As I watched the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia unfold, I thought of my own experiences with the mental health system in America. I have two step sons that have paranoid schizophrenia, and when they are taking their medication, they are not psychotic. The struggle to help them to lead meaningful and productive lives has encompassed the last twenty years of our existence. Once you have encountered the right of a mentally unbalanced person to not take their medicine, even though there is no possible way they can rationally make that essential decision; and then the criteria that they must actually be an immediate threat to themselves or others to get help to not be a threat, can you fully ask the question: which is more insane, the illness or the system?
I hear people debate whether to have more gun control or not despite the statistic that in gun deaths unrelated to wars, America has more gun deaths than all the rest of the world combined. In fact, we have 83% of the world’s gun non-military related deaths since 1980. But the question how an unmedicated mentally unbalanced person could seemingly legally buy two guns and then kill thirty-two people is answered that Virginia does not report mentally impaired individuals to the very data Federal base that determines if someone can legally buy a weapon. Why? Simply put, it is not illegal to be psychotic, but to not treat that psychosis is also not illegal.
I hear people say that mentally unbalanced people, that really want to kill people, can use other weapons. That is undeniably true. There is the case of a young woman being shoved into an oncoming train from a passenger platform by an unmedicated delusional individual that perceived her as an imaginary threat. If one wishes, one could possibly connect airline hijacking to unbalanced minds. However; that perceived threat met an immediate cry to safeguard boarding and passenger loading all across America. We have sky marshals and airline check-in procedures at all airports in every terminal, but we have averaged as many as thirty thousand gun deaths in America yearly since 1980. Why?
How many of these have been at the hands unbalanced individuals, one only can guess, but guns are not the main problem of society verses the individual on mental health. The root cause is proper treatment when that treatment is needed and the monitoring of that sick mind so that they can resume being a contributing member of society, not a potential time bomb that must explode to get the very help needed to prevent tragedy. I recently asked the question why mental health workers and social workers cannot help make sure ill and chemically imbalanced individuals take their medicine, and was met with the response that it’s not in the budget. Why? The next time a sick individual lets loose their unmedicated delusions and your loved one dies, will you be satisfied with that response?
_Thomas P Love 10/27/07
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