[Vision2020] How Many More Jared Loughners? America's Mental Health Crisis

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Dear Visionaries:

Below is my radio commentary/column for this week.  The full version is attached.

Nick

HOW MANY MORE JARED LOUGHNERS? AMERICA’S MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS 

Jared Loughner, the gunman who killed six and wounded 14 at a Tucson Safeway, has all the symptoms of someone who is mentally ill.  Even though anti-government rhetoric was found in his writings, many people want us to believe that Loughner’s actions are exclusively those of a deranged mind. 

In a heart-wrenching letter in the Daily News, a father wrote about his autistic son, who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day and sends frightening e-mails to his father. He confesses that he “can easily see how Eric might decide to make himself instantly famous with the aid of a gun.”  Violent rhetoric can indeed have violent consequences.

Mental health professionals are reminding us that not all those who have a mental disorder are violent individuals.  In fact, the mentally ill are more often the targets of abuse not perpetrators.  It is estimated that only 40,000 of 4 million mentally ill Americans can be considered violent. 

Loughner should have been referred to a mental health clinic, but he most likely would not have received treatment.  In his own Pima County 45 percent of those in mental health programs were disenrolled in 2009 because of budget cuts. 

A 2007 study in the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that 67 percent of Americans with mental disorders do not receive any treatment (vol. 370: 878-89).  As with other social and health statistics—such a teen births and infant mortality—U.S. mental health care compares with Third World countries.

Fox News’ psychiatrist Keith Ablow states that “in most states, the mental health care delivery systems have been gutted by disproportionate cuts that leave them reeling, understaffed and unreliable.” 

Ablow also blames private health insurers “who routinely deny comprehensive services (like hospitalization) to people, even if they are psychotic and drug addicted and even if they have expressed very serious thoughts of violence.” But Ablow and his friend Glenn Beck condemn the civilized world’s socialized medicine that offers much better mental health coverage.

Republicans now control the House and the most state legislatures ever, and they will make sure that economic inequality increases and funding for social and health programs decreases.  

The GOP mantra of “No New Taxes” will prevent the implementation of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health’s recommendations. Set up in 2002 by then President George W. Bush, the commissioners bemoaned the collapse of the nation’s mental health services and proposed increased federal funding in this area. 

The advocacy group America Mental Health makes a strong pitch to the nation’s business leaders by reminding them that “untreated and mistreated mental illness costs the United States $150 billion in lost productivity each year, and U.S. businesses foot up to $44 billion of this bill.” 

American Mental Health proposes that “many considerations—ranging from social justice to economic self-interest—make it imperative that the federal government assume a major, focused, coordinated role in mental health policy, a role both different and larger than it currently plays.” 

In his state of the state address Idaho Governor “Butch” Otter encouraged families to gather around the kitchen table to solve their problems rather than relying on “soul-crushing” state and federal programs to help them. 

Even the strongest families are helpless in the face of the challenges posed by the Jared Loughners of the nation. Even the wisest fathers and mothers on limited Idaho budgets must admit that government subsidized mental health is the only way their troubled children are going to get the help they need. 

Gov. Otter is not calling for cuts in Health and Welfare in his FY12 budget, but the department has suffered a 21 percent reduction over the past three years.  In mental health alone 49 positions have been eliminated in the adult and youth divisions.  In 2009 a Pocatello man, who had been removed from a mental health program, shot and wounded a man near his home.
 
When I travel to India it is depressing to see so many beggars on the streets and so many people that are obviously mentally ill.  The US Conference of Mayors estimates that 40 percent of America’s 1.6 million homeless people are mentally ill.  This is a national disgrace and an international embarrassment.

No amount of Otter “table talk” is going to solve these basic social and psychological problems. Far too many souls have already been crushed and fallen through the huge holes in America’s social safety net.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.
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