Mental Health is the Issue, Not Guns and Armed Guards in Schools is not the Solution

In isolated incidents Sam, doctors have done terrible things indeed, but only in isolated incidents. It is nothing like the mental health system of the 1940s and you know it.

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I am a historian by trade, I've read quite a bit about the history of science and medicine and I can tell you with utmost certainty that your opinion here is COMPLETELY wrong. Utterly wrong.

Explorations (and terrible abuses) into mental health care go back centuries, just like the many truly terrible and destructive and lethal things that were commonly performed, prescribed, and administered by other types of medical practitioner -- far MORE commonly than the abuses within the field of mental health. Mental health care was frequently wrong-headed and abusive and sometimes deadly, but so was just about every other field of health care. Treatments were, more often than not, worse than the disease, illness, or injury.

No general practitioner is going to have you locked up and prevent you from ever legally owning a firearm again. Not in this day and age.

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Certainly true, but your cardiologist has very little concern that the lethal event you're about to experience may cause the traumatic deaths of many other people -- different stakes, you understand.

However, medical professionals absolutely do have the authority to "ruin" your life by ending your career if you happen to be in various fields where your condition might put others' lives at risk.

If you want to strengthen that system, the same system that systematically committed terrible atrocities, and the same system you are seeking to revive, then by all means knock yourself out. As I said before you're making your own noose.

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I've expressed my own opinion about the appropriate response to the school shooting problem elsewhere, but suffice to say here that I'm not convinced that any major social change or reassignment of funds specifically to address the problem makes any logical, statistical or fiscal sense at all. So, from that perspective you may consider that I'm not a fan of systemic changes to the mental health system either.

BryanDavis said:

I Can demonize an entire field of medicine. And I shall and have. No other field of medicine has ever done anything like lobotomize people. No other field of medicine had to deal with the massive targeted cutbacks of things like the Community Reinvestment Act (here in New York). No other field of medicine has to force its treatment on its patients as a matter of course. And no other field of medicine is ever going to try and take your guns away.

A psychiatrist or psychologist can and will.

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Ahhh, you need to look a little further...the syphillis experiments on southern black men, is just one example. Forced sterilization of the poor? The mentally disabled? Such 'experiments' & 'treatments' were common up until the 70's, including on orphans and prisoners....no consent, in many cases they didnt even know they were guinea pigs.

THey forced plenty on unwilling and/or unknowing 'patients.' And that's just in the US...should I go into the doctors in concentration camps in Nazi Germany? ....they were no different than other doctors except that they felt they had a new pool of research animals (like the orphans and prisoners here). Or the Japanese?

I think that your research has not been very thorough.

Wow, getting way off course. I am actually a doctor and I don't know what the you know what everyone is talking about.

Facts, all research today must go through strict protocols and committees before any patient is signed up. Full disclosure of the research is mandatory for each patient. Getting a study through this process is very difficult and highly regulated.

We are not the Japanese and Nazi folks that committed criminal acts against POW's and concentration camp victims.

Primary care doctors can only document the facts of a case and give their opinion. Doctors do not make these sort of decisions, we only document the medical conditions present or absent.

If a person is a pilot for instance, the doctor cannot end their career unless that doctor is also a Flight Surgeon acting on military protocols in an immediate action. Medical review boards acting on published regulations are the only officers who have authority in a military situation to end a career. I know of no analogous entity in the civilian world. I have spent 9 years in military medicine and over 10 years in the civilian world.

I know of no DSM diagnostic criteria of gun ownership constituting psychiatric illness.

Alaska444 said:

Wow, getting way off course. I am actually a doctor and I don't know what the you know what everyone is talking about.

Facts, all research today must go through strict protocols and committees before any patient is signed up. Full disclosure of the research is mandatory for each patient. Getting a study through this process is very difficult and highly regulated.

We are not the Japanese and Nazi folks that committed criminal acts against POW's and concentration camp victims.

Primary care doctors can only document the facts of a case and give their opinion. Doctors do not make these sort of decisions, we only document the medical conditions present or absent.

If a person is a pilot for instance, the doctor cannot end their career unless that doctor is also a Flight Surgeon acting on military protocols in an immediate action. Medical review boards acting on published regulations are the only officers who have authority in a military situation to end a career. I know of no analogous entity in the civilian world. I have spent 9 years in military medicine and over 10 years in the civilian world.

I know of no DSM diagnostic criteria of gun ownership constituting psychiatric illness.

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The other gentleman's view was very unbalanced. I didnt say such things were still practiced...are you denying those things in our past however?

And also...constitutional carry...please explain?

Alaska444 said:

I know of no DSM diagnostic criteria of gun ownership constituting psychiatric illness.

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I do- it's a rare disorder though- when I see a gun like I can't help but buy it. BWAAAHAHAHAHA!

No cure.

9MMare said:

The other gentleman's view was very unbalanced. I didnt say such things were still practiced...are you denying those things in our past however?

And also...constitutional carry...please explain?

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Way off topic, history has spoken volumes on this atrocities. Easy to find on a simple Google search.

Back to topic, Mental health forensic evaluations of mass killers has identified several common elements such as taking months to plan, speaking to other people about their plans, upper middle class white kids, isolated personalities, etc.

If we are looking at a mental health solution, the answer is in profiling of at risk kids and intervening through several current methods of police work. We already have adequate in patient facilities to lock up all of those found to be a danger to self or others. After all, these are very rare events.

Once again, we don't need to reinvent the wheel or jump off any cliffs to look to potential solutions. Since there is no dragnet that can get every single creep off the streets and out of our schools since many can hide below the radar, allowing CCW in schools like Utah won't break the piggy bank either.

Looking at the root causes of these horrible events, there is much we already know to place directed approaches to preventing these events. Israel uses much of this in their daily lives to detect and prevent terrorist acts. This is just a different version of that risk.

Constitutional Carry:

Constitutional Carry is a situation within a jurisdiction in which the carrying of concealed firearms is generally not restricted by the law. When a state or other jurisdiction has adopted Constitutional Carry, it is legal for law-abiding citizens to carry a handgun, firearm, or other weapon concealed with or without an applicable permit or license. There are currently four U.S. states that have adopted Constitutional Carry and eleven U.S. states that have pending legislation to adopt it. The scope and applicability of such laws or proposed legislation can vary from state to state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Carry

Jeff White said:

Did anyone read the article I linked to in my original post? There was possibly a mass shooting thwarted a couple weeks before the Sandy Hook shooting when the parents of a disturbed young man called police after he bought an AR15.

In the article they relate their long fight with the system to keep this young man institutionalized. Something is wrong with a system that refuses to find a bed in a residential treatment facility for someone like that. Something is wrong with a system that has so few beds that people who are certified by the court as criminally insane languish in our county jails for months at a time before a bed is found for them. A system where judges threaten to hold directors of institutions in civil contempt for not taking these patients is severly broken.

Not once did I suggest that we go back to a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest type mental health system.

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Great point Jeff, the other poster was off course for sure. There is much to be fixed, but the issue of recognizing at risk kids has a lot of data behind it today. We can and should do better detecting them in advance.

Alaska444 said:

Way off topic, history has spoken volumes on this atrocities. Easy to find on a simple Google search.

Back to topic, Mental health forensic evaluations of mass killers has identified several common elements such as taking months to plan, speaking to other people about their plans, upper middle class white kids, isolated personalities, etc.

If we are looking at a mental health solution, the answer is in profiling of at risk kids and intervening through several current methods of police work. We already have adequate in patient facilities to lock up all of those found to be a danger to self or others. After all, these are very rare events.

Once again, we don't need to reinvent the wheel or jump off any cliffs to look to potential solutions. Since there is no dragnet that can get every single creep off the streets and out of our schools since many can hide below the radar, allowing CCW in schools like Utah won't break the piggy bank either.

Looking at the root causes of these horrible events, there is much we already know to place directed approaches to preventing these events. Israel uses much of this in their daily lives to detect and prevent terrorist acts. This is just a different version of that risk.

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Thanks for your input.

Again, I was only trying to provide some balance to the other poster's response.

You are taking it a bit further.

Sam1911 said:

I am a historian by trade, I've read quite a bit about the history of science and medicine and I can tell you with utmost certainty that your opinion here is COMPLETELY wrong. Utterly wrong.

Explorations (and terrible abuses) into mental health care go back centuries, just like the many truly terrible and destructive and lethal things that were commonly performed, prescribed, and administered by other types of medical practitioner -- far MORE commonly than the abuses within the field of mental health. Mental health care was frequently wrong-headed and abusive and sometimes deadly, but so was just about every other field of health care. Treatments were, more often than not, worse than the disease, illness, or injury.

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No, I'm not. And I know I'm risking banning by arguing this here, but I'm willing to risk it. So pig-headed is your stance on mental health.

I don't doubt that treatments were worse than the disease. But in no other field of medicine are theyforced on the patients.

I don't need to be a historian to know that.

Did anyone read the article I linked to in my original post? There was possibly a mass shooting thwarted a couple weeks before the Sandy Hook shooting when the parents of a disturbed young man called police after he bought an AR15.

In the article they relate their long fight with the system to keep this young man institutionalized. Something is wrong with a system that refuses to find a bed in a residential treatment facility for someone like that. Something is wrong with a system that has so few beds that people who are certified by the court as criminally insane languish in our county jails for months at a time before a bed is found for them. A system where judges threaten to hold directors of institutions in civil contempt for not taking these patients is severly broken.

Not once did I suggest that we go back to a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest type mental health system.

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My apologies but no, I didn't read the article you linked to.

But the idea of building More mental institutions to host a population that was abused by them and is now moving towards more amicable solutions, like supported apartments and group residences is absurd.

The idea isn't going to fly and I'm glad of it, and people can call me "unbalanced" all they want but that's just the reality.

Ahhh, you need to look a little further...the syphillis experiments on southern black men, is just one example. Forced sterilization of the poor? The mentally disabled? Such 'experiments' & 'treatments' were common up until the 70's, including on orphans and prisoners....no consent, in many cases they didnt even know they were guinea pigs.

THey forced plenty on unwilling and/or unknowing 'patients.' And that's just in the US...should I go into the doctors in concentration camps in Nazi Germany? ....they were no different than other doctors except that they felt they had a new pool of research animals (like the orphans and prisoners here). Or the Japanese?

I think that your research has not been very thorough.

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I'm not going to get into how I know what I know, but do you have any idea what a supported apartment is?

Again I'm really risking banning here, but the views on mental health on this website are appalling.

Alaska444 said:

Constitutional Carry:

Constitutional Carry is a situation within a jurisdiction in which the carrying of concealed firearms is generally not restricted by the law. When a state or other jurisdiction has adopted Constitutional Carry, it is legal for law-abiding citizens to carry a handgun, firearm, or other weapon concealed with or without an applicable permit or license. There are currently four U.S. states that have adopted Constitutional Carry and eleven U.S. states that have pending legislation to adopt it. The scope and applicability of such laws or proposed legislation can vary from state to state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Carry

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While I would like that to be supported by the 2A...or anywhere else in the Constitution, and I have read a bit on both sides of the argument, I dont really believe that 'concealed carry' is a Constitutional Right (as I have seen supported so far).

I believe that it is up to the states to determine that.

Am I thrilled with that? No, but I cant just deny the interpretations of the Constitution. And I do believe in state's rights. I'm also pretty content with my state's cc and other gun laws. (Altho they are already under grave attack since the Newtown shooting.)

9MMare said:

Thanks for your input.

Again, I was only trying to provide some balance to the other poster's response.

You are taking it a bit further.

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No problem, take care. We all have much to learn and consider with these matters.

Origionally posted by BryanDavis

Again I'm really risking banning here, but the views on mental health on this website are appalling.

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Your views on this subject are different than my own. But I acknowledge that you feel very strongly about this issue. Do you have any first hand experience with the mental health field that would support your position?

Again I'm really risking banning here, but the views on mental health on this website are appalling.

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Nobody is going to ban you for stating your views in polite logical manner.

CZ guy asked

Do you have any first hand experience with the mental health field that would support your position?

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I don't care if you do or not, but I do.

Unlike surgery or using antibiotics in physical medicine. We don't cure mental illness, we control the symptoms. Whether it be cathartic treatment, medication, or any one of the treatment modalities.

The problem with past abuses is not relevant as the current paradigm is mainstreaming rather than segregation.
It is not working.
Jails, and homeless shelters, have become the new mental hospitals since the closing of mental hospitals starting in the 80's. I can't think of a more inappropriate, inhumane setting. Yet our government is OK with it and then shocked when it doesn't work.
So when an identified, documented, ill person, as was the case in aurora, and VT, commits an atrocity, the system was at a loss to prevent it and protect society.
That should be the source of our outrage not the tool.

So much easier to blame the tool.

"Something is wrong with a system that refuses to find a bed in a residential treatment facility for someone like that."

Find a bed, after all the cuts the politicians have administered to the budgets year after year, decade after decade? I think we're lucky there are any treatment slots at all. I cannot blame the mental health system(s) when they have been given next to nothing in the way of resources to work with.

John

9MMare asks:

[Do you have that same attitude about govt paid health care? Or even welfare? Spending more in our child protective services agencies?QUOTE]

Lets try it this way:

Gov't paid health care: We already have Medicare and Medicaid

Welfare: That's a given, it's out there.

Child protective services: Also a given, it's out there.

As for my attitude towards the above programs, yes, I do believe that those programs are needed, but with strict monitering which unfortunately is not being done. I don't know what can be done to resolve it, simply because (Like any large organization) there will always be some form of corruption within those organizations. But to deny those who would really need that type of assistance would not be an intelligent alternative.
I hope this answers your question.

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Constitutional Carry is a situation within a jurisdiction in which the carrying of concealed firearms is generally not restricted by the law.

This is a selective posting of only part of the definition which also states "The scope and applicability of such laws or proposed legislation can vary from state to state."

Certain restrictions are not only practical but necessary for the safety of others. Are you advocating that unrestricted carry of guns should be allowed in a courtroom during divorce hearings and domestic violence cases where emotions run high?

It seems to me that for mental health care to be effective it will require that patients in some, maybe many cases will be forced into institutions and also forced meds. In the past I believe there was massive corruption and abuse that stemmed from this. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions and I think there are many unintended consequenses that need to be thought out before we go "all in" with what people are asking for. My biggest fear is who gets to decide and what criteria they use to strip away ones freedom and how we as a country come to terms with another big gov. plan to fix us in the name of safety.

Certain restrictions are not only practical but necessary for the safety of others. Are you advocating that unrestricted carry of guns should be allowed in a courtroom during divorce hearings and domestic violence cases where emotions run high?

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So how about sporting events where emotions also run very high for some. There are many emotionals events that may effect us on a daily basis, I hate to think that we should be dissarmed for them all.
Gun free zones are themselves caused by emotion, the ones I know of have very little difference with free to carry zones aside from the emotional one.
Having a gun at school is no different than one in a crowded theater, resturant, mall, church, sporting event, college campus or zoo except the emotional tie with it being populated primarily with kids. We must either believe in the right or not and quit trying to sort out special circumstances.

Those that oppose ccw in schools by teachers would do well to visit a local school and review their active shooter plan.

Last week the TV news televised a local school district plan. The schools plan is;

1. Teacher locks the classroom door.

2. Teacher turns off the classroom lights.

3. The children and teacher hide out of sight in the darkened classroom.

The first thing my non-leo wife said is a darkened room with the door locked from the inside would tell me students are hiding inside the room. I would simply shoot the lock off to get into the room.

Then consider how long it will be before your local police will have enough officers on the scene and get organized before entering the building. At least 15 minutes in urban areas, 30 minutes + in rural areas and SWAT teams.

We must either believe in the right or not and quit trying to sort out special circumstances.

We will have to agree to disagree on this issue. You must not have experience in the courtroom or have knowledge of the level of violence in divorce and domestic violence cases.

I just don't believe there is anymore danger than what you could find by restraining order violations, arbitration meetings in Lawyers offices, chance meetings on the street or of course crimes of passion resulting from the discovery of an affair. What you are doing is trying to sort out some sort of protected zone by saying there is some greater risk while I don't believe it's a valid argument considering the many similar circumstances that could occur where there are no restrictions.
I'll give you a court room with violent offenders needs to have resriction of weapons just like a jail or prison does and if that is your argument for gun free areas in public buildings like court houses I agree but that is not an emotional reason.

Our local big city schools have both armed and unarmed security/police on campus from primary to high school due to high incidents of kids bringing weapons on campus.
The cost is not 'prohibitively expensive', adding about 1.5% tax increase to property taxes.
Since guards and metal detectors were added to all schools across the board, the incidents of weapon related violence have gone to zero.

This practice is not incorporated in all the smaller townships but may be added to referendums soon.

The city is Peoria and the District is 150 and this is in the ONLY state where private individual legal ccw is NOT allowed.

No, I'm not. And I know I'm risking banning by arguing this here, but I'm willing to risk it. So pig-headed is your stance on mental health.

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Please abandon the persecution complex. No one is going to ban you for stating your opinions as long as you remain polite and on topic. Now, if you get too far afield with insulting talk like calling others "pig-headed" ... yeah, you could end up on the wrong end of the stick, so to speak.

I don't doubt that treatments were worse than the disease. But in no other field of medicine are theyforced on the patients.

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We seem to be confusing past and present. The field of physical medicine as it exists today is fundamentally different from what it was a century, or two, or more ago. The same is true about mental health. Lobotomies happened, sometimes in an attempt to protect society from extremely dangerous anomalous persons without simply ending that person's life -- as a form of mercy, in other words. (And, unfortunately, to try to "fix" other problems as well -- some of which aren't even considered problems any more.) But they don't happen now. The field of professional medicine will not allow those destructive and harmful practices, because we understand that they do not help, do not cure the fundamental problem.

However, the mental health field is still charged with (among rather a lot of beneficial, voluntary aid to people who feel troubled in life) helping protect society from people who's minds have developed cancerous circuitry that leads them to seek the pain, fear, and death of other people. That is an important and necessary task.

There are stories we read and hear which make us worry that "there but by the grace of God go I," after a fashion, but there's little reason to fear that the mental health field has either the desire or the ability to declare Constitutionally protected rights, interests, and hobbies as de facto reason to lock someone away.

I don't need to be a historian to know that

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It does help if you're going to formulate strong opinions about the way things were, compared to the way things are, and why.