A week ago, Liza Long suggested that the Sandy Hook tragedy in Newtown, CT should be a policy window for a national conversation about mental health and how we (don't) treat and address it.
Long chronicles her difficulty dealing with her son, who has has a mental health problem and, despite being intelligent and at times sweet, threatens to kill her and himself. Feeling overwhelmed, she submits him to the hospital, and her social worker advises her that the best way to get attention for her son is to charge him with a crime. Long write, "No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options."
Addressing mental health could also do much to improve the safety and the perception of safety in our nation's cities. Homeless people tend to settle closer to city centers because of their lack of mobility and the relative concentration of services (e.g., clinics), necessities (e.g., McDonalds for food), and people (potential charity givers). With an estimated 20-25% of the homeless population in the U.S. has mental illness (compared to 6% of all Americans), much of that downtown homeless crowd is likely to scare people. Of course there is going to be a stigma for mental illness if most people's exposure to it is in the form of homeless people begging for change.
If we can provide mental health treatment more widely and more easily, it could contribute to making safer and more attractive urban cores.
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