Trump focus on mental health after school shooting denounced

AP ^ | Feb 19 2018 | Lindsey Tanner

[smileyface]

Frustration is mounting in the medical community as the Trump administration again points to mental illness in response to yet another mass shooting.

"The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense," said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago's Rush University Medical College. "The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness."

Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old charged with killing 17 people on Valentine's Day at his former high school in Parkland, Florida has been described by students as a loner with troubling behavior who had been kicked out of school. His mother recently died and Cruz had been staying with family friends.

Since the shooting, his mental health has been the focus of President Donald Trump's comments. And on a Thursday call with reporters, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration is committed to addressing serious mental illness and that his agency "will be laser-focused on this issue in the days, weeks, and months to come."

Mental health professionals welcome more resources and attention, but they say the administration is ignoring the real problem — easy access to guns, particularly the kind of high-powered highly lethal assault weapons used in many of the most recent mass shootings.

"Even for those who manage to survive gun violence involving these weapons, the severity and lasting impact of their wounds, disabilities and treatment leads to devastating consequences," American Medical Association President David Barbe wrote in an online column after the shooting.

"We are not talking about Second Amendment rights or restricting your ability to own a firearm. We are talking about a public health crisis that our Congress has failed to address. This must end," Barbe wrote.

[al_c]

The left likes to point at Australia saying how their gun buyback program changed everything there. What they ignore is how Australia also did something about the mental health angle too.

"Positive changes in mental health awareness and treatment have occurred since the 1990s, which may have contributed to fewer mass shootings. Also, Australian laws now support healthcare professionals reporting to police anyone who may pose a danger to themselves or others."

from this article

[i_robot73]

>
Worth saying again and again: “Liberalism is a mental disorder.”
>

REALLY wish Savage had corrected this before it got TOO far to the mainstream: “LEFTISM is a mental disorder.”

IMO, there’s NOTHING wrong w/ Liberalism (Liberty, Equality, etc.)

But, just another casualty of the War on Words from the Left (unfort., they seem to win more often than not) :(

[Jim Noble]

Thanks for an OUTSTANDING post!

+10

[i_robot73]

You did leave out the Leftist/SJW/race-hustlers, for whom w/o might have never germinated the idea. They use their leverage to cow-tow and brow-beat govt to the table, if not guiding their hand in the signing.

IMO, they are AS culpable, as Cruz.

[ek_hornbeck]

I agree, the vast majority of gun violence (as if guns are violent all by themselves) are not the result of mental illness, but the vast majority of mass shootings are done by people who have been heavily medicated for years. The over prescribing of meds for just about everything is evident all over. I know people in my own family who are on a wide range of meds from high blood pressure to anti-depressants, they’re like a walking pharmacy with their ever present bag of meds.

The buzzword "gun violence" was created by politicians and the media to mask the real roots of the problem. After all, nobody refers to stabbings as "knife violence" or vehicular homicide as "automobile violence" or maintains the pretense that the instruments used are to blame.

What politicians and media call "gun violence" actually falls into two categories. Mass shooters are almost invariably mentally ill, but they account for a small fraction of shootings. The overwhelming majority of the remaining shootings are gang-related - Crips vs. Bloods, Zetas vs. Aztecas, etc. It's much more politically correct to refer to the latter as "gun violence" by blaming the tools than going after the culture and mindset that actually creates the problem.

[Chickensoup]

Thank you for the compliment.

Coming from you it means a lot.

chickensoup

[smileyface]

You missed the School Board...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3632737/posts