The Mentally Ill

Crisis, a word I always hesitate to use because it sounds so unreasonably urgent most often. But “problem” or “conflict” is not going to be enough to explain this one, so a crisis is what I am going to consider this. Answers and solutions is what we are striving for but we’re at a loss for finding them. No headline about the latest murder, or the irrational argument about the second amendment are getting us any closer. Another bouquet of white lilies left on the memorial site of our loved one we lost in the killing of an untreated mentally ill person is a repeated headline we’re seeing a little too often these days. It’s been like our new policy nowadays is everybody should own a gun, and very sparse get appropriate mental health care. That needs to be stopped. And if there is anything we can do, even if it means saving just one kids life, we’re going to do it. This crisis is causing social problems in our society. According to the world homicide surveys, high rates of homicides have a lot of unfavorable consequences on the quality of a social life, including the weakening of social interactions, fear, and also a sense of insecurity in communities. Although many argue that restricting mentally ill from access to firearms is the only solution to stop the mentally ill from committing murder, the bigger solution to the prevention of homicide by the people who have diagnosis of a mental illness is by increased funding of the mental health care. By increasing governments funding towards mental health, the mentally ill population will have accessibility to quality therapy treatment, the violence will decrease while violence is a leading reason people commit homicide, and would abate the inclination to self medicate using illegal drugs, which leads to uncontrollable behaviors by the Severely Mentally Ill (SMI).

I understand that you think firearms should not be accessible to the mentally ill people because when some certain people did get their hands on a firearm, killed many people. Some examples are James Holmes(Aurora), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech.) , and Adam Lanza(Newtown, Conn.). And these are the biggest shootings to this day in America. That is correct, however, on a news report done by J.D Hayes, 11% of Americans consume a type of antidepressant. 110,000 of our Soldiers are taking powerful antidepressant, sedative and antipsychotic medication. Do those people deserve to be disarmed to? The ones fighting for your life can’t bare arms for the right to protect his/her own life? I agree that the severely mentally ill people on most circumstances should not have access to firearms, but that is not the solution to this crisis that we should be focusing on. Let’s make the accessibility to quality therapy treatment as easy as it is to get hands on a firearm. According to National Alliance of Mental Illness, Fitzpatrick states that less than half of children and adults with diagnosable mental health problems

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