Quote:
Originally Posted by bhlloy
Saying "not a lot of countries have cured mental illness" is obviously a strawman, but the fact is most other Western countries do have some form of nationalized healthcare and compulsory mental health care that means it's a billion times less likely that these cases fall through the cracks and people who need mental health care get it. I'd love to see figures on the % of people needing mental health care in the US who receive it vs most of western europe. I would imagine it's probably night and day.
I saw this posted on facebook and honestly, while it's a troll job I can't completely disagree with it
"It's not guns, it's mental health!"
"Great, let's get people mental healthcare!"
"No! The government shouldn't be involved in mental healthcare!"
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Most of these shooters were relatively wealthy and had access to mental healthcare.
The government didn't involuntarily detain them though. I have no idea to what extent that happens in Europe. But that's always been a tough sell here. We've tried to use the criminal justice system for that purpose, but we have real reluctance to lock up law-abiding people who we deem mentally ill. I would love to see that mindset changed. I train police officers on occasion and always emphasize their statutory power to detain people who, due to their mental illness, are threats to themselves or others. Of course, police are only going to be aware of that when someone is acting out in a dangerous way, and a lot of these people are loners who spend most of their time in their homes. And even when there is a situation, people are detained briefly and stabilized and released, at least until they commit their first crime. Adam Lanza was treated and the schools and doctors knew how crazy he was, but I don't think he committed any crimes, or acted out in any way to provide evidence that he was dangerous. I think the mother knew more but was concealing info from authorities, which is easy to do in a country that has relatively strong privacy rights. If there was such evidence though, I'm still not not sure they would have locked him up, because we just don't do that as much as we should.
People struggle with mental illness (and addiction) even when they have resources to treat them. It's a real inexact science. So I don't think it tells the whole story either.