Reiteration

Whenever a tragedy with a mental health angle occurs, there are predictable responses. These vary in awareness of the realities. As I have made my living working with psychiatric emergencies for forty years, I know enough to be at least moderately helpful, and from time to time I reiterate some points that get consistently missed.

After the fact, and working from scraps of information, many people conclude that it was patently obvious that the bomber or shooter or pact suicide was dangerous and ill. Therefore, they believe that the emergency room, or clinic, or hospital messed up by not picking up on the obvious and moving to treat that person. Well, we could always do better, as in everything else, and sometimes it’s true, but that conclusion is often spectacularly wrong. No, that’s just making excuses. The guy told them he was thinking about killing people and was also suicidal. We admit over 2,000 people a year to our 150-bed involuntary facility, and every single one of them reaches some threshold of dangerousness, enough that it has to hold up at minimum, at a probable cause hearing. The suicide and homicide rates of our discharges is not that much higher than the general population. (The self-harming rate is much higher.)

Yet they have said and done dangerous things, which is how they got to our hospital. When I read the news stories of what the killer said when he was brought in for evaluation two months or two years before, I am seldom impressed with how alarmingly dangerous the statements are. I have known thousands of people who have said or done similar things. Sometimes the quotes or actions do sound more alarming to me, but not reliably. Most usually, the person is acting more rationally after a little treatment and is no longer actively suicidal or homicidal. We have to decide what is the safe amount of time after to hold them to reduce the risk.

There will also be accusations that “they said he wasn’t dangerous.” Read more closely. No one says that. What happens is that people need to do or say things that we can bring before a judge and make a case that they are dangerous enough to lock up and/or force into treatment. Because this is America, and you can’t just think someone’s dangerous, lock the door for as long as you like, and not have to answer to anyone. You can have that world if you want it, I suppose, but you are going to need to raise the number of expensive hospitals about tenfold, filled with people who could be working and caring for families.

Outpatient treatment has variations on this. The ER and clinic people can say “You need treatment” all they want, but it’s usually entirely voluntary. Even if there is court-ordered treatment, it’s usually limited and rounding up people who don’t show for appointments can be tricky.

You learn early in this business that if the mental health system has ever touched someone, there is lots of the general public which believes we are still responsible for making sure they don’t do anything bad ever again. I’ve had many family members complain to me in anger over an admission “You let him out too soon three years ago, and I told you he would be back.” To us, three years is a long time of a person somehow surviving in the community. That’s a successful discharge. Hell, sometimes we will call a week a successful discharge, of a person having a volatile six months. They might be in six times. We used to keep them for those six months instead. They got worse. Being out and dealing with everyday problems is good for you.

Xavier Amador is particularly good at explaining mental illness. There are longer talks for affected families or treating professionals in the sidebar, also good, if you choose to watch over at Youtube.