Acceptable Losses

I mentioned in my post about the death of Eric Harris in the Tulsa reserve-deputy-involved shooting that there was another shooting around the same time in Sand Springs.

It was of a mentally ill man named Donald Allen - "a paranoid schizophrenic who ha[d] been off his medication for a year" according to the Allen's wife (source).  He was a Vietnam vet, and I don't think there's anyone in this country who doesn't agree we should be doing more for the mental health of our veterans.  Yet, here he was. 

He was having a breakdown, and came out from his house with a gun, charging at police.  Some might call this sort of attack "suicide by police," but this seems to brush under the rug the horrible truth about it - that had we simply had better support for him in the first place, this would have been entirely avoidable.

There are a couple of key differences between this death and the death of Harris; key among them, perhaps, is the presence of a gun in the hands of Allen.  Officer intent is another, and race is certainly one as well.  The reason race plays into it is that black men finally - and rightfully, I might add - are having a national voice to protest police violence.  It's catching our attention in a big way, and leading to small changes that will hopefully save lives.  Allen, on the other hand, has no voice - while he is white, he is also a member of the Mentally Ill minority group.  This group is still voiceless.

To the credit of the Sand Springs Police Department, though, they acknowledged this same problem, and admitted that our system is broken and we need to find ways of providing better assistance.

How would we avoid these deaths in the future?  Well, larger cities (such as Tulsa) could and should invest in psychological task forces, given the role of handling cases where a perpetrator has a known history of mental illness and helping to identify cases of mental illness in those cases with no history.  Expanded mental health care would also help, though Obamacare greatly increases it already - many people are not aware of their ability to access mental health services through their insurance, and this needs to be broadcast more.*

But as long as we continue to have a stigma surrounding mental health issues, we will continue to have people avoiding getting help.  Perhaps that is why Allen was avoiding taking medication - because to take medication is to admit that you still have a problem, and most of us would like to think we've overcome our mental health issues, that they are only temporary.

So to start out, I'd like to publicly declare - I've sought mental health assistance myself, for depression and anxiety brought on by abuses I received as a teenager.  My mind had reacted to those abuses by creating these two issues, which had protected it from further damage, but had left me unable to cope with certain things.  I will never be *over* these issues.  But I refuse to back down from them, either. 

And I hope and pray that each of you who might be facing your own mental health issues will realize that you have mental health assistance through your insurance and that seeking help for it is not an admission that you are weak, but rather that you're human. And, as a human, throughout your life you've developed a toolkit for dealing with problems that arise.  Some of those tools are damaging, some are healthy.  A trained professional can help you develop new, healthier tools, and help you spot the ones that are damaging.

* - of course, eliminating guns would also help, as a cop doesn't need a gun in that case, either.  But that'll never happen in this country, so I'm trying to be realistic.