VIRGINIA'S MENTAL HEALTH CARE--BROKEN PROMISES

FORMER VIRGINIA GOVERNR McDONNELL

Following the Virginia Tech massacre, state officials promised more money and more emphasis on mental health. They kept their promise—for one year. Virginia now spends less on mental health than it did on April 16, 2007. In fact, former Governor Bob McDonnell’s policy of privatizing the state’s mental health care was an attack on the most vulnerable segment of society, the portion of the population least able to defend itself—the mentally ill.

Privatization is not advocated in order to improve health care. It is pursued to curry favor with the far right wing of the political spectrum that want to minimize government no matter what the cost—in this case, a human life.

POLITICIZING MENTAL HEALTH CARE

Unfortunately, the need for more and better mental health care is being politicized.

The National Review could not resist distorting the facts and demonizing those with whom they disagree. In a recent editorial the magazine wrote, “The common thread in these tragedies is not the killer’s choice of weapons, but his unhinged state of mind.” It would sound as if the influential conservative magazine is throwing its editorial weight behind expanding and improving mental health care.

Unfortunately that’s not the case.

The magazine lambasted liberals. The next sentence reads, “Liberals pushed the ‘deinstitutionalization’ movement of the 1960s that made it almost impossible to keep mentally ill people safely locked up.” The National Review is distorting the facts. Large state and federal run mental health facilities existed well into the 1980s.

Both liberals and conservatives played roles in closing mental health facilities—a policy that has had led to the plummeting of the quality of mental health care.

New Jersey and Virginia, the two states I am familiar with, have closed mental health hospitals with disastrous results. Both states have privatized mental health care and the result has been a marked decline in the quality and amount of mental health treatment.

What a shame a major national magazine couldn’t resist trying to score points on the bodies of students, staff, and faculty.

In the final analysis, we don’t need to waste time and energy arguing whose fault it is that our mental health care system is underfunded and so woefully inadequate. We need to stop blaming each other for past mistakes and turn our attention to stopping the gun violence epidemic.

 We need liberals and conservatives to stop pointing fingers at each other and come together in the common cause of ending school shootings. (To be continued)