re: #305 Obdicut

So, in this case— a highly privileged youth with a wealthy parent— how could mental health professionals have played a role?

I don’t think Obama is being dishonest, but I do think he’s co-opting the opposition position as he often does in order to not create a false conflict. Sure, mental health can obviously play a role in preventing gun violence. But the dishonesty comes from the people calling for us to focus on that rather than on guns or gun culture.

Hell, I’d say the biggest contribution mental health professionals could make is by therapizing people out of gun fetishizing.

The full story of what Lanza was thinking and what his behavior was like in the runup to this event has not yet been told. We do know that both Loughner and Holmes (Arizona and Colorado mass shooters) have been professionally evaluated as psychiatric cases. The president may know something we do not know about Lanza, or he may have been thinking of the whole collection of mass shootings over the past few years, including those two, as well as the most recent one.

Guns and gun culture are certainly a big part of the story. But the problem is big enough, and the mental health side of it is a big enough part of it, that mental health needs to be addressed along with the other things.