Julie Parker, a Prince George’s County Police spokeswoman, addresses the media at the scene of February’s murder-suicide, in which a student suffering from a mental illness killed his roommate and himself.
More support for mental health services has been a hot-button issue surrounding the gun control debate, but advocates of additional funding may hit a roadblock in the face of federal budget cuts.
After December’s Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, along with several shootings in recent months, schools and health officials across the country hoped to see increased financial support for these services. However, sequestration — a slew of across-the-board federal budget cuts that began going into effect March 1 — impacted several federal programs, including mental health services.
“In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, I can’t recall a time where there’s been greater awareness of mental health,” said Julio Abreu, senior director of government affairs at Mental Health America, a nonprofit advocacy group. But it becomes frustrating, he said, because at the same time, Congress is having “these fiscal debates that instead of investing in services and support for young people, they’re divesting that. They’re cutting.”
Mental health services could be facing cuts as high as 9 percent if the government allows the cuts to stay in place over the next several months, Abreu said. This would translate into about 373,000 mentally ill adults and children who would not receive the mental health help they need, which could lead to more crime, more hospitalizations and homelessness, he said.
Suicide prevention hotlines often answer calls from college students grappling with mental health problems, making this an issue that cuts to the heart of college campuses.
“The mental health situation is already really dire,” said Madison Higgins, Help Center administrator at this university. Students already face long wait times to get the help they need, she said, and at times, it leads to more severe consequences, such as students taking more time to graduate or dropping out altogether.
“If anything, we need to be shifting our resources more over to mental health — they definitely should not be taken away,” Higgins said.
In February, 23-year-old graduate student Dayvon Green shot and killed undergraduate roommate Stephen Rane and injured his other roommate, Neal Oa, before taking his own life. Because Green suffered from a mental illness, the incident elevated mental health dialogue on the campus.
“It’s unfortunate that something like that needs to happen in order for there to be attention brought to this issue,” Higgins said. “There are students that aren’t necessarily suicidal or homicidal that still need help.”
The state has included provisions for mental health in its several measures aimed at curbing gun violence, but for some lawmakers, it isn’t taking up enough of the conversation.
“We should definitely talk about that,” said Del. Michael Hough (R-Frederick and Washington). “Unfortunately, that’s one small fraction of the bill.”
The public health system is “already operating in a crisis mode,” Abreu said, especially when suicide rates far outpace both traffic deaths and homicides. Further cuts could add to these numbers, Abreu added.
“We have a suicide epidemic in this country, and at a time where we’re cutting back suicide prevention efforts, it’s not hard to connect that … it could potentially lead to even higher rates,” Abreu said.
Along with mental health discussions, this state, like many others, has become a political stage for gun control debates. Lawmakers have often criticized the signature measures of Gov. Martin O’Malley, claiming his efforts go after law-abiding citizens and their Second Amendment rights while turning a blind eye to the mental health issue at hand.
“It does not attack the problem of people who have mental illness to the extent that they’re a danger to themselves or others but being able to obtain and use firearms,” said Del. Michael Smigiel (R-Caroline, Cecil, Kent and Queen Anne’s). “It fails to address that issue.”
But gun control and mental health do not always go hand-in-hand, Abreu said. The discussion surrounding mental health, he added, ignores the more important realities of poor mental health treatment, specifically that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence and cause self-harm. This is more of a concern than a perceived increased likelihood of the mentally ill being more violent and committing homicide, Abreu said.
“When we talk about gun violence, we have to be careful not to conflate violence and people with mental health conditions,” Abreu said. “People with mental illness are no more likely to commit violent acts than people without mental illnesses.”
The premise that gun violence could be solved if the mentally ill are barred from firearms falls short of solving the problem, Abreu said, and will often “paint people with mental illnesses” with “too broad a brush.”
“The connection between violence and mental illness is overblown,” Abreu said. “It’s making connections where there may not be one.”
