When?...

This morning, I am writing about the connection between mental illness and violence. I am a woman who is not the normal voice you would look towards to have a discussion on violence in a public forum.  I am not a policy expert.  I have my opinions.  But, like most people, I don’t think about violence unless I face it in some way.  This morning I am facing violence.  Not directly, because it isn’t occurring in my family. I am a fifty-something primarily sad depressive.  A woman likely to take whatever anger she has inside and direct it at herself.  Although I have been known to be testy and nasty with people, I am not a person who will ever become physically violent.  I have a horror of fire-arms and other weapons.  I am not angry enough at any one person to ever cause harm.  To anyone but myself. And today, I am trying to mentally process the connection between mental illness and violence. So, in a way, I am out of my depth.  I don’t get it.  It is outside of my frame of reference.  The reason that I am thinking about this?  Yesterday, 20 children under the age of 10 years old were killed by a shooter in his early 20’s.  Most at an elementary school in Connecticut.  This person also killed 7 adults.  One was his mother.  And he has been described by his brother as having mental health problems.  So, here it is.  I am grieving because I love children and abhor violence.  And I can’t comprehend killing a child.  So, I am trying to understand. 

As I listen to the commentary, I am struck by how ideological it gets.  We have this chronic issue in this country with violence.  And children died.  So, what is the answer?  I don’t know.  But I believe I do have ideas.  And more questions.  I hear people discussing gun control. Which I totally believe in.  I believe that our gun culture leads to guns being available to people who are not stable emotionally and they use those weapons to kill.  And if someone is using a gun, especially an automatic weapon, they are more capable of inflicting more damage, more quickly than they would be without a gun. I think that is a fact. I have no patience with NRA 2nd amendment arguments.  I have no problems with hunters.  But I do have a problem with high death tolls.  And I think that it is unlikely that a gun owner will carry a gun into a school and just be there to defend the victims of an elementary school shooter without having some kind of accidental shooting or incident before that happens.

I get the arguments about video games.  About how children become almost anesthetized to the impact of violence as they play those games.  Our movies and music are filled with violent images, somehow leading children and adults to view violence as a choice without consequences.  I get that parents have an obligation to teach values to their children.  And to control the values that their child is exposed to.  As much as is humanly possible.  It is obvious.  Our culture DOES glorify violence.  Action films thrive on that.  The more the merrier.  I have never developed a taste for that kind of thing, so I don’t get that either.  And the fact that vulnerable children are exposed to these images has to have some kind of impact.

Even more, I am aware about the issues surrounding mental illness and families.  How we don’t have a comprehensive approach to dealing with the mentally ill.  And how the stigma leads to isolation and denial.  And that this may eventually lead to a mentally ill person acting out. We don’t recognize that substance abusers and alcoholics are mentally ill.  So, we don’t recognize the importance of having a strong system to take care of those issues.  So, here it is.  Here is the question:  WHEN will the losses become painful enough that we will do something?  When?  That is all I want to know.