Fixing Our Mental Health System

[Geee]

PJMedia:

The recent tragedy in Newtown has finally woken Americans up to the pitiful state of our mental health system. We have had many dozens of these tragedies over the last three decades, and certainly, the pattern has been clear since at least 2000: people with recognized serious mental-illness problems are about half of these mass murderers, and it seems likely that much of the rest had unrecognized or perhaps merely undocumented problems. (What sane person murders a bunch of complete strangers, then commits suicide?)

I have been banging the drum on this for several years, and each time, someone asks, “How are you going to pay for all this?” Mental hospitals are expensive to build, especially because so many states have either closed or demolished their state institutions. Once built, operating costs are substantial. In an era when many state governments are already in financial trouble, where is the money coming from to create a safer and more humane society?

 

We are already spending the money; we just aren’t spending it very efficiently, because we are spending it on cleanup. Drawing chalk marks around bodies, having medical examiners do autopsies, assigning extra police to schools across the country after each disaster — these aren’t free.