For a real solution: Cato Article on Mental Health Reform

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There have been a lot of calls to incarcerate the mentally ill from the pro-gun side and I would argue that these calls are no better than the gun control calls. Up until the 70s, the mentally ill were warehoused in inhumane and awful conditions in sanitariums around the country. As a kid I lived near a few on LI where I grew up and we would walk the haunted grounds at night. Most by now are repurposed as schools, office space or industrial uses. Some remained prisons. I say prisons because these were nothing more than glorified prisons warehousing zombies (medication protocols for mental illness back then was to basically sedate the patient indefinitely).

Read the article here for a better solution. One where mental health commitments are not made by bureaucrats or self interested private hospital administrators (both of whom tend to abuse the process) but by panels using a scientific approach and the goal is not to restrict liberty but to provide structure and freedom to the afflicted.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/08...ns-proposal-to-reform-involuntary-commitment/

"Because of the inadequacies of our current civil commitment practices, 5,000 individuals with mental illness commit suicide annually.[2] Another 200,000 are homeless.[3] Of course, those are not primary concerns to libertarians, most of whom believe that individuals have a right to kill themselves or live homeless.

But as a result of our current restrictive commitment procedures, persons with mental illness kill 1,000 individuals annually, roughly 10% of all homicides.[4] The most likely victims are family members,[5] police, and sheriffs.[6] ...

Because of restrictive civil commitment laws, individuals with serious mental illness are regularly shot by law enforcement who believe their erratic and irrational behavior is putting their own safety or that of the public in immediate danger.[7] People with severe mental illnesses are killed by police in justifiable homicides at a rate nearly four times greater than the general public."
 
Hmmm....panels of physicians deciding treatment for people? I seem to remember others here not liking that idea with Obamacare.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for reforming our mental health system, but I haven't heard any public official embrace the idea in any meaningful way.
 
Hmmm....panels of physicians deciding treatment for people? I seem to remember others here not liking that idea with Obamacare.

Two very different issues. One precludes individuals from deciding their own fate and the other is dealing with individuals who have no capacity to think for themselves and decide destinies that are based on bizzaro world fantasies. I am not suggesting this is perfect, but it's a lot better than what we have now.
 
Two very different issues. One precludes individuals from deciding their own fate and the other is dealing with individuals who have no capacity to think for themselves and decide destinies that are based on bizzaro world fantasies. I am not suggesting this is perfect, but it's a lot better than what we have now.

Agreed, but don't you also worry that the system could be abused or misdiagnose someone?

We absolutely need a change, even if it is not perfect...something does need to change.

Problem is, the policy makers will go after the low hanging fruit and stiffen gun laws instead of making the hard call and sitting down to fix the REAL problem.
 
If politicians seek reform of the mental health process and care, it will be an admission of failure of their previous reform. Typically, politicians do not like to admit their wrong because they view themselves as above the rest of the population, incapable of doing no wrong. In order for them to seek an answer, they need to take an entire block of the population and pass laws to limit their freedoms so as to never admit any wrongdoing.
 
I understand where you're going with this, but most of these recent shooters were very young, and most hadn't registered (strongly or yet) as having mental health problems. Most were goths, ADD, intelligent, loners, yeah, but that describes millions of kids.

I look for the same explanations as others do, in other words what's going on that's different...copycatting and just coincidence come to mind first. But I also think, there's a hell of a lot of despair/malaise in the air in USA over the past few years. Not healthy for some to breath this during formative years. Kids and young adults know that our society+economy+gov is on a crash trajectory. Some just may not take it well.

No excuses for evil, but we know lack of gun control isn't the problem, and this wasn't an issue in 1950, so we look for modern explanations.



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Everyone should have to serve in one branch of the military upon turning 18, men and women. Israel uses this approach and seems to work well for them. Gets people involved in their country and would give us a chance to view them for signs of issues/mental illness. Would also get people around firearms to lessen the amount of the scared/uninformed. Seems kids today are missing guidance and are raised by things other than parents. Just a thought.
 
Deinstitutionalization was a plan brought to life by liberal politicians and activists in the 1970s. The goal was supposed to be to allow the mentally ill to be treated in the "least restrictive manner" and get them out of mostly state run hospitals and into community based treatment. This was accomplished by a combination of legislation, executive action, and litigation. The problem was that the envisioned network of community based treatment centers never materialized. As a result a lot of seriously mentally ill people ended up homeless with little or no treatment. Others refused treatment outright because they didn't like the side effects of the medications. None of them could be forced to accept treatment until they proved themselves a danger to themselves or others.

Unfortunately such proof often comes at the cost of someone's life. While the pre 1970s system was far from ideal and needed reform, it was demolished and no meaningful replacement system has ever been put in place. There is a chronic shortage of mental health beds in facilities across the state, and I'd have to guess across the country. Even when someone has to be committed, there is often no facility to lodge them in.

A large percentage of the homeless have some combination of mental health issues, drug or alcohol abuse, and a criminal record. Some of those people are so out of control that their families can not have them live with them.

Is this shooter one of them? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if this were the case.

The Cato solution might work, but unfortunately it would be litigated to death. Then again, I don't know that judges are well equipped to make these decisions either.
 
I think parents and doctors are too quick to prescribe drugs as a quick fix for their kids problems nowadays. I believe this hinders being able to observe possible warning signs at a young age and giving less than stellar results of diagnosing real extreme mental health issues in these youngins.

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This is a pretty good article on the history of deinstitutionalization and the rise of mass shootings. Clayton Cramer is a pretty thorough researcher, good enough that his pro 2A work was cited in both Heller and McDonald.

Mental health commitment decisions should be made by doctors, but there also have to be enough beds available and an independent procedure for appeals and releases.

The old system didn't work well, but the new system is much worse.
 
Why can't people realize that sometimes bad things just happen. Sometimes someone completely normal from an outside perspective will do terrible things. On the other hand, someone certifiably nuts might never harm a fly. Bad things happen, and people die. It's part of life, the sooner people deal with this the better. Free will gives every person the ability to do whatever they are physically capable of. You can't fix and prevent everything, that is human naivete at it's finest.
 
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