Well, you infantile, ignorant, entitled jacka ss, thank Teddy Kennedy and the ACLU for that.

Liberals delenda est.

Th´first responders´ in mental health systems, at least in Pennsylvania, are youngsters, often straight out of college, with degrees that don´t offer the necessary skills for the needed intervention. I am familiar with youngsters who majored in Sociology, criminal justice, psychology (look at the typical psychology course requirements - counseling is optional)
Those youngsters are the first to see a person in crisis, and those youngsters are decision makers - the psychologists and psychiatrists are somewhere down the road.
And now that kenyacare provides full coverage for mental health services, the problem of the first responders/first providers will remain. But the psychologists and psychiatrists will make lots more money. (think group therapy, with health insurance providing payment to the provider as if he or she was doing one on one therapy.)
Finallly, if you have a family member in need of mental health services, he or she will be cloaked in the secrecy of HIPPA. You will receive no information unless the patient waives that privacy right. And too often, the patient will not do that.

Liberals burnt all the lifeboats for heat. Now they´re complaining nobody can swim.

The best way to eliminate mental health issues is to eliminate the mental health. The industry has done it successfully before. Until 2006, when DSM-IV came out, homosexuality was an Axis 1 mental health disorder. But DSM-IV eliminated homosexuality as a mental disorder (by the way, it is the only sexual practice in the book that is now without any mental health related diagnosis, thus making it officially the only normal sexual behavior). See, if we just did that, there would be no mental health and all these problems would just go away. It’s kinda like banning scary looking guns. The problem is we have too much mental health. There is no need for all that mental health when with the publication of one book we can get rid of most mental health issues. Basically, as long as mental health is defined by society and not by science, we will have all kinds of problems and consequences of those problems. Examine the facts, not the fantasies and things can be improved.

This is an important topic that, however, almost certainly has nothing whatever to do with the Sandy Hook massacre. Mounting and galloping away on one´s personal hobbyhorse -guns, mental health, violent entertainment, psychiatric medications, cultural decline, lack of religious faith etc. etc. etc.- does little except to lay down a thick smokescreen that only complicates understanding things that are already complicated and hard enough to understand.

#4, you are mistaken. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM (I believe it was DSM-III, but I am not going to go look it up) in the 1970s. The process was completely political and had no connection with what the majority of mental health professionals at the time thought. A group of homosexual activists secretly manipulated the system to get it removed.

The mentally disabled only vote in Chicago, and that´s only for Democrats. Politicians of both parties chose to spend money on more vote generating projects. Meanwhile families must cope with children crazier than outhouse rats with no place to humanely put them. With the liberal, PC correct, secular lifestyles of so many it´s no wonder the proliferation of dysfunctional families.

Let´s get to the root of many mental health problems-----look at our processed foods and the chemicals they contain, the meats with all the hormones added and antibotics added while on the hoof, the adulterated additives to foul and contamination of the sea products -- then the preservatives added. These items already change the chemical balance in the body; then people are told they need more chemicals added as vaccines, prescriptions to combat what schools determine as erratic and disturbing behavior to classes. Children are naturally active and forbidding simple things like freeze tag, chase, dodge ball etc. does not allow the release of energy sorely needed.

If all the extra additives (crap) were removed from the food chain supply, many behavioral problems would not exist. That would be the starting place.

But no, FDA is constantly approving methods, additives, drugs which later show disastrous results to the mental and physical health of children and adults.

Its been proven Aspartame poisoning mimics M.S., MSG causes hyper-activity and on and on and on. The Insider Traders in Congress want to ban anything natural to CURE diseases and want everybody to get prescriptions which only treat the symptoms so they can fill their pockets with their stock trades and investments.

This would go a far distance in helping with the mental health problems of today----chemical poisoning of the body and brain and adding hormones to the food chain changes the sexual activity of the normal body.

TIME has become nothing more than a liberal propaganda outlet. No mention here of the ACLU. They are the major villains in destroying the mental health system in America. They said it wasn´t just and humane to put crazy people in mental institutions.

This is an excellent article. #5, it has everything to do with Sandy Hook. Why? Because Adam Lanza was age 20 - an age where his mother had no legal rights to get him any sort of help. She told a friend that she knew he was deteriorating, that she couldn´t reach him. She was looking all over the country for a program suitable for him and was getting ready to sell her house and move to help him. That is indeed sign of a family struggling to find quality care.

A huge majority of any blame assigned here should be at the feet of the ACLU, starting back in the 1960´s when the doors of the mental institutions started closing. And the poster bringing up HIPPA is correct. My daughter is a nurse and she said that you can´t tell relatives ANYTHING about the patient if they are of legal age. My heart just breaks when I read stories about frantic parents who are trying to get help for their adult kids.

Another side effect for this issue is overcrowded prisons. We would have plenty of space if the mentally ill had somewhere else to be placed. But we don´t anymore. Thank you so much libs/ACLU.

Who needs mental health agencies when you have the courts? Judges know everything!

#9....my thoughts exactly.

Especially in regard to vaccines and the increased schedule and sheer volume of what is required and recommended to be pumped into a little kid. It´s nuts!

As for the mental illness, my ex mother- in-law is a paranoid schizophrenic with two sons who are as ignorant about mental health and with their own mental health issues. That woman belongs in a hospital....and has needed good mental care for DECADES and she has never gotten it....will never get it. When my ex father n law was still alive, they never went anywhere or had friends or belonged to a church or went to their grandkids´ Christmas programs....all because her illness was all consuming and all her husband could handle for he 60 plus years they were together. And now, my ex brother in law lives with her, spends her money, abuses her and there is not a damn thing anyone can/will do about it.

The main "treatment" for her illness was working to keep her out of the looney bin where she spent some time in the 50s and got the teh electrical shock treatment offered at the time.....yeah....that really made her want to get help, and made my ex FIL do everything he could to keep her from going back out of guilt.

LONG past time for this discussion.

We still do not have the facts about the killer´s mental health history. He undoubtedly had one. The mother was clearly caring and a member of the 1%. She would have had good insurance and ample funds for the best private care. The story that she was "trying to have him committed" has not been verified and appears to be just another rumor. In any case, it is easy to get someone taken to a mental health facility for evaluation of their need for hospitalization. It is not a long drawn out process as the first rumors implied. Laws vary from state to state, but the procedures for emergency mental health evaluation are quite simple. Had the mother desired to have him taken to a hospital for evaluation, it could have been done in a few hours or a day at most. It is no big deal to have someone transported to a facility against their will for an evaluation. The mother obviously did not regard her son as dangerous. We do not have any information yet that would suggest that he was.

There are many problems to be addressed regarding mental health care, particularly for the seriously chronically mentally ill. They are important in their own right. The Sandy Hook massacre, however, has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

The fantastic growth and spread of theories and pseudo-explanations in the wake of events like this is principally the fault of public officials who stubbornly refuse to make all the information they have available to the public. This leads to all sorts of speculations and false narratives, most of which are driven by the pet peeves of those purveying them and not by the facts of the actual case at hand.

The decades-old failed dem policy regarding the mentally ill has undeniably resulted in some being unable to cope on their own, take their medications properly & etc., and sometimes ending up in the current prison system. It should be relatively easy to investigate exactly how many in the over-crowded prison system actually are mentally ill because of this failed dem policy. Prisoners can be tested in the prisons. So, the question is, what is the percentage of the mentally impared currently in the prisons and why isn´t this issue of national societal importance re-evaluated and corrected?

Compassion for the mentally ill, their families & friends, as well as, society at large are certainly not being helped by ignoring the bad policy which the dems legislated just a few decades ago.