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I wish I could find the humor, but this is one of the few things I agree with from this admin. I have a son with Schizoaffective Disorder and as a result, since 2006, I am my state's coordinator (and a teacher) for the NAMI Family-to-Family education course. (The level of public ignorance about mental illness is staggering. I teach this class 3 times a year to families with loved ones diagnosed with serious brain disorders. One thing I have learned from interfacing with families with an ill relative is that the mental health care system in this country is seriously broken.

The thing that is common among the Tucson Shooting, the Aurora shootings and Sandyhook is not that they used guns, it is that they all involved seriously mentally ill young men who were simply not getting the proper level of care. For centuries, mental illness was viewed a a character flaw, or the result of bad parenting, etc. It's only in the last 30 years of so that we are understanding that these illnesses are real, biological illness, like diabetes. The difference being, these biological illnesses affect the organ we call the brain, which in tun affects complex behaviors.

It is time to treat mental illness with the same level of care and compassion that we treat other serious illnesses.