Who is bothered about mentally ill when our freedom is threatened by Sunni-Shia killings in Iraq? The VA Tech rampage by a mentally ill student who was left to fend for himself was a simple blur on the national TV screens and cast away quickly. The nation excoriates its sins against mentally ill every year by observing May as a Mental Health month.
If some of us could feel the torment of a freight train running over you every night chopping you into two. Or you have an unending urge to walk into traffic on a highway and kill yourself. Or a voice in your head is telling you every minute of the day to slay Jedi, we may be able to get past the hype of Mental Health Month.
Some of the sins we will again excoriate this month are?
Lack of a national plan to identify the mentally ill population in jails and treatment them instead of boxing them for 22 hours a day. Will the media force the Hillary, Obama, McCain, Romney and others to confront this issue?
Letting hundreds of Walter Reed’s fester in our local communities and not finding funds to treat the battle scarred army men who come back from our wars with swerve mental injuries and traumas.
Looking at 30000 plus suicides in US which arise out of mental illness? Why are the politicians talking of the rights of the unborn when we cannot help living people killing themselves?
Will May this year be different? With a price tag of more than 500 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan who are we kidding?
This is not withstanding the valiant mental healthcare professionals who toil against great odds.
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