Having been to both police conferences and mental-health conferences, I am astounded by how differently they look at the problem. Mental-health advocates tend to look at stigma as the biggest problem facing the mentally ill, while police and the public look at violence as being more important. But mental-health advocates believe acknowledging violence creates stigma and therefore refuse to do it.
Obviously, how you see the problem directly influences the outcome and taking the hot-button issue of public mass shooting, and this difference is illustrated by the past president of the American Psychiatric Association who wrote a rebuttal to an op-ed piece opposing better and earlier mental health treatment for these individuals because, "... attributing mass violence to untreated serious mental illness stigmatizes."
Perhaps, but I suspect that most of us are more concerned about preventing mass killings than the possible stigmitization of an individual. In fact, don't such actions of untreated individuals increase rather decrease the stigma of mental illness? Certainly police are firmly in the early treatment camp as they would rather see these people treated and not have to shoot them, especially after they respond to another scene of carnage where multiple innocent victims lie dead and dying because the shooter was not effectively treated or treated at all. It's time for all to get on the same page.
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