Change mental health laws, Gazette?

DJ Jaffe: Obama Left Out Jared Loughner and His Mom
Obama gave a great Speech Wednesday night. But I wish he had some prayers and hopes for Jared Loughner and his family. People with Mental Illness and their moms need our prayers and support. Jared's schizophrenia wasn't developed enough where his parents could differentiate it from being a 'crazy' teen. But even had they known chances are, there would be nothing they could do. I've met many a person with Mental Illness and many a mom of someone with serious mental illness. The moms would call...

Loughner Fell Through Cracks
How can parents recognize signs of schizophrenia? TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Jared Loughner had never been in major trouble with the law or overtly violent, but his behavior at his community college was so disturbing that Campus Police gave him and his parents an ultimatum: Get a Mental Health evaluation or don't come back. Loughner went away but his deteriorating mental condition didn't. Just more than three months later, he is charged in a horrific Mass Shooting that killed six people and left...

Why the Left Bears Responsibility for the Arizona Shootings
Thursday, January 13, 2011 By Ben Shapiro Last week, mentally disturbed youth Jared Lee Loughner shot 20 people at a rally in Tucson, Ariz., including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). The left, led by Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, immediately capitalized on the bloody murders, stating without evidence that Loughner had been inspired by the "the anger, the hatred, the Bigotry" of our current political climate. Over the course of the following days, Dupnik and his allies bla...

Jared Lee Loughner and the Case for Single-Payer
The fallout from the shooting in Arizona has launched a thousand theories about the motives of the 22 year old shooter Jared Lee Loughner ranging from the interesting to the absurd.  Some decry his easy access to a weapon.  Others raise suspicions about a reading list that included the ideological odd couple of the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.  Yet, most miss a central point - Jared Lee Loughner, a deeply mentally disturbed young man, may not have been able to help himself ...

DR. DALE ARCHER: It's the Mental Illness
An undated photograph of Jared Lee Loughner released by the Pima County Sheriff's Office. By all accounts Jared Loughner’s early school years were relatively normal. He played in the band, had friends and a girlfriend; pretty much a regular guy.  Then sometime midway through High School things started to fall apart. He alienated friends, became more of a loner, started smoking pot and talked about weird ideas. He quit in his senior year, tried to enlist and was rejected by The Army an...

Mental health lessons from the Tucson tragedy
The deadly shooting in Tucson last week should remind families of the importance of getting help for troubled Children, Mental Health experts say. While parents can take a young child to a pediatrician, experts acknowledge that getting help for adult children — especially those who resist treatment — can be a challenge. "If you have a Heart Attack or a broken arm, everyone knows where to get services," said Michael Fitzpatrick of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. "If someone h...

Time for 'If You See Something, Say Something' to Apply to Mental Health, Too
Many years ago before the deinstitutionalization of the nation’s mental Hospitals, the Secret Service would visit the psychiatric facilities to find out if patients posed a threat to the President or any other elected officials.  In the mid-1970’s most states responding to Court Cases by incarcerated patients began the process of closing mental hospitals and returning patients to the communities so they could be in the “least restrictive” alternative. -- The safe hav...

Shooting Suspect Fell through Mental Health Cracks
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 By Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press Tucson, Ariz. (AP) - Jared Loughner had never been in major trouble with the law or overtly violent, but his behavior at his community college was so disturbing that Campus Police gave him and his parents an ultimatum: Get a Mental Health evaluation or don't come back. Loughner went away but his deteriorating mental condition didn't. A year later, he is charged in a horrific Mass Shooting that killed six people and left Rep. G...

Shooting suspect fell through mental health cracks
(01-12) 13:11 PST Tucson, Ariz. (AP) -- Jared Loughner had never been in major trouble with the law or overtly violent, but his behavior at his community college was so disturbing that Campus Police gave him and his parents an ultimatum: Get a Mental Health evaluation or don't come back. Loughner went away but his deteriorating mental condition didn't. Just more than three months later, he is charged in a horrific Mass Shooting that killed six people and left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords clinging t...

Loughner could have been committed under Arizona law
Tucson Mass Shooting suspect Jared Loughner's recent history of instability — including five disruptions at his community college and bizarre rants on YouTube videos — probably would have been sufficient to commit him to a psychiatric facility, even against his will, experts said. Arizona makes it easier than most states to commit mentally ill people to psychiatric care, even against their will. But that doesn't mean that everyone gets the help they need. "The state laws are some of ...

Democrat Sheriff Dupnik Guilty of Dereliction of Duty
Back on Monday I posted that Pima County Sheriff Dupnik was blaming the right for the slaughter at Safeway but details had emerged of multiple contacts between Jared Loughner and Dupnik's office over multiple death threats. Duplicious and deceiving, he libeled decent and fine Americans in order to deflect his guilt. Perhaps he believes eveyone will call for cessation of blame and his gross negligence will be overlooked. How disingenuous and dangerous for President Obama to have called Dupn...

San Diego Judge Chosen to Handle Loughner Trial
Yahoo! Buzz Well, that didn’t take long. Shortly after all of the federal trial judges in Arizona were recused from presiding over the trial of Jared Loughner, the accused Tucson shooter, the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit, Alex Kozinski, selected the judge who will. The duties will fall to San Diego Federal Judge Larry A. Burns. Click here for the Los Angeles Times article; here for the Arizona Republic article; here for Judge Kozinski’s one-page order. According to the LAT, Burns...

Why Gun Control (Still) Won't Work
It has been a dismal decade for Gun Control advocates. They lost the federal so-called assault weapons ban when it expired in 2004. The Supreme Court made history by proclaiming an individual right to own Firearms for self-defense. A Democratic president came into office vowing not to take away anyone's guns. So it's no surprise that anti-gun forces would take the Mass Shooting in Tucson as a rare opportunity to reverse their fortunes. It's also no surprise that their proposals are models of fut...

The reflexive call for fewer liberties
iStockphoto/Salon (updated below) William Galston -- former Clinton adviser and current Brookings Institution Senior Fellow -- has a column in The New Republic about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that illustrates the mentality endlessly eroding basic American liberty:  namely, the belief that every tragedy must lead to new government powers and new restrictions on core liberties.  The lesson of the Arizona tragedy, he argues, is that it's too difficult to force citi...

Hil Unhinged
In the list of egregious statements made about the Arizona shooting, many media personalities have been embarrassingly (or should be embarrassed, anyway) wrong about the nature of the shooter as details have been uncovered. While I don't really care much about their opinions, aside from the coverage they get, I rest at night knowing that Keith Olbermann doesn't really "make decisions" with my Tax Dollars. What warrants a chill down my spine, though, is the commentary by Hillary Rotten Clinton:...

The Trade-Off: Should We Commit Mentally Unstable People?
"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell James Lee Lougher, the shooter in the Tucscon massacre, was a scary dude and lot of people knew he had serious issues before he went on a rampage. After he was accused of shooting 20 people last Saturday, school officials described his behavior while at Pima as odd and disruptive. But police reports show in chilling detail that the behavior frightened Students and teachers. In February, a rattled student told school officials...

Exclusive: Va. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli reacts to tragedy in Tucson
Moments before Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took the stage to speak to a monthly gathering of Political Activists in Richmond on January 11, he reflected on the tragic events last Saturday in Tucson, Arizona, where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was seriously wounded by a gunman, six people were killed, and several others were injured. Calling it a “national incident” with “national implications” in an exclusive interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian...

Dealing With Mental Disorders on Campus
Jared Loughner, the shooter in Tucson, behaved so bizarrely in classes at Pima Community College that his algebra instructor and other Students reached out to school authorities. Mr. Loughner was eventually suspended and told that he could not return unless he had a Mental Health consultation. It is not clear whether the matter ended there. Mental health services have increased on college campuses, but not enough to keep pace with the growing needs of Students dealing with serious mental illnes...

Latest Stanford Battle: Where To Treat His Medical Problems
Yahoo! Buzz Wow. Once upon a time, prosecutors and Defense Lawyers in the Allen Stanford matter argued over relatively commonplace matters, like whether to grant Stanford bail. Not anymore. Now all the fuss over Stanford seems to turn over his mental and physical condition, which has deteriorated significantly in recent months. Stanford, accused of leading a $7 billion investment Fraud scheme, seems to grow physically and emotionally sicker by the day. Earlier this month, the judge in the case, ...

Obama offers comfort after Tucson shootings
(01-13) 04:00 PST Tucson -- President Obama comforted a community suffused with grief and summoned the nation to recommit to a more civil public discourse as he delivered a eulogy Wednesday evening urging Americans to talk with each other "in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds." Evoking memories of the six killed on Saturday, Obama seized upon the Mass Shooting at Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Supermarket meet-and-greet to tackle the subject of the nation's harsh political dialogue...

Tucson Tragedy Will Happen Again if We Aren't Serious About Mental Health
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords didn't know she had a stalker, though she knew that she was being threatened after her Tucson congressional office was vandalized in the wake of her vote in favor of Health Care reform. She didn't know that several people had expressed concern about the mental stability of her constituent Jared Loughner, who had, according to reports, become obsessed with her to the point of writing notes about his plans to hurt her, or worse. While some people were worried about Loughner...

Mental Health Break II
Because on a day like today - after the last week - we need as many as we can find. Here's our kind of Republican: I will, of course, be live-blogging the event at 8 pm. ...

136 state mental health employees may lose jobs
A new round of Budget cuts might prompt the state to lay off 136 workers at Mental Health institutions and reduce the number of troubled Children and adults it can care for. Iowa Department of Human Services Director Charlie Krogmeier said in an e-mail to staff Wednesday that one option is to eliminate 129 beds and lay off 136 staff members at three of the four state-run Mental Health facilities. As it stands, psychiatric patients often face long delays or must travel for hours to find a menta...

How to Identify and Address Potential Mental Health Risks
In 2009, I supported Richard Aborn for District Attorney of Manhattan. I liked most of his stated policies (except the ones on Gun Control) and wrote about them often. Aborn lost to Richard Vance. In the light of Jared Loughner, who while not a teenager, is still quite young, I started thinking about Richard's policies, which laid out concrete solutions that well could make a difference. Again, I am not one of those calling for a gentler political discourse as I think the topic had little ...

Jared Loughner: involuntary commitment missed
Despite Arizona having Mental Health laws making it easier than other states to involuntarily commit someone in crisis, alleged gunman Jared Loughner simply fell through the cracks until the sound of his pistol proved his illness and claimed the lives of six Victims. Ironically in the wake of Saturday’s massacre, most of the country, and sadly too late, Arizona residents discovered that their Mental Health laws allow any person, concerned about the mental state of another to petition ...