Mental Health and Madness
For all the events in Orlando, Nice, Brussels — we must consider easy access to guns, fundamentalist religionistas as key contributing factors, but ultimately circle back to the center of it all — mental health services.
And given our current administration’s hell bent desire to provoke, prod, strut and look for international trouble (all contrary to my martial arts training of never looking for a fight), we might have issues forthcoming.
Truly, there are things that we can do to improve gun ownership and safety. And no, hunters and of sound mind others, I don’t want to take away your guns. Sleep with them if you want, for all I care. And most certainly, there are things we can do to suss out fundamentalist terrorist groups who are doing the training. There are things that we can do to prevent and perhaps improve our emergency responsiveness. But, the Muslim Ban, stupid.
So the most obvious, yet the most difficult path to pursue, is to improve our various mental health systems. We need to offer alternatives for lonely, disturbed individuals who find a dark corner in the internet to spiral down further into a hole of darkness. We need to help families develop the skills to support those in their circle that are struggling.
Families are our canaries in the coalmine of cravenness and our first responders. I would love to hear conservative proposals to improve our mental and emotional well-being. Less crappy TV and movies from Hollywood? You, know I might support that, as someone tired of shallow stereotypes and violence spewed, creating wealth, and then leading to some highly paid entertainment industry person posing as a progressive. Support of family? Well, hell yes, if family is broadly and inclusively defined. More religion? I will take spirituality. It is good for the soul or whatever intangible thing you want to call that which cannot be quantified. Options for hard work and getting ahead? Absolutely. Much dysfunction stems from the loss of dignity, from the loss of meaningful work.
It would be refreshing for conservatives to get off of their victimization food train and become leaders and actually broker intelligent conversations on how they walk their talk with their values — specifically as it relates to mental health services.
Clearly, in respecting free speech, encouraging the free flow of information, we inherently allow various streams of that information to be propaganda, garbage. It just flows. It will continue to flow. But we need to improve as much as possible, our collective capacity to filter out the garbage. We need a renewed commitment to honoring free speech, but also encouraging critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence and integrity. Reinvesting in journalism, fact checking, neutral party websites can help mitigate that flow of information but the recipient — us — we will need some help.
How do we address prevent individuals who have drank bile, from getting sicker? There are organic issues of the brain, there are biological factors relative to anger management and acting out. As usual, it will most likely fall to the nonprofit sector, perhaps local jurisdictions. Though I do not believe we can continue to cover the safety net in a business as usual manner, we must be creative in our responses — finding partnerships, communicating and acting in human ways, not bureaucratically.
Ultimately, why is it so out of favor to want to help people — especially those with mental health issues? Why is it so difficult to understand how an individual’s emotional dysfunction evolves from the nature/nurture dynamic? Why is prevention, common sense out of favor — in favor of blustery bulls$%$T?
Hmm, could it be our national role models — or lack thereof? For me, that is a definite, Yes.
