Mental illness has to be addressed in this tragedy...

[Blue_Roses]

How many times do we have to see this kind of carnage before something is done to address mental illness and those who carry guns? We've seen it countless times in the media. There were several people who were scared of this guy, including his college professor. Why do these people keep falling through the cracks and how can we prevent it? Then you add the volatile political environment and it's a murder waiting to happen.


This guy thought he could fly:

"By early 2010, dreaming had become Loughner's "waking life, his reality," Tierney says. "He sort of drifted off, didn't really care about hanging out with friends. He'd be sleeping a lot." Loughner's alternate reality was attractive, Tierney says. "He figured out he could fly." Loughner, according to Tierney, told his friends, "I'm so into it because I can create things and fly. I'm everything I'm not in this world."


More...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1

[valerief]

1. Too bad Reagan released from their hospitals. nt

[cali]

13. yes, let's just return to the good old days of warehousing people.

Not.

[TBF]

17. Oh for gods sake that is not what valerief meant, she was pointing out

that Reagan cut the funding for mental health facilities. Most progressive folks know that institutionalizing folks is not the front line or preferred treatment, but her point was the lack of funding. If we are not going to treat them in hospitals, then we need to fund outpatient care. Otherwise there will be more Jared's out there shooting, and that is the last thing we need.

[cali]

19. the mental health care system is far, far better today than it was in 1980.

whatever Reagan did.

[TBF]

20. It may well be - in fact it's been 30 years so I would hope so. I do know

my knowledge on all of this is outdated. I worked in a psych hospital years ago (late 80's, early 90's) when I was right out of college. At that point we were seeing the St. Elizabeth patients cycling in and out of short-term programs, many homeless, would wind up in an ER sometimes and then to Psych (Wash DC area).

What I suspect though, just looking at other areas of health, is that this is another area where people are self-medicating particularly if they don't have good health insurance coverage. We talk on here about the folks who aren't getting much-needed medical care but not so much specifically about mental health care. Perhaps the silver lining of this tragedy is that folks will focus on that once the dust settles.

[Odin2005]

28. Those institutions where hells of torture and abuse.

Remember Nurse Ratchet?

[EmeraldCityGrl]

2. There are many big issues at play here that are not being discussed.

How about the fact we are living in a country that has been at war for the last ten years.
There's a culture of violence in this country that comes from several sources. What
happens when all the young people start returning from the wars and try to assimilate
back into society with many suffering from PTSD? We have huge problems ahead to deal
with and frankly I'm surprised something like this didn't happen sooner.

[Blue_Roses]

9. this has happened before...

Virginia Tech, Columbine, etc., also displayed warning signs that weren't taken very seriously.

Something has to be done.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

11. I'm referring to an assassination attempt on an

elected official hasn't happened in decades. We can probably expect more security
for our elected officials and even less access for the average law abiding citizen.

But, as I stated in my other post, we live in a violent society. The wars and the trauma
those wars cause our soldiers will come back to haunt us in the future. I suppose because
our president is a Democrat the wars and their impact on this country are not scrutinized
as much here on DU as they were when Bush was in office.

[One_Life_To_Give]

22. Politician, McDonalds, Professor, School

We have a long history of "Lone Wolves" suddenly becoming extremely violent. Typically taking several individuals with themselves to the grave.

In many of these cases there were warning signs that were missed/not addressed. Until the carnage had been unleashed. We need a better way to identify and get help so that the next mass killing can be prevented. Before some "Lone Wolf' shoots up a movie theater, mall, employers place of business or whatever.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

23. YouTube could be instrumental in doing this

It's the perfect venue as we saw with this tragedy for these people to
post their final statements. Anyone that read and watched his videos
could discern they were those of a mentally ill person.

[One_Life_To_Give]

26. But how/to whom should it be reported?

Who has the authority to dig in and try to make a diagnosis? Is authorized to petition the court to compel treatment?

[EmeraldCityGrl]

29. If I came across a recent "goodbye cruel world"

posting by anyone, anywhere I would reach out to that person
and if they failed to respond or responded in a way that confirmed
they were dead set on killing themselves, I would contact the forum
administrators, their local authorities or the FBI.

I think we've become so use to seeing and reading so much
bizarre stuff we hardly pay attention anymore. Maybe it's just a
matter of us paying closer attention to some of the stuff we see
online.

That being said, I realize we have to respect people's rights and
privacy, but some people are begging for attention and this guy
was one of them. The red flags were everywhere.

[mdmc]

3. thanks for the link

r

[zippy890]

4. easy access to guns + untreated mental illness

is the problem. problems.

I wish we would make a national campaign to research and better treat mental illness, like we've done with cancer, heart disease obesity.
and education, outreach, screenings for people. Men, especially young men who get sick are less apt to seek treatment, families are afraid of their own family members, they don't know what to do, they know something's wrong, they are also ashamed and other things get in the way.

untreated mental illness is devastating to so many people, can't we put our hearts and our best medical minds into researching these horrible illnesses of the brain that kill so many people in violence, substance abuse, domestic abuse, suicides, on and on.

can't we take a step in the right direction and see who the real enemy is here, I know its hard, there are no easy answers.

and we need to stop those kinds of guns that make it easy to kill so many people.

[Blue_Roses]

10. exactly

nt

[cali]

12. garbage. The mentally ill are no more likely to commit a crime than anyone else

they are a lot more likely to be a victim of a crime.

[One_Life_To_Give]

24. What about "Lone Wolves" ?

I agree about the mentally ill as a group typically being the victim.

But when it comes to some of the mass murder of random people cases. Be it Virginia Tech, the McDonald's some years back etc. Very high profile indiscriminate carnage. It's a shame that seemingly often after the fact. People can recount the warning signs. But we never seem to be able to intervene in time to prevent these tragedies. (Although perhaps by definition it's impossible to know of those cases where successful intervention took place.)

[rfranklin]

5. Yes, the psychopathology of the right wingers must be addressed...

I suggest increased doses of risperdal

[LuckyStrykes]

6. Thanks for posting this. We can't overlook the fact this is a

very sick person who needed help just as a cancer patient would benefit from chemotherapy. The resources that a mentally ill person has without insurance is nill. We have to change the way we treat people with mental disorders.

[cali]

15. nope. not true. Yes, health services have been cut back in many states

but every state has community health services and someone with severe mental illness has access to treatment- maybe not the best treatment- in every state.

[wickerwoman]

27. But access to treatement doesn't mean much for many with mental illnesses

whose illnesses prevent them from seeking treatment.

The Virginia Tech shooter got treatment when he was a teen but then chose not to continue as a adult and chose not to take medication.

[mzmolly]

7. Agreed. It sounds like this young man is a victim of systemic failure,

as well.

[cali]

16. Looks more like he was failed by his family and to a lesser extent, his friends.

[mzmolly]

21. The school knew he was a probable

danger. We're not sure who tried to do what yet, however.

[pacalo]

8. I absolutely agree. I haven't seen the media call for this yet.

And, without hearing any specific facts about his family, I'm hearing that his family is "very dysfunctional", which is disturbing to me. It disturbs me because I know it's very difficult to rein in the odd behavior of an adult-age mentally disturbed son. In a video shown on Keith's show of the shooter's home, there was a camouflage tarp hanging from the eaves of a patio roof in the backyard with a skull on some type of make-shift table. Very odd, but if this alone is why the parents are being called "dysfunctional", I disagree.

There is virtually NO help out there for mental health problems. The parents of this young man kept him living at their home & that's a plus for them. Now, if they had removed that canvas he tacked up on the patio eave, gotten rid of all his weird paraphenalia, he'd have billigerantly replaced them. Mentally-ill people can't be rationalized with & are hard to deal with. The fact that he was living at home says something good about the parents.

[Taverner]

14. Yes, exactly - 100% agree

Unlike many here I don't blame guns or the NRA for this killing.

If you want to find the source, its our piss-poor treatment of mental health in this country. Had he been treated, he might not have killed. In fact, I think if given the choice of (1) Psychiatry or (2) restrictive gun laws, there would be less of a chance that the murders happened if he had mental health treatment. Did that make any sense? It's early for me.

[Imajika]

18. Agree entirely...

This horrible killing spree/assassination attempt is going to turn out to be about mental health issues rather than anything to do with right/left, the "tone of the debate", or gun control.

It is very likely that Laughner was mentally deranged and very possibly suffering from completely untreated paranoid schizophrenia. He had exhibited all the warning signs for quite some time and his illness apparently went untreated.

The good that may come out of this is to push legislation at the local, state and federal level to better identify those with mental illness and treat them as quickly as possible.

[TBF]

25. Makes sense to me -

I don't love guns but we see what happens in this country when things are banned so we know the criminals would still have as many guns as they wanted... Would really like to see mental health focused on and treatment funded. It occurred to me in the midst of this that so many can't afford health insurance and may not know of any low-income/free resources out there.