Radical Mental Health in an Era of Mass Shootings {marxists, you might want to check in}

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/30-4



he mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 young school children and seven adults (including the shooter himself) has not only reignited the debate over gun control in the United States, but also a discussion over how communities deal with madness in their midst. Adam Lanza showed signs of mental illness before the killing spree — as have other recent perpetrators of mass shootings.

Psychiatrist Lynne Fenton of the University of Colorado says her patient, James Holmes, alerted her of his plans before strolling into a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colo., this July and spraying the crowd with bullets. Fenton informed school officials, but she says they did nothing because Holmes was in the process of dropping out. Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 14 others with a 9mm Glock pistol in a Tuscon parking lot in January 2011; in the two years prior to the shooting, the state of Arizona had slashed mental health services from its budget, services that could have diagnosed, medicated and provided therapy for Loughner’s schizophrenia and possibly prevented the deaths. The 1999 Columbine High School massacre took place at an epicenter of high-tech weapons production, part of the military industry that consumes more than half of our yearly income taxes.

There is a tendency in this country to regard mental illness — as if in deference to the antiquated notion of “possession” — as the personal property of those who exhibit the most alarming symptoms. But the circumstances of each of these shooters indicate the social character of mental illness, and the need for a social response to it.

On a Wednesday night in October at the Brecht Forum, a Marxist community center along the Hudson River in Manhattan, the crowd of about 50 gathered to look back on the first decade of the Icarus Project. It’s a network meant to foster “radical mental health” for those and by those grappling with the “dangerous gift” of mental illness — or, as participants often say, “madness.” Many were veterans of Icarus’ early group sessions or had been nourished by this community, which uncovered a seething madness under the surface of the metropolis.

[BanTheGOP]

1. Bottom line: the GOP was responsible for Lanza's condition...

...therefore, in extension, was 100% responsible for the horrendous deaths in Newtown, and again in extension, the over 300 murders we've had since Newtown. We MUST eliminate the 2nd Amendment as it is currently ensconced, and divert all the funds to psychiatric counseling, like the rest of the civilized world.

[HiPointDem]

2. "the social character of mental illness, and the need for a social response to it" = indeed.