny people use forks every day. A lot of non-crazy people shoot guns, for fun or sport, like my brother. Forks and guns are a means to an end. It's the human being who handles the fork or the gun that results in the problems.
People like Aaron Alexis instigate tragedies because they are not given the help they need.
As the LA Times article says: "He thought people were speaking to him through "the walls, floor and ceiling" of the Navy base there, where he was working."
I've blogged before about the fact that Michael and I like to watch Ghost Adventures on Travel Channel. So many of the adventures take place in abandoned mental hospitals. Yes, those were usually horrific places, where folks were terribly mistreated, even tortured. Yes, it's good they are closed.
However, that doesn't mean the issue of treating mental illness is eradicated.
Alexis told police he was hearing voices. They should have been able to escort him to a mental health facility for treatment. Free, high quality treatment. He was schizophrenic. There are medications for that.
In this country, if you are not posing an immediate threat to yourself or someone else, you aren't necessarily going to be locked up in a mental health facility. You have to be violent and threaten. You can check yourself in, voluntarily, but a lot of times mentally ill people won't or can't take that step. Or their insurance doesn't cover treatment and they can't afford it.
The conversation in this country needs to be about easy to get, high quality, affordable treatment for mental illness. Will Obamacare make that easier? I don't know. I hope so.
At the time my daughter was having issues a couple of years ago, if I had been able to get her treatment, I believe she would be in college today, leading a normal life. She had severe PTSD from years of being abused and institutionalized.She wasn't mentally ill, but she definitely has mental issues which prevent her from making good decisions.
None of her issues are her fault. The fact that she isn't getting treatment isn't her fault. Or my fault. I took her to a therapist that I thought was competent. It just wasn't enough.
Alesia, like many children in this country, spent her first 6 years living with a teenaged alcoholic mother whose first priority was to "party." She left Alesia alone, to fend for herself, from the time she was a toddler. She didn't feed Alesia. She didn't provide love, or toys, or rules. Alesia lived basically like a little animal in a tiny village. That caused her brain to be mis-wired terribly.
My friend Cindy is raising severely brain damaged children [some of them, not all] who were similarly abused and/or neglected, like my daughter. Most of Cindy's 38 adopted children came from the foster care system here in this country.
She has had mentally ill children of hers threaten her life, and the lives of the other kids, and the police did nothing.
The conversation in this country needs to address the root cause of our overpopulated prisons, and the tragic shootings, and the drug problems - all these issues are caused by mental health issues and/or mental illness, those are the root causes.
I have friends who struggle with being Bipolar. Brilliant, loving, wonderful people. I worry about them, because there is a high rate of suicide among bipolar people. My brother's painful divorce was because his ex was mentally ill, probably bipolar. She refused to get treatment.
Think about your own family. I bet you can come up with at least one example of someone who is struggling or has struggled with mental illness. Oftentimes alcoholism and drug addiction are symptoms of mental illness, or at least mental health issues.
I've read opinions of people who say my view is too simplistic. It's not. It's realistic.
It's also a tough dose of medicine for our society. It's much easier to blame an inanimate object like a gun, to say "Ban them!" than it is to say we need sweeping reforms.
We need BETTER MENTAL HOSPITALS. Not the torture chambers crumbling away to dust, filled with tormented ghosts. Not the hoses and padded cells. We need COMPASSION for people who are mentally ill, or who have issues like my daughter's.
Nobody chooses to be mentally ill.
IF we don't get a handle on it, there will be more shootings. You can ban all guns, and it won't stop the shootings because mentally ill people don't care about laws. Our prisons are filled with people who committed crimes with guns they didn't buy properly.
Our prisons are also filled with former foster kids. That's another system that needs an overhaul.
The more I think about this the more it makes me sad, and angry, and frustrated. Untreated mental health issues are the root cause of SO MANY of society's ills.
OK, I'm gonna climb off my soapbox now...
