UTNE Reader - Losing It - America’s mental health crisis is a matter of priorities

Important article from the UTNE Reader on the state of mental health care. The article spends some serious time on the issue of Jared Loughner, the troubled kid who held a three-year grudge against Gabriel Giffords and then tried to assassinate her, killing six innocent victims and injuring many more. Giffords was shot in the head - and although she survived and is recovering, the wound will leave with some level of disability.

So why was a kid so obviously (according to reports on his behavior from classmates and peers) allowed to wander around without treatment AND buy a gun and extended magazine, essentially creating a held-held, easily concealed machine gun?

For me, however, this is the key point in the article, the real source of the problem:

Besides a few glancing references on the odd editorial page, no connection was made between the shooting spree in Arizona and the lack of affordable, universal health care. Politicians, who once again made a show of mourning the loss of America’s innocence, also escaped scrutiny for spending the last 15 years systematically severing society’s safety net, forcing social service workers and health care professionals to make life and death choices based almost entirely on the bottom line.

This is Arizona, and this will happen again. We have some of the most lax gun laws in the country. We have a One Billion Dollar Deficit in the state budget, and despite this horrible lack of funds that is destroying health care for the poorest citizens, gutting the state university system, and even destroying the public school system Governor Brewer swore to protect in her campaign - despite all of this, state GOP leaders (including Brewer) just passed a 500 million dollar tax cut for the wealthy and for businesses. Seriously.

You know where that money is going to come from? Services for the poor, including mental health services. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities offers some hard numbers:

As a result of state budget cuts, over 1 million low-income Arizona residents have lost access to Medicaid services offered by the state, including emergency dental services, medically necessary dentures, insulin pumps, airway devices for people with chronic lung disease, gastric bypass surgery, certain hearing aids for the deaf or severely hard of hearing, and prosthetics.

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Arizona has eliminated a host of behavioral health services for 4,000 children ineligible to receive such services through Medicaid, and has also cut case management, therapy, and transportation services for 14,500 individuals participating in a non-Medicaid program for the seriously mentally ill.

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Arizona eliminated preschool for 4,328 children, funding for schools to provide additional support to disadvantaged children from preschool to third grade, aid to charter schools, and funding for books, computers, and other classroom supplies. The state also halved funding for kindergarten, leaving school districts and parents to shoulder the cost of keeping their children in school beyond a half-day schedule.

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Arizona’s Board of Regents approved in-state undergraduate tuition increases of between 9 and 20 percent as well as fee increases at the state’s three public universities. Additionally, the three state universities implemented a 2.75 percent reduction in state-funded salary spending and through a variety of actions, such as academic reorganization, layoffs, furloughs, position eliminations, hiring fewer tenure-eligible faculty, and higher teaching workloads.

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Arizona is cutting the time limit for temporary cash assistance to 36 months from 60. As a result, an estimated 8,200 families will lose eligibility for that assistance.

Is it fair to cut services for the poor, the elderly, and the mentally ill - not to mention cutting education, the backbone of a healthy and successful society - so that wealthy people and businesses can pay less in taxes?

This is one of the central issues in my perspective - Government should not be involved in every area of our lives, but it should be a safety net for those who need help. We have spent the last 30 years making sure that is no longer the case.

Losing It

We have to start talking about America’s mental health crisis

by David Schimke
March-April 2011

The first time I saw the mug shot I was at an Amoco station, 15 minutes from the nearest psych ward and 90 miles from home.

I didn’t need to stop for gas. My tank was still three-quarters full. But having just spent the past 48 hours trying to help a dear friend navigate his hometown’s heartless mental health care system, I figured a scalding cup of stale coffee might keep me from drifting into a ditch.

While I was waiting for the clerk to count out my change, my eyes fell on a copy of the daily paper, dated January 11, 2011.

The front page looked like something a newsboy in knickers would be hawking during the second act of a Batman movie. The headline type was extra-large and loud, the accompanying photo swallowed up all the space above the fold, and the subject—eyes wild, framed by pale cheeks, and a hastily shaven head—looked like a patient from Arkham Asylum. He even wore an off-kilter, vaguely villainous smirk.

Jared Lee Loughner: Arizona’s assassin, the new year’s first mass murderer, and America’s bogeyman du jour.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, the coffee was ice cold. I hadn’t touched it. I didn’t need to. Enraged, my head swimming in adrenaline, I threw my bags inside the front door and sought out my unsuspecting wife. I wanted to scream about the banality of cynical sensationalism and wail about our country’s need to reduce everything to a biblical battle between good and evil. And I wanted someone to hear me.

It had been three days since Loughner senselessly murdered six people, including a 9-year-old girl, and shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head. Yet the initial storyline was hopelessly fragmented and predictably off point. As was the case in the immediate wake of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the mine collapses in Chile and Kentucky, and countless other made-for-TV disasters, the chance to prompt a broad, meaningful conversation about our culture, our government, and our collective moral compass (or lack thereof) was already being squandered.

The first wave of stories out of Tucson set the table for yet another ideological food fight. On the left, scholars and columnists blamed Loughner’s outrageous crime on the proliferation of hate speech. Bomb-throwing conservatives, who thrive on turning themselves into victims, unleashed their attack dogs. Before the nation had time to shed a communal tear, Rush Limbaugh was defiantly defending his rabid constituency’s constitutional right to spit venom at whomever they want, whenever they want.

Gun control debates dominated the discussion for a few days, of course. There was even a measure of hand wringing over the antisocial webs we weave online.

In the midst of all of this, I kept expecting someone to broach the subject of Loughner’s actual state of mind. Reading between the lines, it was clear that he was mentally ill, as are nearly one-fourth of the people who populate the nation’s prison system. It was also evident that while the screeching tenor of public discourse might not drive a sane person to the nearest rifle shop, a confused, distraught individual might have a hard time distinguishing between Glenn Beck’s hyperbolic theatrics, Sarah Palin’s revolutionary ranting, and an online hate group’s call to arms.

Nearly a week passed, though, before journalists started scrutinizing Loughner’s well-documented history of depression, mania, paranoia, isolation, and apparent breaks with reality. As Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnick told the New York Times on January 16, “Based on what I’ve seen, [Loughner] is psychotic, he has serious problems with reality, and I think he’s delusional.”

That Times piece, which ran on the front page of its Sunday edition, reported that administrators, teachers, and police officers at Pima County College, where Loughner took classes, were so concerned about his behavior that they suspended him. There was testimony from friends who said they were baffled by their pal’s appearance and occasional tirades against the status quo. There were even details concerning his haircuts, his marijuana use, his favorite beer, and his affinity for the saxophone.

The topic that went largely untouched, and still cries out for attention, is the extent to which the mental health care system, despite all the warning signs and proclamations of concern, failed Loughner and his victims. What’s even more maddening, and seldom addressed, is that even if someone wanted to help the troubled young man (and for all we know, someone did), there’s a high probability that the system would ignore the pleas and insist that “creepy” behavior, as one campus cop in Pima put it, is rarely a precursor to criminal aggression.

Besides a few glancing references on the odd editorial page, no connection was made between the shooting spree in Arizona and the lack of affordable, universal health care. Politicians, who once again made a show of mourning the loss of America’s innocence, also escaped scrutiny for spending the last 15 years systematically severing society’s safety net, forcing social service workers and health care professionals to make life and death choices based almost entirely on the bottom line.

Just ask the kind, conscientious case manager whom, in a lucky series of coincidences, I managed to reach by telephone on the morning of January 10. She had taken mercy on me—and hours out of her busy day—to talk off the record about my loved one, who was struggling with an intense bout of psychological stress that threatened to steal his job, alienate his support system, and otherwise make his life unmanageable.

“Has he gotten in trouble with the law?” she asked.

“No.”

“Has he threatened to hurt himself?”

“Not that I know of.”

Well, then, she told me gently, apologetically, there was no way to get him official access to the county’s health care services. They were reserved for people who had already been through the court system. We just don’t have the money or the resources, she said.

Not long after hanging up, grateful that someone had at least bothered to listen, I took to the road in search of caffeine. After I pulled onto the highway, the phone call replayed again and again in my head. And Jared Loughner continued to stare up at me from the passenger seat.

Read the rest of the article.

Tags: UTNE Reader, Losing It, America, mental health, crisis, priorities, Arizona, Jared Lee Loughner, tax cuts, cuts in spending, GOP, Republicans, Jan Brewer, education, behavioral health, services, mental illness, government, taxes