At least 5 Mass Shootings over the Weekend !!??

If it’s mental health and not guns (as the incessant debate goes), then why isn’t our country providing universal coverage of mental health services for all – including therapy (not just drugs)?

Texas governor Greg Abbott said that “the Uvalde school shooter had a “mental health challenge” and the state needed to “do a better job with mental health” — yet in April he slashed $211 million from the department that oversees mental health programs.”

I don’t see how even those against gun control can’t see the problem with this.

Especially after the traumas of the COVID pandemic, we don’t have enough truly qualified professionals to provide the amount of mental health care our society needs. So why aren’t we funding 100% of the costs for people to become trained in mental-health therapy in exchange for their (paid) service staffing public schools and community health centers across the country for a set amount of time? 

Don’t say it can’t be done. Over a decade ago, Duke University offered a scholarship to anyone seeking a teaching degree in math and science who agreed to teach in Durham (NC) Public Schools for three years – I remember because I seriously thought of doing this in addition to raising two young kids and being pregnant with my third (!).

If these scholarship recipients choose to leave their initial jobs in the public sector, that’s not bad. We need mental health therapists in our schools, but we also need them in our world. Can you imagine if your primary care physician could refer you to a therapist as easily as a colonoscopist? 

Surely we all want our young citizens to develop sound mental health as well as science and math skills. We should want it even more desperately given the easy access to guns in our country. 

More importantly, can you imagine if every school *in the country* had a mental-health therapist who met individually, during school and on campus, with every student on a monthly basis? 

I hope administrators and school boards in Durham and beyond will learn what Harnett County (NC) is doing to address the mental health issues of their most distressed students: https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2022/01/09/tired-of-seeing-barriers-disrupt-mental-health-support-for-students-this-district-redesigned-its-process/. 

As discussed above, I hope even more that we will fund monthly therapy for every student. Not only will this enable their trauma to be preempted rather than treated, but it will remove the potential stigma of students receiving therapy for situations that have become more extreme.

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Side note (kind of): Most people reading this should have learned by now that blank checks don’t work – not when you’re repairing or renovating your house and not when it comes to government. The federal government shouldn’t just give money to the states and say, “Use this for mental health.” Shoot, with the divisive politics involved, the checks don’t even get cashed until long after they’re needed, much less get used as originally intended. Of course, this is the way things almost always seem to happen.

So I propose that the federal government provide funds to schools for therapists the same way it provides per-student funding now- that is, specifically to fund the salaries of therapists, the number of which depends on student population. Let’s keep state politics out of it.

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