Where is the Outrage?

Enough with all the grandstanding and finger-pointing. Everyone is looking for something or someone to blame for the latest school shooting.

What happened in CT will NOT be prevented in other places by gun control or allowing God in schools, because it wasn’t about guns or religion. It was about the fact that the mentally ill are largely ignored in this country. The stigma is still there and the treatment options are not. A large portion of our homeless and prison populations are mentally ill. They need to be in psychiatric hospitals or treatment programs, but because in this country, mental health services, like healthcare, are a luxury item too few can afford, and many more are afraid to ask for. People with mental illnesses are often ridiculed and shunned thanks to the horrible stigma we’ve attached to mental illness. In this country if you don’t understand something, it’s acceptable to ridicule and attack it. Movies and TV shows help perpetuate this. Comedies use mental illness for laughs, horror films to frighten, and millions of dollars are raked in.

Guess what? You know someone with a mental illness. Since the age of 8, I’ve struggled with depression, anxiety disorder, and mild OCD. In my 20’s I developed PTSD as well after becoming the victim of a violent crime. I am lucky though. I got treatment and got better. I still have bad days but I am a happy, healthy, contributing member of society. I have friends who’ve had their own struggles with depression and anxiety, and a friend who struggles with a child’s mental illness. Most of us who have struggled with a mental illness have never been a danger to anyone but ourselves. Tragically though, there are exceptions.

28 people were murdered not because of a gun or because God wasn’t there-they were murdered because a severely mentally ill person did not get the help he needed. Granted, not all mental illnesses can be treated. Pedophiles will always be pedophiles, sociopaths will always be sociopaths. But there are many mental illnesses that CAN be treated-depression, OCD, schizophrenia, PTSD, anxiety disorders, etc. Yet many people with this illnesses suffer due to the stigma, or because they can’t afford the treatment they need to get well and insurance companies refuse to cover it. That is a national disgrace. If the outrage over that was as strong and vocal as the outrage over gun control is, there would be a lot less suffering and grief today. We should all be outraged, not at gun control or the lack thereof, and not at the lack of religion in schools. We should be outraged that the mentally ill are forgotten and ignored, left to suffer and in some tragic cases, become a ticking time bomb that eventually, horrifically explodes.

Where is the outrage? Where are the solutions? Where??