Bonne Viviante
[one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, and four of weak]
It would be a mistake to conclude that incidents such as this are characteristic of people who have mental illness. In fact, these events are very rare. Studies show that having a mental illness, in itself, does not increase one’s propensity to commit serious violence; other factors come into play, including co-occurring substance abuse, trauma and, perhaps in this instance, today’s vitriolic political climate.
Over the past decades, a handful of similar tragedies—at Virginia Tech, in the New York City subway and elsewhere—raised immediate concerns about mental healthcare in this country. These concerns soon translated into efforts for quick-fixes, typically, efforts to enact laws making it easier to commit people to psychiatric hospitals or to court-order outpatient treatment. The fact that Arizona has had such laws in place for many years points to the hollowness of these solutions. The plain truth is that America’s mental healthcare system is horribly broken and horribly underfunded. And across the nation, budget cuts continue to eviscerate community mental health programs that reach out to vulnerable individuals and put them on a path to recovery.
