Mental health funding needed

Angry, very angry is what the political and media reaction to the school shootings makes me.

My undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College was in physiological psychology and my very first Master Degree was in clinical and abnormal psychology.

With this acquired background it makes me upset when I see the same shrill political and media talking heads calling for gun control when they are the ones that emasculated our mental health system with the help of the ACLU.

Now, we can only hold mentally ill people for 24 hours and, even with a court order, for only a maximum of 72 hours.

This has led to thousands of mentally challenged living under interstate highway bridges, alleys, and in state and city parks. That is why killers, rapists and drug addicts are free to wander through our neighborhoods and streets, as we all know, and into our schools.

The mother of the latest murder had tried, without success, to have her son committed.

For purely political purposes, these politicians and media figures ignore the real problem and its exceedingly difficult challenges to focus on the absurd and ineffectual effort to ban guns.

That is disgusting. Here, we have an opportunity to discuss a meaningful programme to improve our deplorable national mental health care system.

The blabbers in New York and California as well as the shrill social media are wasting the chance to do something useful and leaving the real problem unsolved. No wonder we have no respect for our political figures.

It is now time to get serious about the real issue and for the politicians to step up and do their part and fix the mental health system.

Bill Shiltz

Eastport