Mental Cases

First we were talking gun control, now we’re talking mental health. It’s certainly true that anyone who picks up an assault weapon and shoots up an elementary school has obviously fallen through some sort of crack in our health care system. But I’m curious to know how exactly this is going to be fixed.

One obvious remedy, as it is to many of life’s problems, is more money – in this case, to offer more access to mental health services. The only problem is, the potentially dangerous people we hope to control don’t necessarily want more access to health services. They usually have to be forced to take advantage of them. If they’re adults, who’s going to do the forcing? Will therapists get more authority to commit people? What kinds of behavior will cause that kind of response?

In the absence of facts in the Newtown case, which are slow to come out (or slower than cable news would like), the talking heads are filling time discussing autism, schizophrenia and other conditions. Parents of autistic children are already worried that this syndrome is being stigmatized as one that could lead to the mayhem that we saw last week. One of the signs, according to the discussion I heard, is “lack of empathy.” So people who aren’t empathetic, who lack social skills, or maybe just prefer to be alone instead of joining the crowd, may be suspicious? How exactly are we going to screen for this, and what are we going to do with that information? Gun control may be politically difficult, but it’s way easier than this issue, and now I'm getting a little nervous.

It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from a horror movie of the 1930s, in which one attendant at an English insane asylum says to another, “Sometimes, I think everyone around here is crazy, except for me and for you. And then again, I has me doubts about you!”