Recently, a Jonesboro man shot six people with a six-shot .357 Magnum revolver. Two, including a 12-year-old girl, were killed. An 8- and 10-year-old were among the injured.
Porfirio Hernandez then drove to a business where he shot 31-year-old Richardo Lopez to death. Hernandez later shot himself.
Hernandez, according to police, spent April 28-30 in treatment at a Jonesboro hospital's psychiatric unit. His wife told police Hernandez went there "to get help because he had been saying that he wanted to kill people and then himself." According to police records, the husband and wife had also gone to Texas on Good Friday to seek help at a mental facility, but there was no space available.
Police investigators will seek out where Hernandez got the gun and will try to determine a motive.
There really are more critical questions to answer: What opportunities were there for Hernandez to be evaluated by mental health professionals? Were there capacity or financial barriers that resulted in his discharge from the Jonesboro hospital or that prevented him getting help on that Texas trip? What about our health system limited its potential to intervene in such a way these terrible deaths might have been prevented?
But we'll hear more about the gun.
Last week, about 4,000 mental health professionals gathered in Washington, D.C., for the National Council on Behavioral Health's Conference '14. Out of 125 sessions with 300 speakers, not a single session was called "Gun Laws: The Secret to Treating Mental Illness."
But it was hard to tell from the news coverage, which focused on keynote speaker Hillary Clinton. The potential presidential candidate could have made headlines about the need for community-level mental health services and how what's missing from so many acts of violence were seized opportunities for mental health intervention that might have stopped the violence before it began.
Instead, Clinton hijacked coverage of challenges to funding, treatment and diagnosis of mental illness and intervention. Asked about the role of guns in suicides, she broadened her response in a way anyone with her background knew would consume the headlines.
"I think again we're way out of balance," she said." I think that we've got to rein in what has become an almost article of faith that anybody can have a gun anywhere, anytime. And I don't believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people. And I think you can say that and still support the right of people to own guns."
She continued: "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many people with guns everywhere, fully licensed, fully validated, in settings where [one] could be in a movie theater, and they don't like someone chewing gum loudly or talking on their cell phone and decide they have the perfect right to defend themselves against the gun chewer or cell phone user by shooting."
What a missed opportunity to have shined a needed light on the role of mental health and intervention in prevention of tragedy. The "hottest topic" at the conference, according to the Washington Post, "the kind of early intervention that can keep young people experiencing a "first break" with reality from ever having another psychotic episode."
Conference attendees discussed whether public safety is central to the mission of behavioral health care providers. Joel A. Dvoskin, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Arizona, told conference attendees that "prevention of crisis equals prevention of violence."
Even in a session called "Lessons Learned From Sandy Hook," Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz focused not on guns, but on what kinds of intervention might have helped the young shooter, Adam Lanza.
Are teachers trained to recognize the onset of mental illness, he asks. He suggested more training of pediatricians in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, easier access to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, and mental health screenings as part of routine medical checkups. He concluded that what we can learn from Adam Lanza is how much we need to integrate medical science and community to address public health risks.
But it's easier to get headlines by focusing on the gun, as Hillary Clinton proved.
The nation needs a robust discussion on guns and the meaning of the Second Amendment. But too often -- almost always -- our political leaders fail us by allowing it to overshadow the more vital discussion about mental health intervention that can save lives, including the ones of people caught in the grips of mental illness.
Violence stops by addressing what causes it, not myopically focusing on the tool used to carry it out.
GREG HARTON IS OPINION PAGE EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.
Commentary on 05/12/2014