Following the mass shooting in Oregon last week, John Oliver turned the topic to mental health Sunday night, since as he says, the only time politicians ever talk about it is after a mass shooting in order to turn the attention away from gun control. Which is actually the worst time, as he points out, since the vast majority of people with mental illness are not actually violent and the vast majority of gun violence is committed by people who are not mentally ill.
But fine, let’s talk about mental illness, then! It should come as no surprise that the United States does not have an excellent history of dealing with the mentally ill, despite the fact that approximately 10 million people deal with serious mental illness every year. The problem seems to stem from the ’60s, when John F. Kennedy signed legislation to close cruel “insane asylums,” which would have ideally been replaced by state-run therapeutic centers. Unfortunately the second half of that plan never came to fruition, and in the decades since, patients have been turned away to anywhere from nursing homes to jails.
But Oliver explains that repairing America’s system of dealing with the mentally ill is by no means an easy task, as it involves several different services throughout the country including Medicaid, a mixed bag of federal agencies that administer more than a hundred different programs, and each state’s social-service agencies. It’s pretty sad that after each and every one of these tragedies, politicians pay lip service to the problems with mental-health services, but John Oliver was able to take the entire system down in just over 10 minutes. It’s clear he’s incensed on the issue; it would be nice if finger-pointing politicians felt the same way.
