Political Decisions Can Cause Long-Term Damage

— Collateral damage has become part of our everyday vocabulary, and we accept it as an unfortunate part of our actions, particularly in war. When it strikes home, as in the recent series of mass shootings, we are in disbelief and ask, “What’s going on? How could this happen? Who or what is to blame?”

We are all to blame for not understanding what the policymakers in Washington are doing or not doing.

Around 1970 we began many programs to assist the mentally ill within the community. The programs addressed housing needs and Congress passed legislation to help public schools educate students with disabilities and mental illness, the beginning of special education.

In the 1980s, we elected a president who told us the most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” We all laughed and agreed, so ourgovernment declared war on community mental health and closed mental health institutions across this great nation.

In 1970 there were 550,000 institutional beds and by 1985 there were 120,000. A combination of court cases found states were using institutions as inhumane detention facilities, and federal as well as state funding cutbacks reduced budding services dramatically.

It became cost eff ective for states to close government-run institutions and reduce promised money for the growing needs of community mental health care. The Arkansas StateHospital is the only stateowned and -operated facility for the treatment of mental illness in Arkansas. In my native Kansas, there were seven state hospitals at one time; there is only one now, Larned Correctional Mental Health Facility, a prison facility for the mentally ill.

The community mental health centers and special education were never fully funded.

Since 1980, our federal prison population has grown from 500,000 to more than 2.5 million, of whom half to two-thirds are, you guessed it, mentally ill inmates. There are more than 3.5 million homeless persons annually in the United States. Twentyfive percent, or 800,000, are mentally ill. Our state and federal leaders failed to tell us there would be collateral damage from these undertakings.

Mass shootings are on the rise, not to mention other senseless murders and violent crime. We have had 61 mass murderssince 1970, many of which were perpetrated by lone young white mentally ill males. As we can see with the Connecticut school and the Colorado movie theater shootings, not all mass murderers come from low-income families - some even come from the 2 percenters, the most afiuent of our nation. Why young white males? Most answers feature a mixture of biological and social explanations: Testosterone makes men more aggressive, while boys are brought up to believe that a willingness to engage in physical combat is essential to being a man. Other factors such as bullying, child abuse, poor nutrition (particularly prenatal), drug use before and during pregnancy, including alcohol, drug use in and after adolescence, poverty, single-family homes with no positive male role models and gang culture or some combination of the them are contributing factors in these heinous crimes.

Some say we’ve had enough, after the Newtown massacre, but I rather doubt it, because it’s going to cause a change in our collective lifestyles. Americans don’t have long-term memories.

Fix it quick but don’t ask me to make any sacrifi ces.

The fix to this isn’t quick.

It’s a long-term commitment to our citizens. It will take years to develop meaningful programs and to train the thousands of staff members necessary to pull it off .

States needing to cut costs during the recent recession have slashed non-Medicaid spending for mental health care by more than $1.8 billion since 2009, diminishing access to necessary services for the mentally ill. This is on top of the funding lost since the 1980s. Can we as a society look at the positives of the Aff ordable Care Act (ObamaCare) and other sensible proposed legislation, such as reasonable gun control, i.e., a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks? Neitherof these are enough to solve the problem, but at least they would be a start. Arguing endlessly over the Second Amendment just wastes time and spins our wheels.

Too many lobbyists who only see the trees and not the forest, with too much money, shouldn’t control our legislative process.

We must crawl before we walk. Lawmakers should do something and keep it as simple as possible. Do we have the moxie to take meaningful action on a twoprong front or should we just forget it? The long-term fix is going to take a funding commitment on the national, state and local levels, if we are going to truly do anything about the collateral damage.

ED STACEY OF BELLA VISTA HAS WORKED AS A THERAPIST AND DIRECTOR IN THE MENTAL HEALTH FIELD. HE IS A CONSULTANT FOR A PROGRAM IN OKLAHOMA THAT SERVES INDIVIDUALS DEEMED INCOMPETENT TO STAND TRAIL.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 02/24/2013

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