Gabrielle Giffords, Jared Loughner and Mental Illness

The shooter of Representative Giffords, Jared Lee Loughner, is likely to be mentally ill.

The hints are in his writings. Like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who sent 16 mail bombs in the 1980s and 1990s and wrote a rambling manifesto of incomprehensible philosophy, Jared Lee Loughner also had psychotic fueled rantings. Only reflecting the times, Mr. Loughners ramblings were posted on YouTube rather than mailed. He killed with a gun, rather than parcel post. More like Russell Weston, another mentally ill man who shot and killed two police officers in the Capital in 1998.

Politicized Pundits and Politicians (PPPs) are on the air now analyzing the ramblings of Loughner, as if they are worthy of analysis. They are already starting to use him as a poster child for gun control or against the Tea Party, or for a Rodney King-style "can't we all be friends" approach to political civility.

But the PPPs are failing to address the reforms that could prevent these incidents.

What's needed is reform of our involuntary commitment and treatment laws.

Families face a deadly Catch-22. If their family member is so mentally ill they can't even recognize they are ill, they can't be helped until after they become "danger to self or others". Rather than preventing violence, the law in many states requires it. Families are the most frequent victims.

The AP says: "He was obviously disturbed... He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts," said Lynda Sorenson, who took a math class with Loughner last summer"

Involuntary commitment laws did begin to change twelve years ago at the state level when 32-year-old Kendra Webdale was pushed to her death in front of an oncoming New York City subway train by Andrew Goldstein, a young man with untreated serious mental illness.

In reaction to this incident and similar ones across the country, state leaders started passing Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) laws which allow courts to courts to order mentally ill individuals who have a past history of violence and non-compliance with treatment -- to stay in violence-preventing treatment as a condition of living in the community. Case managers and the specter of rehospitalization work in tandem to ensure medication compliance and a richer, fuller life for those experiencing serious mental illness. These laws save money, save lives, and improve care for the seriously ill.

Is Anyone Listening?

But only after Ms. Webdale was pushed, did the New York State legislature pass the eponymously named Kendra's Law. It was after the shooting of 19-year-old Laura Wilcox (10 years ago today) that California passed Laura's law. Similarly, AOT laws were enacted in Maine after mentally ill William Bruce killed his mother with a hatchet; in Florida, after deputy sheriff Eugene Gregory was shot by mentally ill Alan Singletary; and in New Jersey after the stabbing of 11-year-old Gregory Katsnelson.

None of the mental health commissioners make sufficient use of the laws that were put on the books. Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Nevada and Tennessee still don't have a law in spite of pressure from advocates for the mentally ill to pass one as a way to deliver more humane care.

While mental health commissioners may not have a plan to improve care for the mentally ill, they do have a plan to avoid responsibility when events like the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords takes place.

The National Association of State Mental Health Directors recently issued a 98-page Toolkit for State Mental Health Commissioners: Responding to a High-Profile Tragic Incident Involving a Person with a Serious Mental Illness. As the toolkit explains:

No one wants to think about such an event happening on his or her watch"

And therein lies the problem.

Mental Health Commissioners won't 'think about such an event' or take steps to minimize the possibility of one. The 98-page document doesn't contain a single proposal on how to improve care for the seriously mentally ill; only 98 pages of information on how to spin the media into thinking no action is needed.

And I have not heard any of the PPPs on TV addressing this issue. States that have AOT should force their mental health departments to make greater use of it. Those that don't have AOT should get it. Washington should force states to stop spending the mental health dollars on the worried-well and force them to spend on the most seriously ill. And Washington based government agencies like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency that stand in the way of reform should lose their funding.

Something has to change.

It shouldn't take another Loughner shooting another Giffords to get Washington and states to act.

 

 

 

Follow DJ Jaffe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheRealMrMe

Comments

[novabird]

11:30 PM on 02/23/2011

Involuntary or forced treatment is sometimes the most kind and humane thing you can do for a loved one. Once you have experienced the prolonged and gut wrenching experience of trying to help a loved one who is in full psychosis and whose family, job, social life and personality has disintegrated into unspeakable darkness and suffering you might appreciate the chance to obtains forced medical care for them so they can get into some sort of healthy recovery.

My close family members was forced into treatment by a judge and it saved her life. She is in her own apartment and doing well today, once she got stabilized with anti-psychotic meds.

[Alexander Bingham]

12:34 PM on 01/20/2011

Why are you refusing to post my comments? Are you afraid that comments from me, a licensed clinical psychologist and psychological activist will successfully challenge your credibility as an honest, forthright blogger? although you have consistently avoided answering my questions directly in previous posts, at least you commented on them. Please have the courage to address perspectives on medications and the medical model instead of ignoring them. It only serves to prove that you are not interested in dialogue or learning anything new.

Dr. Alexander Bingham
[e-mail]

[spoonerrothbard]

10:24 PM on 01/10/2011

Isn't it weird that Giffords sbscribed to loughner's youtube channel?

[Elizabeth Laine]

08:06 PM on 01/10/2011

Precisely why I wrote my 1st book as the wife of a severe bipolar disordered doctor. Despite knowing better he put me and our 4 kids through hell for 27 years.Non-compliance was his ultimate downfall as he sought alternative therapy, deliverance from churches and looked for a cure.
He lost everything, our marriage, his career, even his medical registration after committing arsen against the doctor who 1st committed him involuntarily 25 years previously. He lost his life; suicided in an untreated depressive episode in July, 2009, 5 years after leaving me for the 2nd time and destroying all my relationships with our adult kids to justify his cruel actions. He blamed me for his illness and subsequent divorce, when he instigated it in 1999 just after he left me for the 1st time in 1998. My book gives me and my kids a voice for emotional damage. That is why my book supports World Visions Rescue Programme for enslaved, abused kids, some as young as 4. A butterfly landed an eagle is my true story, spanning 47 years. I hope other families with mentally ill members may use my hindsight as foresight, to make less mistakes than I did, and more informed decisions to protect from and prevent emotional damage, particularly of children in the marriage/relationship. The well person is all they have! Thank you, Elizabeth Laine

[Deborah Foster]

04:50 PM on 01/11/2011

I feel for your pain. In our family, my grandfather lost everything because of his bipolar disorder, which cascaded into my mother with bipolar disorder and father with schizophrenia losing everything (including custody of us due to poverty), and then my brother committed suicide. Serious mental illness is so destructive. Like you, I have been writing an intergenerational family memoir, and even if no one ever publishes it, it has given a voice to a very lonely, isolated traumatic life. And that is healing. I plan to look for your book.

[Kristin Ulland]

05:53 PM on 01/10/2011

Mr. Jaffee has not read current literature supporting the fact that psychiatric medications can trigger violent actions towards others. The FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System by Thomas Moore, Joseph Glenmullen and Curt Furberg, published by PLoS One on December 15, found that such “adverse event” are indeed associated with antidepressants and several other types of psychotropic medication.
Jaffee insists that involuntary commitment and reform of treatment laws are the key to stopping these unspeakable crimes. Yet, it has been documented that forced drugging and worthless time spent locked up only perpetuates the problem.
Have you, Mr. Jaffee, considered using this platform (which I am constantly amazed you have!) to educate readers on the basics of healing from psychological trauma? Have you considered focusing your attention on resources which foster dignity and self-worth? What if there was better access to quality voluntary outpatient help? Have you considered looking into treatment without psychotropic drug intervention? Do you know anything about peer-run support?
Fear-mongering is your game. You have drawn support from families who have been separated from their loved ones by the psychiatric system. Your supporters have thrown away their power and live in fear of their loved-ones next move. I suggest to try what many people have -- take back the power, get your loved-one off drugs, out of the system and deal with them one on one. Scary, at first but not half as scary as the alternative.

[Ivy Jones]

01:47 AM on 01/12/2011

May I ask about your expertise on this subject?

[Meg Park]

09:03 AM on 01/15/2011

Very well said Kristin. Mr Jaffee, it would seem, has one tool in his kit. He believes he needs a hammer. He reaches in to get the hammer. The head is broken off the hammer. But he continues to pound away with the broken hammer expecting to build something.

[Paleo Man]

04:40 PM on 01/10/2011

Thoughtful and insightful article. Thoughtful and insightful responses from those who posted in opposition to it, likely often by those with their own issues. Liberals will oppose the proposals on civil liberties grounds. Conservatives will oppose them for fiscal reasons, it is cheaper to let someone live under a bridge.

While you folks and the mentally ill debate this, how will the rest of us respond? We will keep doing what we are doing. We'll go out of our way to avoid those who are obviously mentally ill (usually pretty obvious to everyone but themselves) and we'll prepare to effectively defend ourselves personally against those on the loose who are dangerously or violently so. The liberal anti-commitment folks will be happy. The fiscal conservatives will be happy. Apparently many of the mentally ill and others who wrote in opposition to the article will be happy, or think so.

Perhaps the necessity of some avoidance maneuvers and personal preparedness on the part of the rest of us is a small price to pay for all this happiness on the part of others.

[Juli Lawrence]

11:24 AM on 01/10/2011

DJ says: "They are already starting to use him as a poster child for gun control or against the Tea Party.."

And yet here you are, making a national holiday of it all. And turning this guy into the poster boy for forced treatment.

[Todd Winstrom]

10:32 PM on 01/09/2011

NO, NO, NO!!!! We do NOT need to make it easier to subject people to civil commitment and involuntary treatment!! WE DO need to dramatically increase funding for VOLUNTARY Mental Health treatment in the community, WE DO need to ensure that our community MH programs are based on the RECOVERY based principles of empowerment, dignity and self-direction, and WE DO need to fight and fight ever more vigorously against the stigma aimed at people with mental illness that makes it so hard for so many folks with these disorders to acknowledge that they have a condition that needs treatment....

The key is offering people high-quality treatment in the community that they find so helpful and empowering that they want to receive it ... And remember, an Involuntary Commitment (Inpt or Outpt) to an underfunded MH system that can't provide meaningful, quality tx does NOTHING....
WE NEED MORE ACCESS TO HIGHER QUALITY VOLUNTARY OUTPT TX -- Not a greater ability to coerce people into an underfunded system that offers little in the way of true quality care....

[Opponent]

04:42 AM on 01/10/2011

Ignore the author. His life consists of collating articles about murder and tweeting them while calling for more coercive laws. He doesn't believe personal problems can be caused by life events, he is essentially a raving fundamentalist whose purpose is to browbeat people into living as he does, pretending psychiatrists have insight into his, your, our, biology. He's been given numerous chances to connect with people who've recovered from the problems he labels 'biological', people who've recovered without that model, and he knows full well how much pain and misery coercive psychiatry has caused to countless of us, he thinks nothing of subjecting us to his hate speech month after month, re-traumatizing the victims of the coercion he seeks to expand. He is truly a bully and so one eyed he's prepared to hurt and force people he's never met to live in fear of the regime he seeks to create in 'mental health'. He has put himself on the map as one of the most heartless human beings to ever label himself an 'advocate' for anyone. His presence here on a supposedly progressive blog pushing his hate speech and hate policy, wounds and terrorizes some of the most already traumatized people in society. He is a menace. A heartless, cruel, menace with zero desire to truly help any troubled person, as evidenced by the fact he is unable to put aside his prerequisite, unshakable belief that those he claims to 'advocate' for are defective, diseased, walking brain diseases.

[Bloosky]

08:54 PM on 01/09/2011

Involuntary incarceration/commitment can be a very slippery slope. Look what happened in Russia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

Also, a large number of wacko shooters in the past have been on psychiatric drugs already. That may actually be the cause of the problem, not the solution.

[jwald1]

08:22 PM on 01/09/2011

good article dj, shared it.

[1prophetspeaks]

07:26 PM on 01/09/2011

AOT laws are not humane, nor are they treatment. They are abusive and unconstitutional. ANYONE WHO ADVOCATES FOR THEM IS not ADVOCATING FOR THE MENTALLY ILL. The mentally ill do NOT want to take the drugs voluntarily, because they KNOW they have horrible side effects, and are toxic and deadly. They cause liver and kidney and brain damage, agitation, tics, tremors, and PSYCHOSIS. The drug handbooks ADMIT that a common side effect of anti-psychotics IS psychosis. THey CAUSE MENTAL ILLNESS; they DO NOT cure it and do not help in any way. The only purpose they serve is to make money for BIG PHARMA.

Many of the people labeled schizophrenic are NOT mentally ill at all; they are CHRISTIANS. For 50 years psychiatry has been slandering christians or anyone with spiritual beliefs and experiences as being mentally ill, sinc e psychiatry is atheistic and anti-spiritual in its worldview. Their 2nd question is ALWAYS "Do you hear voices?" It is their test question. Anyone who says YES is thought to have auditory hallucinations; a symptom of psychosis. ANY Christian who hears GOD speak to him would be called schizophrenic; it is NORMAL CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY to do so. Jesus said "my sheep hear my voice". John 10:27 Everyone hears voices, as thoughts in our heads. This is biblical theology. James ch 3 (NT) says there is wisdom from above and wisdom from below. Thoughts come into our heads from the spiritual realm. "inspiration" means "a spirit goes into it".

[Louesa]

06:09 PM on 01/09/2011

Thank you, DJ, for once again hitting the nail on the head. A nail's about the only thing you're going to hit, since the politicians and political pundits all have their heads in the sand! And with the collusion of the politically correct SAMHA and state commissioners, it's going to a long, slow slog, indeed to refocusing precious and scarce dollars on those who need them most.

[Ivy Jones]

05:40 PM on 01/09/2011

As the mother af a mentally ill adult son, this article really hit home with me. How many people (sane and not sane) have to die before people wake up and change the laws for families trying to get help/take care of their mentally ill family member? No one knows what that family member is going to do next. when we try to get help because we can see them amping up, we are told that until he admits he is going to hurt himself or someone else there is nothing we/they can do, even if there is documented proof of the illness, our hands are tied. Luckily for me, my son started a fire in a small town where he was known by the local police (we are lucky he wasn't shot), He was committted to a mental facility for 6 mnths. and is scheduled to be released soon. At that point I am sure the state will drop the ball and lose track of him. He needs to be kept under canstant supervision. Luckily for him, the state has no problem supporting him monitarily, but because of the antiquated laws for mentally ill people, there is nothing that us as family members can do when he stops taking his medication.....again...and on it goes until someone gets hurt.

[1prophetspeaks]

06:19 PM on 01/09/2011

It is the 'treatment' with psych meds that makes your son ill. The drug handbooks admit that a common side effect of anti-psychotics and anti-depressants (prozac) is psychosis! The new testament is clear that mental illness is caused by demonic oppression, and the CURE is prayer in Jesus name. It works. Get him to a pentacostal church ALL DRUGS are openings for demonic oppression, including caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, pot, lsd, etc and all psych meds. You can read my FREE book on how to heal mental illness on my website 1prophetspeaks.com; Manual For Transformational Healing-God's Answer to Psychiatry..

[Opponent]

08:32 PM on 01/09/2011

I'm glad you're not my mother.

[db08]

09:06 PM on 01/09/2011

How cruel

[Theresa N]

02:19 PM on 01/09/2011

While this shooter is clearly mentally ill the vast majority of the mentally ill are not violent. What the mentally ill need is not involuntary incarceration but resources in the community that treat them with the respect and compassion that the seriously ill deserve. Instead we have cuts in health care, housing, and every other service they need to survive with dignity. Most seriously mentally ill end up in crowded, dilapidated board and care housing that you would never think of putting the developmentally disabled or elderly in. Drop-in centers frequently shame those who frequent them with chores while those who work their sit around ("Club House Philosophy" ones especially). They cannot work yet are treated by society as lazy. Many have to live on SSI, about $640 per month and to receive this meager amount they must expend all their resources. No one can live on this. Subsidized housing is frequently nothing better than "slum" housing infested with pests and mold. Psychiatrists are so poorly paid that few doctors would consider it as a specialty. HMOs have closed most of their psychiatric clinics because they are reimbursed less for psychiatric care. Before we punish all mentally ill for the very few who are violent we should provide those cursed with this awful illness humanitarian treatment.

[Russ Evenhouse]

01:42 PM on 01/09/2011

Actually, I think we need to stop being so concerned with the lives of so-called "Important" people.
Let their shootings and murders be handled the same as any Joe on the street. No special investigative work. Just the usual for the community they live in.
Maybe when the well to do are treated as shabbily as the general population, then there will be some major reforms in the treatment of violent crimes. I'm tired of taxpayers spending millions to
Investigate crime against the well to do, while poor folks barely make it into the obituary column when they are murdered. America is one of the most violent nations on Earth. Let the rich and poor
folks violent crimes be treated equally.

Equal justice for all!

Isn't that what this country is supposed to be all about?