By Jefferson Weaver
Like most of you, I am still processing the shock and horror of the murders of 17 people, most of them students, in Parkland, Florida.
Like many of you, I am disgusted with the way so many politicians and talking heads have jumped up to use this killing as a means to promote their sociopolitical agendas. But that is not what I feel led to write about today.
Like a lot of you, I know that such terrorism can’t be stopped or even slowed down by more gun laws. The gun laws we already have cannot be enforced, or are not enforced. Countries with strict gun laws really don’t have a lower murder rate, when you look at all the numbers. But arguments about the Second Amendment are not heavy on my mind today.
Unlike a lot of folks, I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of blaming the school resource officer and the other deputies who didn’t do anything when Nicholas Cruz began shooting. I wasn’t there. I have not been under fire like that. I can’t say I would have rushed toward the sound of gunfire, but I think I would have, especially if I were armed. Nor am I going to lambast the FBI and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, although both obviously failed.
And while I personally endorse a highly-regulated program allowing some teachers to carry firearms, that too is a column for another day.
What hurts my heart today is the fact that we as a nation have dropped the ball on mental health.
Years ago, I was talking with then-Sen. Tony Rand of Cumberland County about the state’s plan to de-institutionalize mental health care. Tony and I rarely agreed on a lot of topics, but we both loved our mothers and neither was afraid to speak his mind. We got along famously.
I told him I thought focusing more on community programs was a bad idea—this was long before the so-called reforms of a few years ago that made mental health care even worse. He hemmed and hawed, and called me out as a fiscal conservative, since the few mental institutions still in operation then were major expenditures for the state. We both agreed, however, that the rampant over-prescription of various drugs to kids would have long-term consequences, and that good parenting and fewer lawsuits against schools could solve many problems faster than Ritalin or Haldol.
Flash forward 14 or 15 years. We have 18-year-olds who can’t join the military because they were prescribed mood stabilizers to cure hyperactivity. We have teenagers requiring new drugs to counter the effects of the drugs that were given to them when they were in elementary school. And every school shooter in the past several years has had a history of mental problems and medication.
I hate being right sometimes.
When I was a little kid, I was full of restless energy. Miss Lois didn’t have all the pharmaceutical options available to too many folks today, and wouldn’t have used them anyway. She had a flyswatter that was liberally applied to my backside. She also made a harness that scandalized many other mothers younger than her. Mother began leashing me when I developed a tendency to scoot under display racks and down aisles in stores to hide. It was a safe, handy way to keep me in the yard in Keener. I could be clipped to the clothesline, and allowed to run until I was exhausted, playing with my dog and never out of Mother’s sight.
Ironically, a few years after I was too big for a leash and harness, similar systems became available in finer baby stores across the country. Years after I was grown, Miss Lois just about died laughing when the daughter of one of Mother’s harshest critics dropped by to visit. She had her child – the critic’s grandchild — on a fancy store-bought rig just like the one Mother made for me.
I still wish Miss Lois had patented her idea.
I compare that to a 10-year-old boy whose parents I was visiting one evening several years back. The boy had a new video game where the player killed Nazis with a variety of weapons. What really scared me was when the young hero accidentally shot his digital companion – then reset the game so he could do it again. At 10 years of age, he was being taught that life has a reset button, and squelching through gore to kill people is fun. I don’t necessarily believe all shooter games are bad – but when one can see an enemy’s head explode, or splashes through a puddle of blood, and the player is a kid, that’s gone too far. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?
Until you have dealt with a family member who has a mental issue, you might not have the same perspective as someone who does. It ain’t easy, trust me. You learn that there is no catch-all, miracle cure. Every single person requires a different kind of treatment, and sometimes those folks – sadly, even kids — require intensive treatment. All too often, the sick person ends up in jail, rather than where he or she can get help. Sometimes there’s get an involuntary commitment to a local hospital, which sadly does nothing but tie up law enforcement and hospital staff.
And there is virtually no public record of folks with such problems. Health privacy laws and bureaucratic laxness prevents background checks for firearms buyers from reporting mental illness. It’s hard to believe, but the same rules apply, in some cases, for jobs in teaching and the medical field. If a mentally ill person doesn’t tell the truth, there is often no way of knowing someone has a problem until it’s too late.
Never mind the blurring of the line between drug abuse, which has its roots in voluntary usage, and true mental illness. It infuriates me to see a repeat offender who’s been in and out of rehab equated with someone who is truly mentally ill.
We don’t have nearly the gun problem in this country as we do a problem with turning away from traditional values. We have been conditioned to think that disciplining children is a bad thing, since the kids’ feelings might get hurt. I would posit that a lack of appropriate response to measured, loving discipline is an early sign of mental illness, that might be able to be treated early on, but that’s just my opinion.
We have been conditioned to think that we can solve mental illness with a pill, and then assume that the person in need of treatment is going to consistently take that pill. That’s just lazy and cruel, folks.
Once upon a time, you could discipline a child; I’d bet if you ran the numbers, undisciplined children are far more likely to end up “needing” medications than those with parents who — well, parent.
It used to be that when there was a real problem, a person could get treatment other than a prescription and a pat on the back. Not every unruly kid is going to be a mental case – and not every well-disciplined child is going to be a good member of society. But poisoning a child’s future with expensive chemicals simply because a parent can’t make a kid behave is not the answer.
Folks, in my opinion, many Americans are killing their own children – not by letting terrorists purchase firearms, but by not being the parents they need to be. Until we can have a heart change, I can’t see any law, any pill, or any impassioned statement making a difference.
Kids need to be able to be kids – but parents have to be parents. And both young and old who are truly sick need to get some help other than a pill, a promise and a pat on the back.
Like most of you, I am still processing the shock and horror of the murders of 17 people, most of them students, in Parkland, Florida.
Like many of you, I am disgusted with the way so many politicians and talking heads have jumped up to use this killing as a means to promote their sociopolitical agendas. But that is not what I feel led to write about today.
Like a lot of you, I know that such terrorism can’t be stopped or even slowed down by more gun laws. The gun laws we already have cannot be enforced, or are not enforced. Countries with strict gun laws really don’t have a lower murder rate, when you look at all the numbers. But arguments about the Second Amendment are not heavy on my mind today.
Unlike a lot of folks, I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of blaming the school resource officer and the other deputies who didn’t do anything when Nicholas Cruz began shooting. I wasn’t there. I have not been under fire like that. I can’t say I would have rushed toward the sound of gunfire, but I think I would have, especially if I were armed. Nor am I going to lambast the FBI and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, although both obviously failed.
And while I personally endorse a highly-regulated program allowing some teachers to carry firearms, that too is a column for another day.
What hurts my heart today is the fact that we as a nation have dropped the ball on mental health.
Years ago, I was talking with then-Sen. Tony Rand of Cumberland County about the state’s plan to de-institutionalize mental health care. Tony and I rarely agreed on a lot of topics, but we both loved our mothers and neither was afraid to speak his mind. We got along famously.
I told him I thought focusing more on community programs was a bad idea—this was long before the so-called reforms of a few years ago that made mental health care even worse. He hemmed and hawed, and called me out as a fiscal conservative, since the few mental institutions still in operation then were major expenditures for the state. We both agreed, however, that the rampant over-prescription of various drugs to kids would have long-term consequences, and that good parenting and fewer lawsuits against schools could solve many problems faster than Ritalin or Haldol.
Flash forward 14 or 15 years. We have 18-year-olds who can’t join the military because they were prescribed mood stabilizers to cure hyperactivity. We have teenagers requiring new drugs to counter the effects of the drugs that were given to them when they were in elementary school. And every school shooter in the past several years has had a history of mental problems and medication.
I hate being right sometimes.
When I was a little kid, I was full of restless energy. Miss Lois didn’t have all the pharmaceutical options available to too many folks today, and wouldn’t have used them anyway. She had a flyswatter that was liberally applied to my backside. She also made a harness that scandalized many other mothers younger than her. Mother began leashing me when I developed a tendency to scoot under display racks and down aisles in stores to hide. It was a safe, handy way to keep me in the yard in Keener. I could be clipped to the clothesline, and allowed to run until I was exhausted, playing with my dog and never out of Mother’s sight.
Ironically, a few years after I was too big for a leash and harness, similar systems became available in finer baby stores across the country. Years after I was grown, Miss Lois just about died laughing when the daughter of one of Mother’s harshest critics dropped by to visit. She had her child – the critic’s grandchild — on a fancy store-bought rig just like the one Mother made for me.
I still wish Miss Lois had patented her idea.
I compare that to a 10-year-old boy whose parents I was visiting one evening several years back. The boy had a new video game where the player killed Nazis with a variety of weapons. What really scared me was when the young hero accidentally shot his digital companion – then reset the game so he could do it again. At 10 years of age, he was being taught that life has a reset button, and squelching through gore to kill people is fun. I don’t necessarily believe all shooter games are bad – but when one can see an enemy’s head explode, or splashes through a puddle of blood, and the player is a kid, that’s gone too far. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?
Until you have dealt with a family member who has a mental issue, you might not have the same perspective as someone who does. It ain’t easy, trust me. You learn that there is no catch-all, miracle cure. Every single person requires a different kind of treatment, and sometimes those folks – sadly, even kids — require intensive treatment. All too often, the sick person ends up in jail, rather than where he or she can get help. Sometimes there’s get an involuntary commitment to a local hospital, which sadly does nothing but tie up law enforcement and hospital staff.
And there is virtually no public record of folks with such problems. Health privacy laws and bureaucratic laxness prevents background checks for firearms buyers from reporting mental illness. It’s hard to believe, but the same rules apply, in some cases, for jobs in teaching and the medical field. If a mentally ill person doesn’t tell the truth, there is often no way of knowing someone has a problem until it’s too late.
Never mind the blurring of the line between drug abuse, which has its roots in voluntary usage, and true mental illness. It infuriates me to see a repeat offender who’s been in and out of rehab equated with someone who is truly mentally ill.
We don’t have nearly the gun problem in this country as we do a problem with turning away from traditional values. We have been conditioned to think that disciplining children is a bad thing, since the kids’ feelings might get hurt. I would posit that a lack of appropriate response to measured, loving discipline is an early sign of mental illness, that might be able to be treated early on, but that’s just my opinion.
We have been conditioned to think that we can solve mental illness with a pill, and then assume that the person in need of treatment is going to consistently take that pill. That’s just lazy and cruel, folks.
Once upon a time, you could discipline a child; I’d bet if you ran the numbers, undisciplined children are far more likely to end up “needing” medications than those with parents who — well, parent.
It used to be that when there was a real problem, a person could get treatment other than a prescription and a pat on the back. Not every unruly kid is going to be a mental case – and not every well-disciplined child is going to be a good member of society. But poisoning a child’s future with expensive chemicals simply because a parent can’t make a kid behave is not the answer.
Folks, in my opinion, many Americans are killing their own children – not by letting terrorists purchase firearms, but by not being the parents they need to be. Until we can have a heart change, I can’t see any law, any pill, or any impassioned statement making a difference.
Kids need to be able to be kids – but parents have to be parents. And both young and old who are truly sick need to get some help other than a pill, a promise and a pat on the back.
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