As a biased person, I’ll stay out of the discussion about guns, but as a physician, I feel morally obligated to say something about mental health.
The shooter in Buffalo had been admitted to a mental hospital and then released: he said he hated black people.
He was able to buy a gun even though he had undergone a police-mandated mental evaluation.
Darrell Brooks’s (who said he hated white people) mother says, “…what has happened is because he was not given the help and resources he needed.”
The following chart shows the number of hospital beds per 100,000 people in various countries. Notice that every country has more than the US except for Mexico, Turkey, Italy, & Chile (the US is 5th from the lowest number of all the countries listed).
The US has less than 25; Japan has more than 250 beds per 100,000.
Do not let anyone tell you otherwise–Japan does not have ten times as many mentally ill people; the US simply turns these very vulnerable people out on the streets to hurt themselves and others.
Mental hospital beds per 100,000 people per country in 2014…
Switzerland———72
Trinidad———–65
The United Kingdom—–34
The United States—-2.2 (Iowa) to 34 (Wyoming). Most states have less than 20 beds per 100,000.
One study estimated that the US needs 64.1 beds per 100,000 people (click to read)<—
Question 1.
In 1955, the number of psychiatric beds per 100,000 in the US was 340 beds per 100,000 US citizens! Over ten times as many mental hospital beds per 100,000 as now. Yes, we have better medicines now, but are they really THAT much better? Research reports that we need at least 64 beds per 100,000; those who are not hospitalized and who need to be are a threat to themselves and to others.
Question 2.
Do we in the US really have 1/3 the rate of mental illness of Switzerland, or just 1/3 the number of mental hospital beds per 100,000 people? If our rate of mental illness is the same as Switzerland, then we could have 2/3 of our mentally ill people running free that Switzerland would have locked away for the patient’s safety and the safety of society.
The number of hospital beds available in the US for those suffering from mental illness has decreased by 500,000 (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND) since the 1950s. The number of beds continues to shrink<–
Question 3 If we increase the number of mental hospital beds, will that one thing make it easier for mental health workers to do their jobs and protect the mentally ill from themselves and others?
Does Mental Illness Account for Homelessness?<–click & Read
Challenge-Homework for you to try today…
Ask anyone who has been in medicine for over 20 years (they must have been working in a hospital in 1995 or before) the f0llowing question…
“Is it true or false that we no longer have enough money and resources appropriated to care for the mentally ill in the US…so the mentally ill too often land in prison, dead, or living homeless in the streets.”
True or false?
If the answer is, “true,” then please bring this up whenever such problems are discussed (homelessness and violence), and hopefully, at least that part of the problem will perhaps be better addressed. There will be much, much more to talk about, but at least let’s please not keep ignoring the care of those who cannot speak for themselves…the mentally ill.
The number of beds for the mentally ill in the US decreased by 500,000 in the past 50 years even though the population doubled (150 million to 340 million).
**Dayton Ohio shooter suspended in high school for putting his “kill list” and his “rape list” on the bathroom wall.
**Gunman was “cleared” by his psychiatrist<–
**The following article [click] says, “Many of the shooters in the United States were mentally ill, according to the data. But other studies have shown that the estimated number of cases of mental illness hasn’t gone up significantly while the number of mass shootings in the U.S. has skyrocketed.”
Though it may be true that mental illness has not gone up (debatable), what’s not debatable is that the number of psychiatric hospital beds in the US has gone down. Even if the numbers of mentally ill do not rise, if the number of mentally ill people stays the same and the number of hospital beds to put them in goes down…what does that mean?
I think when you cut down on the number of beds, you have more mentally ill who become homeless, in prison, or on death row.
** Some psychiatrists have blamed the psychiatric drugs on the violence, but it’s likely correlation, not causation. For example, it’s a fact that the more ice cream sold, the more women are raped…a FACT. But, it’s a correlation; women are not raped because we sell ice cream. In the summer, people buy more ice cream; and for various social reasons, in the summer, women are more often raped.
So, it’s likely that the mentally ill have less control and hurt people not because of the medications but because the medications did not accomplish the complete job of helping the mentally ill become stable and safe.
** Most of the major news stories about Nikolas Cruz never mention the mental illness that had plagued him. If you read this Wikipedia article, you’ll see that school counselors tried to have him put into a mental hospital, but someone decided against it and let him free (click). You can read more about it here and here and here.
Hindsight is always easy. I’m not attacking the wrong decision as much as I’m saying the decision to keep someone in the hospital becomes more difficult when there’s not an empty hospital bed available.
I Agree Wholeheartedly!
I agree !