"In almost everyone one of these cases the common denominators are legal antidepressants or anti-psychotic pharmaceuticals and ready access to high capacity firearms."
The New Math:
Unaddressed mental health issues + easy access to guns equals scores of dead people.
The pharmaceutical companies have the most powerful lobbyists. They are responsible for our broken mental health system and the current opiate crisis.
While the Nattering Nancies proclaim "just say no" to drugs, this society and our government actively promotes drugs as the solution to most problems.
The most unaddressed issue of our time is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Drugs don't help with PTSD. Yet the government is now in the business of dispensing drugs whether they help or not. And if a mental health client doesn't take them, they are "non compliant" which can have legal consequences including imprisonment. Yes, the government can and does coerce people into taking drugs. And not just Anabuse.
Why is it that every discussion about mental health ends with people agreeing "the mental health system in this country is broken" and then they change the subject to something sexier, like gun control?
Meanwhile, the problem just festers. The Republicans even refused to renew the Brady Bill. They will never surrender on this issue because they are fighting for segregation.
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