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The shooting and stabbing spree in Isla Vista,
California on Friday, May 23, which left seven people dead including the shooter, is the latest
in an ever increasing number of public mass murders in the United States.
With each tragedy, it is normal to look for an explanation—a
reason why it happened. There has been no shortage of mental health experts on
local and national television speculating as to why the killer went on his
rampage. This particular case is fueled by YouTube videos and hundred-page
manifestos from the murderer himself.
Up to this point, almost everything that psychologists and
psychiatrists have been saying about the shooter has been speculation.
What little we know at this point can be boiled down to a
few main points:
1. The
shooter was very angry.
2. He
was at an age where mental illness typically emerges and can be dangerous
because people do not fully understand the impact of their symptoms yet.
3. He
was already in mental health treatment and his parents were worried about him.
Regardless of the causes of the tragedy, it is important to
recognize the killer’s mental health providers may have been doing everything
they could for him. In many states, Colorado included, people cannot be
committed to a psychiatric institution against their will unless they are an
imminent threat to themselves or others.
In hindsight, it is obvious the killer was imminently
dangerous. But, if he told his therapists he felt fine and that he didn’t have
a plan to harm anyone, there was nothing more they could have done. They might
have worried he was dangerous, but as far as they knew, he was not imminently dangerous and he could not be
hospitalized against his will.
Colorado is now grappling with the problem of how to deal
with potentially dangerous individuals in the wake of the Aurora theater
shooting. Some legislators are pushing to change civil commitment laws in the
state to remove the requirement of an “imminent” threat in order to get people
the help they need and avoid further tragedies. Others in the state have argued
this would give therapists and doctors too much power and would infringe on an
individual’s civil liberties.
Making the issue even more complicated is that many people
who desperately need treatment are not yet connected to a mental health
provider. In cases such as these, it is often difficult for someone to know
where to turn for help. Even people who want
mental health treatment get turned away due to lack of care. In an environment
such as this, people who are refusing treatment tend to get overlooked.
Until states grapple with these tough issues, we as
Americans run the risk of continuing to allow individuals who could become
mentally unstable to go untreated (keep in mind, most individuals with mental
illness are no more dangerous than those without mental illness—but untreated
mental illness is one cause--of many--of the recent rash of public mass murders).
The unfortunate reality is that more preventable suicides and homicides are
likely if we do not deal with the crisis of mental health treatment and mental health laws in our
country.
(by Max Wachtel)
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