Bolster mental health system in U.S. to help stop mass shootings

Another mass shooting by an individual suffering from mental illness who was able to purchase not just one gun but four. This time the target was the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. This small congregation had just started its Sunday service when 26-year-old Devin Kelley entered the church and began randomly firing a semi-automatic rifle. By the time he stopped, he had killed 26 people and injured 20 more.

According to some of Kelley’s classmates, he suffered from mental illness as a child and was heavily medicated by his parents. In June 2012, according to police reports, Kelley escaped from a mental hospital in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Just five days before his escape, an Air Force commander had ordered Kelley to pretrial confinement on charges he had assaulted his wife and young stepson. A witness told police that Kelley, then 21, “suffered from mental disorders,” and was a danger to himself and others.

Kelley was convicted in a general court-martial in 2013 on two counts of domestic assault on his spouse and her child. The court sentenced him to one year in a military jail.

Involuntary commitment to a mental treatment facility would have been grounds to deny Kelley a weapon provided that records of his confinement were submitted to the federal database used to conduct background checks on people who try to purchase guns. The Air Force has acknowledged that it did not enter Kelley’s criminal history into the federal database.

Most individuals with serious mental illness are not dangerous. They manage their illness. However, the National Institute of Mental Health estimates that people with serious mental illness are three times more likely to be violent than the general population when substance abuse, a previous history of violence or nonadherence to medication is involved.

I’m the mother of a son who suffered from severe and persistent bipolar disorder. Despite the extraordinary and loving efforts of his family, the illness destroyed him. His downward course was aided by an ineffective legal system that continually protected his civil right to refuse treatment.

Mental illness is not going away. We must find a balance between protecting the rights of the mentally ill and also getting them the treatment they require to not be a threat to innocent people who have the misfortune to get in their way.

DOTTIE PACHARIS,