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Let's Talk About America's Dangerously Gutted Mental Healthcare System
How much Damage could be averted by attending to the other side of this bloody coin?
The Right’s program for public safety: Everyone should have a gun and few should get adequate mental healthcare.
The scene has replayed itself over and over -- in Tucson, at Virginia Tech, at Columbine. On Friday in Connecticut, another unstable man has taken innocent lives in a burst of terrifying violence.
Inadequate gun control is only one half of the story. The other is the shameful job America does of treating the mentally ill. Today, 45 million American adults suffer from mental illness. Eleven million of those cases are considered serious. Most of these people are not dangerous, but if they can’t get treatment, the odds of potential violence increase
Yet the mentally ill are finding it increasingly difficult to get help. Mental health funding has been plummeting for decades. Since 2009, states have cut billions for mental health from their budgets. As Daniel Lippman has reported in the Huffington Post:
snip
Mental healthcare workers have been laid off. Vulnerable people are neglected until their situation becomes acute – often after it’s too late. Many are incarcerated, often subjected to solitary confinement because prison officials don’t know what to do with them. Others are homeless – as many as 45 percent of the people living on the streets suffer from mental illness.
The scene has replayed itself over and over -- in Tucson, at Virginia Tech, at Columbine. On Friday in Connecticut, another unstable man has taken innocent lives in a burst of terrifying violence.
Inadequate gun control is only one half of the story. The other is the shameful job America does of treating the mentally ill. Today, 45 million American adults suffer from mental illness. Eleven million of those cases are considered serious. Most of these people are not dangerous, but if they can’t get treatment, the odds of potential violence increase
Yet the mentally ill are finding it increasingly difficult to get help. Mental health funding has been plummeting for decades. Since 2009, states have cut billions for mental health from their budgets. As Daniel Lippman has reported in the Huffington Post:
snip
Mental healthcare workers have been laid off. Vulnerable people are neglected until their situation becomes acute – often after it’s too late. Many are incarcerated, often subjected to solitary confinement because prison officials don’t know what to do with them. Others are homeless – as many as 45 percent of the people living on the streets suffer from mental illness.
more at link:
Alternet:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wake-another-mass-shooting-lets-talk-about-americas-dangerously-gutted-mental?akid=9805.71875.vYjsNg&rd=1&src=newsletter761328&t=11
