Obstacles to treatment and promises that are not kept....

As we continue to experience the horror of mass shootings, we will continue to look at solutions.  But it seems, as a nation, that we have a limited attention span.  And once the initial horror is over and time passes, we lose the motivation to actually do something to move forward in making changes.  Then we experience the next horrific shooting, and we are again on the bandwagon.  Have you noticed this?  On December 14, 2012, we experienced the rampage of Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook elementary school.  Twenty elementary school children and six adult staff lost their lives.  Even Adam Lanza’s mother was killed.  And the national outcry began.  We talked about gun control.  And we also discussed the need to make mental health assessment and care more available.  What has been accomplished since that time?  Definitely nothing at the federal level.  We seem unable to actually move forward and do anything.  The gun lobby prevents logical and reasonable gun control.  And because we seem allergic to making changes, we don’t even have any actual action towards making mental health care more accessible.  This is so sad.  

Here is an article that explores the difficulties of finding assistance for the mentally ill:  http://bit.ly/19OOco7  The basic point of this article for me is that our current ideological differences and the inability of the Executive Branch and Congress to move forward have prevented even the most basic efforts to work through issues.  This means that we are figuratively shooting ourselves in the foot instead of dealing with what is going on in our country.  What is likely to happen as a result of this is that we will get what we have always gotten.  And that will result in lost lives. 
     

This article contains some interesting ideas, in my opinion, for making some basic changes in mental health policy.  Here are some examples:

• We can provide education to teach "mental health first aid" to emergency workers, teachers and others who interact with people struggling with mental illness.

• While ObamaCare will require insurance plans to cover mental illness as they do physical illness, we don’t know how to enforce that yet.  The Obama administration still hasn't written the rules.  Maybe if we weren’t forever involved in ideological warfare, the important work that we need to do could actually happen.

• We could modify confidentiality so that families could obtain information instead of running into a wall because of confidentiality law.  What would happen if we encouraged families to work towards helping the patient receive treatment instead of discouraging family involvement?

• We could alter the standards for involuntary commitment, making it easier to obtain help for people.  If the only standards that we operate from are the more restrictive ones, such as being able to prove that someone is suicidal or threatens harm to someone else, we have fewer opportunities to provide treatment in potentially dangerous situations. 

If we could change the way that we handle mental illness and potentially save even one life, that would be more than worthwhile.  We have the power.  If we can keep our attention on the goal, we could accomplish a great deal.  But to do that, we have to remember how we felt when we heard about the deaths of innocent school children and the adults struggling to protect them.  We have to remember the horror and to realize the seriousness of the challenge.  Our ideological differences are not more important than that.