This is the first in a 3 part series on the child murders in Newtown, CT. This first installment is about the biggest issue raised, in my opinion: Our country's mental health policies. The second will be about another hot-button issue: Gun control. The final one will be on the need for us to better handle the cultural shifts we are experiencing.
I am going to try a new tactic and keep the blogs shorter. I can discuss sources and nuances in the comments, and shortness will hopefully widen the potential audience.
Mental Illness
Most of us seem to think that only "crazy" people would go to a public place and murder as many strangers as possible. True enough, but while "craziness" may be necessary, it is not sufficient -- it does not cause the incidents, but instead it permits them by removing one of the barriers (individual sanity) to such mass, "senseless" violence happening.
To state what should be overly obvious, most people suffering from mental illness are not going to commit homicide By most, I mean something like 99.9999%. This is similar to how many Muslims will be jihadists, or Christians will be KKK members. Some sorts of serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, when left untreated, and especially when combined with substance abuse, DO increase the chances that someone will commit a violent crime. That should be unsurprising to everyone, but the complete nuance should be remembered when making any sort of statement about mental illness and violence.
This incident can be anecdotal evidence that our system of helping the mentally ill is broken. It is not slam-dunk evidence, of course -- no system in a free society will ever be able to 100% prevent people from making bad choices. But the violent deaths of innocent children gives most people pause, and it is certainly worth using that pause to consider the state of our mental health care policies.
For those of us that have worked in institutions that handle mental health patients, we know that the "danger to self or others" standard dramatically changed the landscape with how mental illness is addressed. In many ways, that is good -- we are not locking up people who believe that Julius Cesar speaks to them daily. On the other hand, it is also bad, as many of those that would formerly have been committed are now without any meaningful care at all. This is horrible news for the mentally ill, as their illnesses put them at greater risk of all sorts of bad things (suicide, homelessness, joblessness, and poverty, to name a few). It is also bad news for society, as we lose their productivity and happiness, and many of us think we should be judged on how we treat the downtrodden... oh, and remember that the untreated ill are the ones that are more likely to be violent.
We will run headlong into problems of freedom and paternalism here, and those problems should be taken seriously. All serious philosophers on freedom and liberty that I know of, though, base their assumptions on some level of capacity. You don't expect a 1-year-old to understand these things, nor someone with severe brain damage. We have to make some sort of definition and determination of capacity so we can help mentally ill people while helping rebuild the individual barriers to these horrific events.
I think we need much more comprehensive assessments and follow-ups, and I think we should be more willing to make mental health treatment compulsory. Hand in hand with this effort should be an attempt to educate more people on why people that are mentally ill really are ill and the diagnosis does not reflect poorly on them -- that label isn't a value judgment any more than being born with a heart defect reflects poorly on the child. These are conditions for which there should be no shame, more compassion, and much more societal focus.
For those interested in details about mental illnesses and policies around them, you may find this site worthwhile: http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/index.html .
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