We Die Too

 

Let's put aside all arguments about whether or not there is a clear statistical relationship between mental illness and violence for a moment. Doesn't it bother anybody besides me that no one gives a damn about the mental health care "system" until they need someone to blame for a tragedy? Then we all start talking about how to strengthen the rules on involuntary detention and commitment, how to identify "dangerous" mentally ill people and do something or other with them, how to increase "access" to mental health treatment (which often does not exist) and somehow restrict access to guns by scary and dangerous mentally ill folks whose futures we have foreseen to feature acts of violence against others and/or, secondarily, themselves.

We die too.

I live in the state of Virginia. After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, in which 32 people died and 17 were injured, Virginia pumped $38 million into the mental health care system, a relatively large boost but not massive. Seven years later that's all drained away and things have returned to how they were before that tragedy. Until now. New bills will ramp the funding back up and try to "fix" the broken mental health system. Why? Because two months ago a prominent state senator, Creigh Deeds, was stabbed by his son, who then killed himself.

We die too.

This incident is tragic. Mr. Deeds is a fine man, who has now lost a son as well as suffered an injury. Today he acknowledged publicly that "the system failed" his son. He is right. And in response, bills to change and fund the mental health care system are on the table again. A large portion of them address the specific procedures, programs and legal restrictions that resulted in Mr. Deeds' son being released after two hours because he was not deemed a danger to himself. Those aspects of the mental health care system are some of many that are "broken." But there are others.

And we die too because of them.

Those failings and inadequacies of the system kill many more people than the ones in high profile tragedies. Mentally ill people do kill, as do people without mental illnesses. But mentally ill people themselves also die in droves -- by suicide, by illness-related disease, because of homelessness and victimization resulting from their illnesses, because of family dysfunction their illnesses contribute to -- and many of those lethal conditions are directly caused by a lack of basic mental health care.

Those are tragedies too.

Mentally ill people are dying by the thousands everyday but no one pays attention because they have not injured or hurt anyone else. Suicide killed 35,000 people in 2007. We are dying too, on a very large scale.

And that is tragic too.

Yes, we should increase funding for the mental health system. We should make access simple and immediate, we should give special attention to anyone showing signs of violence -- we should do all of the things Virginia is talking about doing, but we should do it not just in the name of the victims of high-profile shootings and assaults. We should do it in the name of the mentally ill who suffer greatly from their illnesses every day and seldom become violent. Yet violence is done to them every day by their illnesses, silently and invisibly. Their minds, their hearts and often their lives fall victim to painful and incurable illness.

We die too. And those deaths are tragedies. They are tragedies too.