Since the Newtown shootings, public debate over gun control and second amendment supporters have raged non stop. Those of us in mental health care have hoped this event, and the others like it, could raise awareness of the one preventable cause of the recent mass shootings: the lack of mental health care funding and weak commitment laws. A recent poll shows something else.
Those surveyed feel strongly that anyone treated by a psychiatrist should be denied access to guns. This is in spite of the fact that psychiatric patients are no more likely to be violent than the general population. It is a small segment of patients, namely young adult psychotic paranoid men, who have been the recent shooters. If properly treated the threat is dramatically reduced. Again, the public misses the point and simply re-stigmatizes this already  misunderstood population. Of course, since this is fifteen to twenty percent of our country, it is really all of us! Hopefully we can still raise this discussion to address the real issues here and the underlying causes: lack of mental health awareness, funding and legal support.
And, I join those sick to the core of groups who use every public event to promote their crusades, even if it only vaguely relates. We need to realistically focus on the issue at hand. Give those of us in this field the resources to do our job!