Mental health key to avoiding another Newtown

The Grinch has stolen Christ­mas this year. I have lost all enthu­si­asm for light­ing the tree, dec­o­rat­ing, or wrap­ping gifts as in years past. My heart is bro­ken from the Dec. 14 event in New­town, Conn. I remem­ber exactly my late-afternoon loca­tion when first hear­ing news of this cat­a­stro­phe, adding to my col­lec­tion of mem­o­ries for history-making, mostly tragic occurrences.

Part of me writes this entry with incred­i­ble sad­ness while another aspect of my psy­che is enraged. Since receiv­ing my Master’s in Com­mu­nity Coun­sel­ing from Geor­gia State Uni­ver­sity in 1990, I have watched our country’s men­tal health ser­vices col­lapse. The major­ity of in-patient facil­i­ties are gone. Sev­eral in Atlanta where I received train­ing are now sub­di­vi­sions, with no remain­ing evi­dence of what once stood. They are plowed-under and for­got­ten, par­al­lel­ing our society’s atti­tude toward men­tal health issues.

Presently there are equally as few in-patient men­tal health facil­i­ties serv­ing cen­tral Ohio. Now named Twin Val­ley Behav­ioral Health­care, the for­mer Cen­tral Ohio Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal once accounted for more than 2,000 in-patient men­tal health beds in our geo­graphic area. That num­ber has been reduced to just 176 beds, with min­i­mal avail­abil­ity, some­times forc­ing patients to be trans­ported long dis­tances for treat­ment, accord­ing to Steve Hedge, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Delaware and Mor­row Men­tal Health Recov­ery Ser­vices Board, of which I am a mem­ber. Only 1,077 state-funded beds remain at five facil­i­ties ded­i­cated to men­tal health in-patient care within Ohio, where once there were 3,524 beds at 17 cen­ters. No state-funded facil­ity remains open for ado­les­cent men­tal health. Pre­vi­ously three hos­pi­tals served the psy­chi­atric needs of Ohio’s children.

One of every four adults is presently encoun­ter­ing a men­tal health-based issue such as depres­sion, bi-polar dis­or­der, anx­i­ety, addic­tion issues or schiz­o­phre­nia. Sadly, 1-in-10 chil­dren also strug­gle with a behav­ioral diag­no­sis, per sta­tis­tics pro­vided by the National Asso­ci­a­tion for Men­tal Ill­ness (NAMI.) Fewer than half of these indi­vid­u­als will receive pro­fes­sional treat­ment. A key com­po­nent of this prob­lem is that fam­i­lies of the men­tally ill have fewer places to seek treat­ment for their loved ones and those remain­ing facil­i­ties lack avail­abil­ity, espe­cially when more than 4,000 beds at state-funded Ohio psy­chi­atric cen­ters are now gone.

An esti­mated 1.6 bil­lion dol­lars of fund­ing for men­tal health ser­vices (per NAMI sta­tis­tics), have dis­ap­peared within the United States since 2009, yet psy­cho­log­i­cal issues are becom­ing more com­mon for Amer­i­cans. The usage of anti-depressants, anx­i­ety, and sleep­ing med­ica­tions has reached record lev­els, but rarely is a men­tal health expert such as a psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chol­o­gist pre­scrib­ing or rec­om­mend­ing these pow­er­ful phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Instead, most pre­scrip­tions are writ­ten by an internist or fam­ily prac­tice physi­cian, a med­ical pro­fes­sional with lim­ited time for each patient need­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal assess­ment or the scope of train­ing to be diag­nos­ing both phys­i­cal AND men­tal maladies.

There are reports that the gun­man was undi­ag­nosed with pos­si­ble Asperger’s, a less severe type of autism. The killer’s divorced mother sup­pos­edly warned his pre­vi­ous babysit­ters, “not to leave him alone.” Accord­ing to news reports, the mother rarely if ever con­fided to friends of his behav­ioral chal­lenges. The out­ward appear­ance of her upscale well-manicured Con­necti­cut home is deceiv­ing for what poten­tially was occur­ring inside. Once again in this sce­nario, silence was her cop­ing mech­a­nism ver­sus call­ing from New­town rooftops that she des­per­ately needed help. Some­how this mother inex­plic­a­bly ratio­nal­ized that tak­ing her son to a fir­ing range for tar­get prac­tice would teach “respon­si­bil­ity.” Com­bin­ing an arse­nal of guns with a men­tally ill fam­ily mem­ber is beyond com­pre­hen­sion and fuels my above-mentioned rage. I am clue­less as to how she con­sciously allowed this lethal mix­ture of keep­ing an assault rifle and sev­eral other weapons in her home, while expe­ri­enc­ing an esca­la­tion in his prob­lem­atic temperament.

Colorado’s Gov. John Hick­en­looper in the after­math of the Aurora movie the­atre mas­sacre ear­lier this year and the New­town deaths, has requested $18.5 mil­lion from the state leg­is­la­ture to improve men­tal health ser­vices for his state’s cit­i­zens. The ini­tia­tive intro­duced at a Dec. 18 press con­fer­ence, is called “Strength­en­ing Colorado’s Men­tal Health Sys­tem: A Plan to Safe­guard All Col­oradans.” His rec­om­men­da­tions include open­ing 24-hour walk-in men­tal health cen­ters, expand­ing both emer­gency room capa­bil­i­ties and com­mu­nity men­tal health cen­ters for in-patient care, and first-responder capa­bil­i­ties for men­tal health crises in that state. I applaud Gov. Hick­en­looper. Twenty four-hour walk-in men­tal health facil­i­ties are needed through­out cities and at other strate­gi­cally placed loca­tions to serve rural areas. Gov. Kasich should take notice. Ohio is des­per­ately lack­ing in these same ser­vices. It was not so long ago when small-town Chardon became nation­ally known for a stu­dent killing class­mates. How many more towns will be bestowed this moniker?

Come on, Amer­ica. Wake up. Men­tal ill­ness is not going away. It is stand­ing at our per­fectly dec­o­rated front doors, yet we con­tinue to ignore the sig­nals which lead to the Dec. 14 mas­sacre and more young lives lost too soon. Our nation’s men­tal health cri­sis is unde­ni­able. As Amer­i­cans, our “head in the sand” atti­tude can only lead to an increased num­ber of trau­ma­tized cities added to this list where men­tal ill­ness and gun usage have cre­ated mon­u­men­tal tragedies.

And finally, I refuse to address by name the New­town gun­man who caused this car­nage. Even though I write for a news­pa­per, my opin­ion is that we should stop pub­li­ciz­ing these mass-killers, thus giv­ing them fame when they deserve only ostracism. Poten­tially the desire to “go out in a blaze of glory” with all of a nation know­ing who they were after such a ram­page, would be less­ened if these mur­der­ers remained anony­mous and only their inno­cent vic­tims received recognition.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Dec 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.