Opinion: Mass Shootings Due To A Mental Health Crisis

For nearly 2 decades or longer, this country has had a plague of mass shootings. Many, if not all of the shooters, have had serious mental health issues. Often times, it is discovered that some of the perpetrators were known, or made known to law enforcement, well before they carried out their heinous acts of violence.

People then become outraged, and more often than not, point the finger of blame at local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, for not stopping the atrocities before they occurred. Yet these agencies don't have the power to do anything until or if some perpetrator makes an attempt to carry out their dark acts.

What is the reason for this? In many cases, law enforcement agencies have been hamstrung by an out of touch justice system, and well intentioned, but myopic "victim's advocacy" groups.

Advocates for the mentally ill, too often have successfully painted all mental health agencies with the broad brush of the insane asylums of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They successfully portrayed them as wretched places of despair and hopelessness as often depicted in some old horror movie.

They effectively championed the picture of all mental health agencies as being like those insane asylums from long ago, and demanded the release of hundreds, if not thousands of mentally ill patients. The courts agreed, and large numbers of the mentally ill were released onto a society that frankly, did not want them, nor was prepared to provide them with the care they need.

We have seen some of them appear among the large numbers of the homeless. Mentally ill homeless people, whose numbers began to grow rapidly in the cities and towns that were, and still are unprepared for them. Numbers that grew rapidly after court decisions ordering their release, with little or no consideration as to how they would continue to receive the treatment they need, or the physical care that all human beings have a right to.

In essence, another stigma was added to these already stigmatized people for being mentally ill, and to those facilities that cared for them. This has resulted in a justice system that was and still is, all too reluctant to give orders for the diagnosis, treatment, and care of those people whose behavior, threats, and actions, have warranted it.

Until there is a demand from the public at large for reforms, the numbers of these heinous, evil atrocities will only occur again and again. The time for us all to demand action is now.

We must all remember as well, that the time for us to pray is now, and always. Especially pray for all the victims, the first responders, and the young shooter Nikolas Cruz as well.