Head games

Mere minutes after the news broke about the Tucson shooting, liberals launched an assault on aggressive right-wing rhetoric, suggesting that the coarsening of political discourse had contributed to the killings of six people and the attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. There was little evidence to draw such a conclusion. The shooter, Jared Loughner, had targeted a Democratic congresswoman, but based on the bizarre commentaries he had posted on the Internet, he might just as well have focused on a politician of some other ideological stripe.

I rarely have much use for conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, but he was right on this issue: "Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, The New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There was no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head."

When the skirmish over political wordplay ran its course, liberals opened a second front against lax gun laws. The news that Loughner had purchased the murder weapon, a semiautomatic pistol with an extended magazine, without incident from a Sportsman's Warehouse store prompted calls for stricter gun control. After all, how was a mentally ill man allowed to buy a gun?

It turned out the store had performed the required background check on Loughner before allowing him to take possession of the handgun, but the check did not show any official declaration of mental illness. Although the national database used to perform background checks on gun buyers is not as complete as it should be, the system worked as well as it could have in this case.

Here's the point: All the hot air exhaled about political rhetoric and gun laws has obscured what this tragic incident is really about: mental illness and mental health care.

There's little question Loughner was deranged -- a textbook case of paranoid schizophrenia, according to many psychiatrists. He'd been kicked out of a community college for his strange and disruptive behavior. But for reasons still not clear, he apparently never received any form of mental health treatment. He fell through the cracks of the system.

Those cracks have widened considerably in Nevada in recent years as a series of budget cuts has decimated the state's mental health services. Now, Gov. Brian Sandoval and many Republican state lawmakers are looking to cut mental health services again, perhaps by as much as 30 percent.

"The funding that we currently have has some tears in the safety net," says Jim Osti, a member of the Southern Nevada Mental Health Coalition. "If we cut any deeper, we might destroy the safety net completely. Individuals like (Jared Loughner) are much more likely not to get services, and unfortunate situations can occur."

The number of people placed under "civil commitment" -- those judged to be potentially harmful to themselves or others as a result of mental illness -- totaled 13,779 in 2009 in Clark County. For 2010, the preliminary estimate is almost 15,000. Civil commitments have been increasing an average of 8 percent a year, Osti says.

This is happening at a time when Nevada has a poorly funded mental health system. "We're way below the national average for number of beds and number of outpatient treatment services," Osti says. "It would take a tremendous amount of funding just to bring us up to the national average."

Mental health advocates are preparing for a funding fight when the state Legislature convenes next month. Clark County District Judge Jackie Glass, who oversees the Mental Health Court, has sent a letter to the governor urging him to keep the program going.

Since its inception in 2003, the Mental Health Court has graduated 107 people, and there are 98 more still in the program. "Of those consumers who have successfully graduated, total post-program arrests have been reduced by 95 percent," Glass writes. "This significant reduction in crime greatly enhances public safety in our community."

If the Legislature cuts mental health spending by almost a third, the effects will be felt far beyond state services. Consider that if mental health programs are eliminated, some mentally ill people will have no option other than local hospital emergency rooms.

You may remember the hospital crisis of 2004, when mentally ill patients' average length of stay in Las Vegas emergency rooms reached 105 hours. In response, the 2005 and 2007 Legislatures expanded mental health services. But when the recession struck, the budget ax came out. Another big cut could result in a recurrence of that 2004 crisis. "It could completely congest our emergency departments and restrict services for individuals who need medical care," Osti says.

The governor and lawmakers should figure out how to avoid such drastic cuts. Foremost, this should be done to help those suffering from mental illnesses. But also, if greater resources are devoted to preventing the Jared Loughners of this world from falling through the cracks, that's a benefit to the entire community.

Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@reviewjournal.com) is the Review-Journal's director of community publications. His column appears Friday.