Dear Congress: If Mental illness Causes Mass Shootings, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

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It’s easy to blame mental illness, but we fail to mention that treatment works and recovery is possible for many.

For mothers of teenagers like me, news about a school shooting never gets any easier. We experience the same dread, the same despair, the same fear that someone will attack our children’s school. In between mass shootings, we drill our children on what they would do. We check on their social media accounts. We try to pretend that there’s some sense of safety in a world that always seems full of random, unpredictable violence.

I’m the mom CNN used to call whenever there was a school shooting. And today, one day after 17 children who are the same age as mine did not come home from school because of another mass shooting, I’m angry. Predictably, politicians have tweeted meaningless “thoughts and prayers.” Also predictably, some Republicans have tried to shift the blame for the latest massacre to the isolated actions of a “mentally disturbed individual.”  

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting five years ago, I shared my story of parenting a child with violent behavioral symptoms of a then-undiagnosed mental illness in a viral essay entitled “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.” In that essay, I wrote, “It’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.” 

Now, I’m concerned that we are having the same blame and shame conversation without any meaningful action, as this viral Facebook post shows.  

Today, with the correct diagnosis (bipolar disorder) and treatment that works, my son Eric lives in recovery. In 2016, he even gave a TEDx Boise talk about his experiences.  Eric is a normal high school senior who, like many of the Parkland, Florida students, is planning for college next fall.

Today, I feel that blaming mental illness for an epidemic of violence in the wake of so many mass shootings has become a meaningless trope. If politicians and the National Rifle Association really believe that mental illness causes mass shootings, it’s time to put their money where their mouth is. Here are a few suggestions:

1.       Provide funding for research into treatments and cures, perhaps by donating the millions of dollars that the National Rifle Association gives to their campaigns.  

2.       Continue to support parity for mental and physical health, currently required by the ACA but already under threat in my own state.  

3.       Stop blaming children and their parents for the appalling lack of community mental health services and supports.  

4.       Understand that when treated, people who have mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Treatment works and recovery is possible.  

5.       Adopt reasonable and bipartisan gun control measures that focus on suicide prevention, since more than 60% of deaths by gun violence in the U.S. are completed suicides, a tragedy that disproportionately affects the brave men and women who serve in our military.  

Most people can agree that universal background checks and allowing the government to track gun violence statistics (currently prohibited by federal law) are good first steps to better understanding and controlling our nation's clear gun problem.

To be transparent, I live in Idaho, a gun-loving state. I grew up in a family that hunted, and my brothers taught shooting sports at Boy Scout camp. I have enjoyed shooting sports in the past. While I do not personally have guns in my home because of my son’s illness, I know many responsible gun owners, some of whom live in recovery. 

Yes, it’s true: people who have mental illness can be responsible gun owners, which is why mental health advocacy organizations including the National Alliance on Mental Illness believe that “Federal and state gun reporting laws should be based on these identified traits, not mental illness.”   

People who are in treatment for mental illness and are compliant with treatment should not be treated any differently than anyone else. To focus on mental illness as the sole cause of mass shootings is a clear example of the pervasive discrimination and fear in our society. In fact, while it’s true that at least one-third of mass shooters seem to have had an untreated mental illness, a more common predictor of this kind of violence is a history of animal abuse or domestic violence, as is the case with the Florida shooter. Both of these deplorable behaviors are actual crimes, and both of them should require immediate intervention including loss of gun rights.

But mental illness is not—and should not be—a crime.

It’s time to act.  Build the community mental health treatment centers. Fund research into cures. And most importantly, stop blaming by association the millions of good people who live in recovery for the violent actions of a few.

Time to Talk about Guns

Photo courtesy of rbayak, freeinages.com

Please don't shoot me!

In 2012, 986 mass shootings ago, I wrote these words: “”In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.” 

Now it’s time to talk about guns.

In the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting, I had the unenviable task of appearing on CNN to defend the shooter’s mother, Laurel Harper, for sharing an entirely legal interest in firearms with her son.

Legal, but stupid.

Should Harper be blamed for her son’s actions? Of course not. Millions of parents share an interest in guns with their children. Harper did not have a crystal ball that could predict her son would become a mass shooter; in fact, it could be argued that mothers are the worst people to ask about their children’s weaknesses, because we prefer to focus, like Harper did, on our children’s strengths. Harper, who is grieving the loss of her son, the tenth victim of the shooting, couldn’t predict a mass shooting any better than anyone else can.

But was Harper irresponsible in how she owned and stored her guns? The clear answer is yes. Not because her son had a mental illness. Because all parents who own and store guns in their homes are irresponsible, regardless of whether anyone in the family has a mental illness.

What causes mass shootings? The same thing that causes 61% of all deaths by gun violence (suicides): easy access to guns. If no one in your family has suffered the negative effects of gun ownership, it’s not because you are a “responsible gun owner.” You are just lucky.

The research on guns and gun ownership is clear. Having firearms in your home makes everyone who lives there more likely to be a victim of gun violence, period. That’s irresponsible parenting.

In the wake of other clear public health risks, Americans have acted rationally. For example, seat belts save lives, so we pass laws that require car drivers to buckle up, and accident-related deaths go down.

But guns? Pry them from our cold, dead fingers.

I live in Idaho, a state where the Second Amendment is revered only slightly less than the Bible. I have enjoyed shooting as a sport; in fact, my brothers taught marksmanship at Boy Scout camps for years. I also enjoy hunting, and many of my friends provide food for their families by heading to the hills with their .22s each October.

But as I’ve learned more about the risks of storing guns in the home, my views on gun control have evolved.

I've avoided talking publicly about guns for this simple reason: I am afraid one of my Second Amendment-worshipping, gun-toting neighbors will shoot me. As I wrote this essay, my husband, reading over my shoulder, said, “Let’s update our wills before you publish.”

But our fear speaks volumes about why we need to talk about guns. In fact, we all are afraid—to go to the store, to the movie theater, to school. It’s time to face that fear head on and do something about it.

I believe that Americans should be allowed to own any type of gun they want to—as long as they are stored in locked cases at gun clubs. Want to shoot a semiautomatic and feel like an action movie hero? Knock yourself out—at the gun club. Want to take your kids hunting for the weekend? Check out your hunting rifles—from the gun club.

If Adam and Nancy Lanza had bonded over guns at a club instead of at home, 20 children would likely be enjoying fourth grade this fall. If Laurel Harper and Chris Mercer had bonded over guns at a club instead of at home, 10 people would likely still be alive today and turning in their midterm writing assignments. If guns were stored at a gun club instead of at home, more than 19,000 people who died by suicide in a single year might have had a chance to get the mental healthcare they desperately needed.

Our Founding Fathers were reasonable men. They surely never imagined a country where an amendment designed to keep the British from invading, at a time when guns could only fire one shot at a time with questionable accuracy, would lead to weekly mass shootings of innocent citizens.

I hope that Laurel Harper will join moms across America in demanding action from Congress on gun control. I’m one of those moms. Please don’t shoot me.

The Great Divide

Hendric Stattmann"The Grand Canyon"

Two bills in Congress, both designed to improve mental healthcare, reveal a growing rift in the mental health community

Like many parents of children with mental illness, I have spent much of my life feeling isolated. At social events or the morning water cooler, while other parents share their children’s accomplishments—“Mary got elected to Student Council! John got the MVP award for his soccer team!”—I am usually silent. It’s hard to brag about how your child was able to plead his misdemeanor battery charge down to a mere juvenile beyond control status offense, or how he was the star patient in his psychiatric ward last weekend, even though both are arguably notable accomplishments.



When I finally spoke out about the struggles my family faced, I found an instant new community of friends, mothers like me who had become vocal advocates for their children’s care. But I also discovered that not every mental health advocate supports the same goals I do. This rift in the very advocacy community that should be supporting parents like me and kids like my son has been growing for a while. The divide has widened even further after the tectonic tragedy in Santa Barbara, when a young man whose parents had sought treatment for his mental illness for years took his own life—and the lives of six other people.

At its center is a disagreement about serious mental illness—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression—and the best ways to care for this vulnerable population. That disagreement is evident in the contrast between two proposed bills that both seek to remedy America’s broken mental health care system. To my mind, the biggest difference between the two bills is this: one treats people with serious mental illness. The other does not.



One of the most controversial features of Representative Murphy’s HR3717, the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act,” is its Assisted Outpatient Treatment requirements, which the opposition has labeled “forced treatment.” Yet even Representative Barber, the author of the second bill, acknowledged on Monday’s Diane Rehm Show that “involuntary treatment is necessary from time to time.” And many of the provisions in HR 3717, including a revision of HIPAA laws, might have stopped Jared Loughner before he shot Rep. Barber in Tucson.



Dr. John Grohol and others like him are worried about “arbitrary distinctions” in mental illness he says HR 3717 creates. I agree with Dr. Grohol’s point that all mental illness can be crippling or even deadly, just as a cold, if left untreated, can lead to fatal pneumonia. But I also think we do need distinctions in mental health, just as we have them in physical health. The current focus on behavior rather than organic brain disease is the real challenge in making sure that people with serious mental illness get the medical care that they need. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, “Oh SAMHSA, Where Art Thou?” there is no readily apparent or useful information for me, as a parent of a child with serious mental illness, on SAMHSA’s home page. And this is the government agency tasked with providing resources to people with mental illness!



As I read the opposition’s often vitriolic attacks on mothers like G.G. Burns, a friend of mine who shared her family’s painful story with Diane Rehm yesterday, I’m reminded more of religion than science. We have this very human tendency to rely on our own belief systems about the mind, and especially about our ability to choose and to be accountable for our choices, rather than looking at the choice-stealing reality of brain disease. G.G., in talking about her efforts to get treatment for her son, told a harsh truth: “We are forced to watch our loved ones die with their rights on. Without help, there is no hope.”



The comments section of Diane’s show demonstrates the wide variety of challenges parents continue to face, and why so many of us are still afraid to share our stories. We have the mental illness deniers, the Mad in America anti-medication crowd, the folks who blame our bad parenting, the consumers who think that everyone with mental illness can seek treatment and recover like they did, and the E.F. Torrey haters (and boy, are they an angry bunch! They should try some SAMHSA sponsored yoga!).

Still, I think that a robust discussion about HR3717 is a good thing. Task-oriented conflict can ensure that the end result—fixing our broken mental healthcare system—is the best it can possibly be. And certainly the experiences of people who have experienced involuntary commitment need to be carefully considered (see this powerful essay at "The System is Broken," for example ). I wish Diane Rehm had included the voices of people with serious mental illness on her show.

But when we rely on our belief systems about what mental illness is (or isn’t), when we retreat to our anecdotal or lived experiences rather than considering other points of view, it can be too easy for the dialogue to devolve into person-centered attacks rather than focusing on productive, inclusive solutions. We don’t have time for any more of that kind of talk. The consequences of inaction on mental illness are unacceptable. We cannot continue to treat serious mental illness in prison, or to ignore it on the streets. That’s why I support HR 3717.

Without Us

Treatment before tragedy. Photo by Daniel Battiston, freeimages.com

Why are some mental health advocacy groups opposed to critical healthcare reform for serious mental illness?

Early Saturday morning, I woke up to the news of another mass shooting, this time in a pleasant Santa Barbara neighborhood. Details were still sketchy at that point—the shooter was young, white. and male. I turned off my computer, packed my kids and our camping gear in the car, and headed for the hills, out of cell phone range.

Like so many other mothers of children who have mental illness, I knew how the story would go. His parents would have sought treatment. He would have had encounters with law enforcement. Probably he was bullied as a child. He played violent video games. And now, he—and six other young people, all of them with promising futures—were dead.

When we returned this afternoon, sunburned and covered in sand from playing all morning on the dunes, a few new details of the story surprised me: the connection to Hollywood, the misogynistic YouTube rant (see Laurie Penny’s analysis here), the Fox News allegations that Elliott Rodger was gay (???). But Fox News aside, the media seemed to be paying far less attention to the tragedy than they were to NASCAR.

It seems as if after Newtown, we just gave up. We decided that this is the kind of society we are going to live in—a society that has too many guns, and a society that chooses to ignore people with mental illness and their families, at great cost (see Liz Szabo’s timely piece in USA Today).

Part of the problem is that just as gun control opponents and gun control advocates can’t agree on even common-sense things like background checks, the mental health community can’t come to a consensus about how best to fund—and treat—mental illness. As I’ve shared before, my son has a serious mental illness. For him, and for my family, medical treatment has restored a sense of normalcy to our lives. But not everyone thinks the medical model is best for treating mental illness.

Right now, there are two competing bills in Congress. HR 3717, the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act” proposed by Rep. Tim Murphy, promises hope to families and children like mine. The other, the “Strengthening Mental Health in Our Communities Act” proposed by Tucson shooting survivor Rep. Ron Barber, maintains the status quo, a broken and fragmented system that requires patients to be well enough to seek their own care and promotes a focus on behavior and prevention, two concepts that don’t apply to people who have organic brain diseases, people who are too often “treated” in prison or ignored on the streets.

What I want—and what Elliot Rodger’s parents no doubt wanted—is “treatment before tragedy.”

Last week I attended a webinar sponsored by SAMHSA-funded mental health advocacy groups who are opposed to HR 3717. As the mother of a child who has a serious mental illness, I’m a supporter of Rep. Murphy’s bill. But since I also volunteer for and donate to organizations that get grants from SAMHSA, I wanted to understand the other side.

The phrase “Nothing about us without us” was used 30 times in the course of the hour-long webinar. This dictum establishes the common sense model of including people with mental illness in crafting legislation that would affect their lives. It’s a good idea, and that’s exactly what Representative Murphy did over the course of his year-long post-Newtown investigation into the myriad problems that continue to plague our mental healthcare delivery model. You can read the final report here. 

But at the end of the webinar, I was left wondering who these probably well-meaning and sincere advocates meant by “us.” Because I don’t think they are talking about me or my son, or hundreds of other families I know.

“When young men rage and scare their families, where are they supposed to go?” a friend who was also on the webinar and whose adult daughter suffers from bipolar asked me. “I feel like I have to beg my government not to imprison my child or leave her on the street to get prostituted out or taken advantage of by druggies. All while they spend money in the name of the illness she suffers from.”

The problem is that many of the sickest among us do not know that they need help. And even if they—or their families—realize they do need help, as Creigh and Gus Deeds did, too often there are no resources available. That’s why anything less than HR3717, the comprehensive transformation of our broken mental health care system proposed by Rep. Tim Murphy and backed by 86 bipartisan legislators, is so critical.

My son has never gone to an acute care psychiatric hospital willingly; in fact, it usually takes 2-3 police officers and a tranquilizer to get him into care. I can’t do it on my own. But at least he’s still a minor, so I can make sure he gets the help he needs—if we are lucky and beds are available.

And at least when he’s not in a manic rage, he’s aware of his illness and wants to take his medications.

What happens when he turns 19? What happens if he decides not to take lithium anymore?

The alternate bill proposed by Rep. Barber fails to address this all-important question, and many others that will haunt the investigation of this most recent mass shooting.

According to Susan Mosychuk, Rep. Murphy’s chief of staff, the bill introduced by Rep. Barber 

denies inpatient and outpatient treatment options to those who are experiencing an acute mental health crisis. It denies families the opportunity to be part of the care team and help their loved ones with serious mental illness. And it denies the reality that the lead federal agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has failed in its mission. It’s almost as if the Barber bill wants to deny that people with severe and persistent mental illness exist. Denial doesn't work for substance abuse, and denial won't work for the families whose loved ones are in a mental health crisis.

Allen Frances, the author of Saving Normal, articulated the problem beautifully: “This is the cruel paradox haunting our mental health non-system: we deliver way too much care to basically normal people who don't need it, while providing way too little care to the really sick people who desperately do.” 

So why are some mental health advocacy groups opposed to Rep. Murphy’s bipartisan-backed legislation?

In the webinar I attended, they gave three reasons: that the medical model of mental illness would prevent people from seeking mental healthcare services, that requiring accountability and restructuring SAMHSA would eliminate or curtail innovation in mental healthcare, and that HR 3717 discriminates against people with serious mental illness by forcing treatment through its Assisted Outpatient Treatment provisions. While civil rights are undeniably a concern for those with mental illness, forced treatment and loss of civil rights already occurs when we choose to treat them in prisons rather than in hospitals.

Though this conclusion disturbs me, I think the real opposition to HR 3717 comes down to money. Organizations are afraid of change, and they are afraid of losing their funding. But as the most recent tragedy so clearly demonstrated, we can’t keep doing things the same way and expect our outcomes to be better. Those of us who have serious mental illness deserve a chance at hope and health. We deserve, as my son does, to have a life worth living—and to live that life. Please don’t support proposed legislation that is written without us, the parents who love our children and want treatment before the next tragedy.

I Am Not Adam Lanza's Mother

Now that we’ve talked about mental illness, when will it be time to act? 

Photo by Charles Mims, October 2013

Republished from The Blue Review, December 15, 2013 

On the morning of December 14, 2012 I closed the door to my office and started to cry as the news of a tragic school shooting in Connecticut blew up my Facebook and Twitter feed. My then 13-year old son “Michael” had been in Intermountain Hospital for two days, placed there against his will after an inexplicable and violent episode of rage he couldn’t remember. After years of struggles, we still didn’t know what was wrong, or how to help him. I was exhausted, sad and afraid. The isolation of living with a child who had a serious, undiagnosed mental illness made me feel like there was no hope for me or my family. 

That night, I sat down and wrote my truth. I told about the years of missed diagnoses, medications that didn’t work, costly therapies. I wrote about my worst fears for my son’s future. And as a national tragedy beyond comprehension intersected with my personal sorrow, I called for a conversation about mental health. My cry for help, which I published on my formerly anonymous blog, “The Anarchist Soccer Mom,” was picked up by The Blue Review and republished under the title “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.” The essay was shared everywhere. Many people wrote me to say, “You told my story! I am Adam Lanza’s mother too!” But a few excoriated me for talking openly about my son’s struggles with mental illness. 

One year after the Newtown tragedy, where has that conversation about mental health led us as a nation? The official report about the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School could be summarized in five words: no answers, lots of guns. Lanza’s mental illness was certainly a factor. As the report notes, “the shooter had significant mental health issues that affected his ability to live a normal life and to interact with others, even those to whom he should have been close.” Like his mother. 

As the one year anniversary of the shooting approached, with yet another school shooting in the news, policy makers were paying more attention to mental health. After meeting with the families of the Sandy Hook victims this week, Vice President Joe Biden, whose initial response to the tragedy was to push for tighter gun control, announced a $100 million increase in funding to help people access mental health services. Half of the money will come from the Affordable Care Act; the other half has been pledged for rural mental health care, which should be welcome news in states like Idaho. 

Lots of things have been promised. For example, when the state mental hospitals closed, we were promised community based care. That never happened. The fact is that in December 2013, one year after Newtown, if you or a loved one is in crisis, you still have to call the police. And we continue to use prisons as the new institution to treat our adults and children who have mental illness. 

In the past year, I have slowly found my voice as an advocate for children’s mental health. I haven’t done it alone — my son has joined me in calling for an end to stigma, by bravely speaking out about his condition on Nova and in a StoryCorps interview. We were honored to share an award for family advocacy from the Idaho Federation of Families, which my son placed prominently on our piano. 

Where is my family a year later? I’ve had quite a bit of time to think about what I wrote. And I can’t sugar coat it: the consequences of my decision to put my name on my story were devastating to us personally, as we learned firsthand just how harsh the stigma of mental illness can be. 

Yet there were also rewards. I researched and wrote a book, The Price of Silence. The book will be released by Hudson Street Press in the fall of 2014.which explores stigma and other barriers to mental health care for children and families as they try to navigate the healthcare system, public schools and the criminal justice system. I also had the opportunity to speak at TEDx San Antonio, where I asked the audience why we never see a picture of a child with mental illness in a grocery store checkout line. 

My family has also found some answers. Michael now has a diagnosis — bipolar disorder — and medication that works. I can’t tell you how much this has changed our lives for the better. A year ago, I had almost no hope for my son. Now, we are talking about where he will go to college (he says Harvard or Oxford, but he’s going to have to bring his math grade up just a little bit). 

Above all, I’ve learned this year that I am most emphatically not Adam Lanza’s mother. While I still feel a great deal of empathy for Nancy Lanza, who surely loved her son as I love mine, we are different in two important ways. First, by acknowledging the seriousness of my son’s condition, I am empowered to do everything I can to ensure he gets the treatment he needs. 

Second, I don’t own guns, and I never will. 

Some have speculated that perhaps guns were a way for Nancy Lanza to connect with her son. My son and I share some common interests too: writing, history and Greek mythology. As far as I know, a love of history never killed anyone. 

Still, I believe that in the futile search for answers, too many people continue to blame Adam Lanza’s mother, the first victim of the tragedy in Newtown. Emily Miller of the Washington Times is representative of that view. As she explained in her Op Ed piece that followed the release of the official Sandy Hook report:

"In the end, we can’t blame lax gun-control laws, access to mental health treatment, prescription drugs or video games for Lanza’s terrible killing spree. We can point to a mother who should have been more aware of how sick her son had become and forced treatment.”

If only it were that easy. Instead, numerous barriers still exist for children and families who need access to mental health care. In 1999, NAMI published a report called “Families on the Brink: The Impact of Ignoring Children with Serious Mental Illness.” That report addressed school shootings in the wake of Columbine:

"As we struggle to make the lives of all our children better in the wake of unthinkable school violence, we must not forget our children who have serious mental illnesses and their families who love them.”

On December 14, 2012, more than ten years later, we watched again in horror as we witnessed exactly how devastating that impact of untreated mental illness could be to a community — and very little if anything had changed for children and families who needed help. 

If 2013 was the year to talk about mental illness, let’s hope that 2014 is finally the year to act. 

Watch my interview with Marcia Franklin on Idaho Public Television’s “Dialogue,” December 13, 2013.