Free Republic

Whenever a shooting event, like the murder-suicide at UCLA, gains national notoriety, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over “our” alleged failure to deal adequately with issues of “mental health.” Tragically, it is the rarest of figures who dares to challenge this consensus. But challenge it we must, for as innocuous as the term sounds, “mental health” is fraught with philosophically problematic assumptions and implications. First, the sole reason for concluding that, say, Mainak Sarkar, the UCLA gunman, is “mentally ill” is that he became a murderer. Yet this in turn logically implies that anyone who murders is...

One obstacle preventing Americans suffering from mental illness from obtaining the treatment they need is a stigma associated with having a sullied bill of mental health.States can overcome this obstacle in part by expanding digital access to mental health care providers. This would allow patients to obtain preventive and maintenance mental health care from the convenience and comfort of their homes.The stigma surrounding mental health problems is prevalent on a webpage hosted by the educational nonprofit group Mental Health America aggregating social media posts with the hashtag #mentalillnessfeelslike. “The struggle of having illness is speaking up about what is affecting...

There was a time when most of what I knew about psychiatrists came from Woody Allen. In his 1973 movie "Sleeper," his character wakes up in the future and complains, "I haven't seen my analyst in 200 years. He was a strict Freudian, and if I'd been going all this time I'd probably almost be cured by now." But even his treatment sounded better than what Jack Nicholson's character got in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for being rebellious: a lobotomy. Those films imprinted a couple of lessons about psychiatry. The first was that mental health professionals were useless;...

The latest mass-casualty shooting spree -- this one in Santa Barbara, California -- has touched off the usual debate about how to put a stop to these hideous spasms of murder. These random massacres have become, as I wrote in a previous column, an American psychosis. Some, including the anguished father of one of the victims, point to guns and the National Rifle Association as the villains. Defenders of guns respond with the usual arguments -- which I find persuasive. That much having been said, I wish people who defend the Second Amendment wouldn't talk about their guns with...

In the aftermath of the mass shootings in Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; Tucson, Ariz.; Virginia Tech; the Washington Navy Yard; and sadly, other locales, conventional wisdom held that the epidemic of mass shootings was a problem of gun control. I wrote columns attempting to draw attention to the mental health system in America that so wrongheadedly fails to treat the dangerous mentally ill. Now, at last, the mental health angle on mass shootings has become conventional wisdom -- just in time, perhaps, to be wrong again. "Fort Hood shooter had mental problems" headlined USA Today. "Fort Hood shooter was Iraq...

Obama has been draping himself in families of the children murdered in Newtown. MSNBC's Martin Bashir suggested that Republican senators need to have a member of their families killed for them to support the Democrats' gun proposals. (Let's start with Meghan McCain!) In a bizarre version of "A Christmas Carol," CNN's Carol Costello fantasized about "a mother who lost her child," showing up and knocking on Sen. Rand Paul's door, saying, "Please don't do this!" The victims of gun violence are the left's latest "human shields" -- a term coined by me in Godless: The Church of Liberalism -- for...

<p>In April 2007, a mentally disturbed student showed up at the campus of his school, Virginia Tech, brandishing two semi-automatic pistols. He murdered 32 students, teachers and school employees and wounded 17 others before taking his own life.</p> <p>It was the one of deadliest mass shooting incidents in American history.</p>

Guns, guns, guns. Love, love, love. America needs guns and love. As humans, we have an inherent right to life. Our right to life (or self-defense) is a natural right and does not come from any document, even the Constitution. The Bill of Rights or the first ten amendments to the Constitution simply acknowledge our natural rights. Specifically, the Second Amendment recognizes our natural right to bear arms for self-defense. Guns are the reactive, defensive answer to evil in the world. Love is the proactiveanswer to evil. We need both—guns and love. LOVE Good men express themselves through love; love...

Nothing strikes deeper to the heart than the loss of children. It's one more reason why the horror in Newtown, Conn., has hurt our nation so badly. I do not believe there is any human suffering like the suffering of a parent who loses a child. I know it from personal experience. I lost a beautiful, young teenage daughter almost 10 years ago, and the pain never goes away. When tragedy strikes, we want to do something. It is a natural human instinct that when we suffer, we conclude it is because something is broken and to want to...

One week ago, a lone lunatic took the lives of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Sadly -- yet, predictably -- before the crime scene was even secured by police, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to his bully pulpit to issue another in his endless demands for more stringent gun control. There is no question the Sandy Hook shooting is a tragedy of horrible dimensions. Nor is there any question the incident is another red flag that something is not right with the culture of our nation. Half of the...

It's too hard to try and make sense of a senseless event. Adam Lanza's merciless slaughter in Connecticut has forced everyone with a microphone to insist we have a "national conversation" about why this happens. But this urgent need to talk is not an excuse for a reckless discussion. Sadly, that is where we're headed, with pundits hysterical, naive or both. Predictably most in the media went straight to the Left's Alpha and Omega: blaming excessive "access" to guns. It was also an excuse to open fire on the National Rifle Association. For example, author Joyce Carol Oates spewed...

On Friday, in his moving and heartfelt statement in response to the horrific shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Obama said, "As a country, we have been through this too many times. ... And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics." There's just one problem: In a democracy, politics is a synonym for "democracy." It is through politics that people with strong feelings and strong interests peaceably hash out their disagreements. When politicians say they want to do something regardless of the politics, or that they want...

<p>A mentally disabled woman was left alone inside a dark-colored van parked in the sun with the windows closed Tuesday while her caretaker was in a Shadyside tattoo parlor, city police said.</p> <p>The 45-year-old woman, who police said is unable to speak and wheelchair-bound, was taken to UPMC Presbyterian hospital in Oakland for treatment of heat-related problems, police said. She was released following treatment.</p>

BUSH WORKS FOR DEMOCRATS IN NEW MEXICO TODAY Dubya will be in Albuquerque, New Mexico today to introduce his plan for the mandatory inclusion of mental disorders in health care coverage. This is a long-time goal of the Democratic Party. Democrats know that mandatory mental health coverage will cause insurance premiums to skyrocket. As insurance becomes more expensive more and more employers will drop coverage --- ditto for individuals. With more individuals going without health insurance, the demand for government intervention will increase … just what the Democrats want --- another excuse to push socialized medicine.