By Craig Napier
The Daily Record Newswire
We must change gun laws.
We must dial back the political rhetoric.
We must stop the media from jumping to conclusions.
We must, we must, we must!
Like most Americans I have been watching and reading about the horrific tragedy in Tucson and I am so tired of the voices coming from all sides of the aisle using this situation for political points.
The only thing I haven’t heard is what I’ve been thinking the whole time.
When will someone recognize that this incident says more about how we deal with the mentally ill in this country?
I’ve discussed it here before in the context of my experience in Missouri’s judicial system — dealing with the mentally ill folks who have no money is very, very difficult.
While it doesn’t seem the shooter from Tucson was indigent, he passed through the gaps of a system which does nothing to effectively find and help the nearly 25 percent of the population that are said to suffer from mental illness.
Now, this number itself is controversial, as there is probably another 25 percent of the population who see mental illness as a means for other people to avoid responsibility for their actions.
I know firsthand that for the most part here in Missouri that if you are not in a state that is an immediate threat to yourself or others there is no mental health facility for you unless you can pay somewhere in excess of $10,000 per month.
There are several problems with the system of mental health in this country, but I really only have tried to work with Missouri’s system. The main problems in my mind are privatization of the infrastructure and lack of funding for the public programs that do exist.
I deal on a weekly basis with some mental health professionals and I have found them to be caring, intelligent, well-meaning folks for the most part, but they are tied to the realities of commerce at every turn.
We have one program in our area which was formerly a great step for many a criminal client because it dealt with mental illness and addiction, which are hand-and-glove issues for many undiagnosed mentally ill individuals.
This program just stopped getting funding last year at some point.
Now, unless you have thousands of dollars or really good insurance then the only way you are getting into the program is to be referred from a psychiatric facility — where low, or no cost, admissions are limited to only the most severe cases because of similar budget cuts in federal and state monies.
With the state needing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget to keep any semblance of fiscal responsibility in Jefferson City, the shortfalls are understandable but nonetheless unfortunate.
We tend to lock the mentally ill up in this state in prisons instead of putting them in therapeutic settings; that is, unless they are lucky and have great insurance that will pay for more than a few weeks of in-patient care or a family that can afford treatment.
In 2006, Missouri spent about $75 per capita on mental health services. I know such statistics can be used for any purpose, but mine is to show that we are below the national average of just over $103.
It can’t just be money, though, as Arizona more than doubles our per capita expenditure with nearly $157 in spending.
As we all know, the amount of money government spends is only part of the equation. The main issue here would be how it is spent.
It would seem that we have held on to many of our notions about centralized huge facilities dealing with mental illness.
This for the most part strips people from their communities and segregates them to a big place in the middle of the state.
If we went for smaller, county-level facilities with few beds but lots of information and free screenings, we might do more to catch folks early on in their illness and avoid more folks getting into legal trouble because of mental health issues.
I’m afraid as long as there are humans there will be folks who go over the edge and start hurting people because of delusional thinking, but I think we could do better trying to identify folks with issues and getting them help before they break the law.
Craig Napier is an attorney in the Kirksville office of the Missouri State Public Defender System. He can be reached at ncnapier@gmail.com.
