mental illness

Sen. Harkin( D-Iowa) deploring scapegoating of mentally ill in debate in Congress of gun violence. Now on C-Span 2. Now commenting LIVE on Gun Violence Prevention bill in Senate.

Listen in to one of the most educated and compassionate Senators in the US Senate.

I am listening to the NRA attribute gun violence to the "homicidal maniacs" of the country.

You can view and hear video streaming live at WRAL.com the Senate Judiciary Commmittee Hearing on gun violence here:

http://www.wral.com/news/video/12042379/#/vid12042379

Posted by Bebe Smith, MSW, a professor at UNC-CH School of Social Work, on NC Health News site:

http://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2013/01/17/commentary-early-inter...

I thought this information should be shared as the discussion of the shootings in Connecticut continue. While I do not necessarily agree with her piece in its entirety, I think her statement below is important.

there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence...

I wrote on this subject yesterday. This is a longer and more detailed look at the general tendency to blame folks with psychiatric disabilities for more than their real share of violence in the US.

As I was listening and watching to news on CNN of the attack on women and children at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, I saw a tweet from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, “NRA staffers will have to come in on Sunday to issue statements about why guns had nothing to do with Sikh temple shootings.”

I had planned to write about a message I received from a local Democrat running for the NC Senate, Sig Hutchinson, anyway. Sig, not unlike many others, does not understand the focus of folks like me who think that future prevention of the many mass murders as of recent years is rooted in the purchase of automatic weapons and the clips with as many as 100 rounds.

The quote above is in a nutshell Hutchinson’s take on the shooting in Colorado, one of the worst on record:

Yesterday, Abdullah El-Amin Shareef was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The unanimous jury vote came after almost eight hours of deliberation, six and a half weeks of trial, and six years of waiting for the families on both sides.

North Carolina death row inmate Guy Tobias LeGrande has been found incompetent to be executed under both state law and the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

After the jump, read a May 2007 post from my blog with more about Mr. LeGrande's mental state.

The strange case of Guy Tobias LeGrande goes on. In 1996, Guy LeGrande was sentenced to death in Stanly County for the murder of Ellen Munford. (Incidentally, the man who hired LeGrande and provided him with the murder weapon - Munford's husband - was convicted only of second-degree murder.) LeGrande fired his court-appointed attorneys and was allowed to represent himself over their protestations that he was severely mentally ill.

This post is a follow up on one I did for hometown of Greensboro and Guilford County, but since this is a state wide problem I have decided to post here also.
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My post of January 17, 2007 talked about out drug problems in the United States and here in Greensboro. I went on to explain how our War on Drugs started in 1970 by President Nixon simply isn’t working because we are trying to eliminate the producers rather than the consumers. When there is no longer a market for drugs the producers will stop on their own accord. To eliminate the consumers we need much more in the way of drug treatment and rehabilitation. And yet of the budget for the War on Drugs only 6% is spent on treatment whereas 94% is spent on interdiction trying to keep the drugs out of the country. Stupid and not working!