Are Shrinking Shrinks Part Of Uvalde-itis?

APA & studies say only “5% of violent acts are linked to mental illness” & suggest post-Uvalde calls for red flag laws or predicting school murder may be worthless. Yet if shrinks can’t help with the problem are they part of it?

“There are a lot of angry young men,” a Duke medical researcher told the WSJ, “and you can’t just round them all up.” But, who said anything about rounding ‘em all up? The debate now going on amongst pols, schools, police, parents & concerned reasonable folks everywhere does NOT single out those diagnosed with garden variety “mental health issues” and agrees that “better predictors of violent acts” include “childhood physical abuse, antisocial behavior or a father who abused substances.”

Yet, it’s the untimely as well as all too predictable defensiveness of the psychiatric community as expressed in that WSJ article that itself is arguably worrisome. The American Psychiatric Association certainly makes a good & timely point in reminding “stigmatizing people with mental illness could dissuade them from seeking treatment”. Yet, for God’s sake, how about our shrinking shrinks forgetting about our national obsession with finger pointing, jumping in the problem-solving fight, and helping society find ways to intervene where appropriate so’s to short-circuit another massacre when clear-cut evidence suggests to anyone with a Psych For Beginners understanding that a tragedy may be in the offing?

Davd Soul