UPDATED: House GOP Psychologist May Finally get a Mental Health Bill Passed: 12-Year-Old Stabbed 19 Times
According to prosecutors, two 12-year-old girls from southeastern Wisconsin stabbed their 12-year-old friend 19 times because of internet horror meme Slender Man. We need to vote The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act into a Bill.
UPDATED: 5 24. 2014
Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who allegedly shot and killed seven people and wounded seven others at the University of California, Santa Barbara last night wrote a 140-page document about his personal suffering. On Saturday, a family attorney said Elliot Rodger’s parents long had concerns about their son’s mental health.
“He had multiple, and I’m telling you multiple, therapists,” Alan Shifman said. “He had a social worker who as recently as last week was concerned and who’s the one that actually called the police.”
Speaking in front of Peter Rodger’s home, Shifman told reporters that the shooter’s family alerted authorities after Elliot Rodger posted a series of disturbing, ranting messages on YouTube.
“They reported this weeks ago,” Shifman said. “There was an investigation by the police department.”
Shifman said Elliot Rodger had been diagnosed at a young age with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism, but did not have a history of gun use. And this is misleading because Asperger’s syndrome has incorrectly linked to violence and since Elliot Rodger came from an entitled background I am sure there is more to his mental health issues that are still missing from the psychological profile. His hatred towards women demonstrates resentment towards their beauty and a deeper reflection of his hatred towards self.
His rants while entitled also suggested that he envied the way these beautiful women were admired by men and he wanted that same admiration (from men). The lip injections (suspected) also suggests he struggled with his sexuality or feeling he was in the wrong body for his gender (neither of which are linked to mental illness). This man struggled for a long time and psychological intervention should have happened in his youth. It’s likely he was rejected by men and not women as his hypervigilants would suggest on the surface.
Elliot Rodger should never have been able to legally obtain a gun if he was under the treatment of that may therapists, a social worker and his family had concerns. We need a stronger check and balance system. And we need solutions for families who are conerned about the mental stability of theirchildren regardless of age.
Information on the seven victims.
The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act isn’t the end all for mental health but it’s a starting point and it’s only a starting point if it gets passed. Click on the link to contract your Representative in Congress. After clicking on the link, enter your address (it’s not stored) and then a page like this come up, add your telephone number, you get called in 3 seconds and leave a message.
April 13, 2014
The only practicing clinical psychologist in Congress, Republician Representative Tim Murphy is trying to turn his Families in Mental Health Crisis Act into law. The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act has 72 co-sponsors, divided roughly evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Key provisions would increase the number of hospital beds available for crisis psychiatric care, improve access to mental health care for children and adolescents, authorize an assistant secretary of mental health at the Health and Human Services Department, and encourage states to adopt a “need for treatment” standard for care, as opposed to the current requirement that a person must pose a danger to themselves or others before they can be committed.
Sadly it takes tragedies like Fort Hood and the Pittsburgh attacks where a teenager is said to have had a confrontational phone call the night before he allegedly went on his rampage (just out of Murphy’s district) to wake up the rest of the law makers to mental health issues.
“These are sparks, but there’s usually a long fuse that goes with that,” said Pittsburgh Rep. Tim Murphy.
In Murphy’s office on end table are photos of the Sandy Hook families and pictures of some of the children who died that terrible day in December 2012, “a reminder of the mission we’re on,” he said. Appointed in 2012 to chair the subcommittee on oversight and investigations of the Energy and Commerce committee, Murphy launched a yearlong investigation into government mental health practices, the result of which is embodied in the legislation he introduced in December 2013.
As someone who spent the first twenty years of my life in Pittsburgh, hometown pride was usually centered around sports teams (even though I’m not really a sports fan in the traditional sense-no face painting), I’ve always taken pride in growing up there. And as someone who has benefitted from the help of a clincial psychologist, it’s nice to have hometown pride in a politician who understands mental health issues and is trying to create positive change in the mental health world and Congress. And if ever there were people in need of mental help it’s Congress. If only there were more people like Representative Tim Murphy in Congress who looked at the issues and not party lines.
The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act isn’t the end all for mental health but it’s a starting point and it’s only a starting point if it gets passed. Click on the link to contract your Representative in Congress. After clicking on the link, enter your address (it’s not stored) and then a page like this come up, add your telephone number, you get called in 3 seconds and leave a message.
Source: The Daily Beast