As is usual following an incident involving guns, people are bewailing the US' alleged "gun fetish." And as usual, these people are wrong. Yes, including you on my flist
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You haven't lost me. But "mental health" is far from an exact science, and it would involve some pretty scary invasions of privacy to try to predict everyone who's likely to go apeshit.
True, but as someone who suffers from mental illness and behavioral disorders and has friends who do, too, it can be really hard to find help when you want it
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My son is a clinical psychologist. He has worked with the homeless, with substance abusers, with veterans and emergency workers with PTSD. He'd agree with you in a heartbeat that mental health treatment (and medical treatment, for that matter) ought to be freely available to everyone when they need it.
But the problem with people who lose control and commit acts of violence is that many of them have never sought professional help. Some forms of delusional thinking include the belief that psychologists, psychiatrists, even regular MDs, want to "steal their thoughts" or "practice mind control" on them. Others come from cultural backgrounds where "mental illness" is considered shameful, like STDs, or where a person (especially a man) is supposed to just be strong, pull their socks up, and behave properly no matter how they feel. When someone like that goes on a killing spree, there's no warning
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We can't prevent it. We can only deal with it as it happens. Pretending that devices have some kind of demonic power to unleash the Inner Apeshit is delusional.
Guns are such an emotionally loaded icon in American society that, if an unstable person has had subconscious urges toward violence, the presence of a gun may be the last bit of stimulus needed to prompt them to action. But if someone is already convinced that they should kill, keeping guns away from them won't stop them; the internet can teach them about incendiaries, poisons, industrial sabotage, train derailments, and countless other messy and "newsworthy" ways of killing lots of people at once. (I know a few myself.)
that there are many doctors out there that have no problem bringing shame to the table
You don't have to be a sex worker or a drug user to be treated as some kind of morally degenerate leech by medical professionals. It took nearly a decade of severe symptoms before I was correctly diagnosed and treated; the shame and uselessness that GPs, psychiatrists, even counsellors who aren't meant to be judgemental...I would go into shock rather than step into their room for a second time. I lost virtually all of my pre-therapy friends. They couldn't deal with the truth of my condition once I was open about it. Given some of the obscenely hurtful things that they said, I came to see this as a good thing in the long run.
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But the problem with people who lose control and commit acts of violence is that many of them have never sought professional help. Some forms of delusional thinking include the belief that psychologists, psychiatrists, even regular MDs, want to "steal their thoughts" or "practice mind control" on them. Others come from cultural backgrounds where "mental illness" is considered shameful, like STDs, or where a person (especially a man) is supposed to just be strong, pull their socks up, and behave properly no matter how they feel. When someone like that goes on a killing spree, there's no warning ( ... )
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You don't have to be a sex worker or a drug user to be treated as some kind of morally degenerate leech by medical professionals. It took nearly a decade of severe symptoms before I was correctly diagnosed and treated; the shame and uselessness that GPs, psychiatrists, even counsellors who aren't meant to be judgemental...I would go into shock rather than step into their room for a second time.
I lost virtually all of my pre-therapy friends. They couldn't deal with the truth of my condition once I was open about it. Given some of the obscenely hurtful things that they said, I came to see this as a good thing in the long run.
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