Guns, Safety and Mental Health

UPDATED JANUARY 18, 2013 12:02 AM, The New York Times

DEBATERS

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  Enforce the Laws, Don’t Add to Them

  SALLY SATEL, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
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  Reform Commitment Laws, Add Psychiatric Beds

  E. FULLER TORREY, TREATMENT ADVOCACY CENTER
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  Care Less Likely if Therapists Are Cops

  PAUL S. APPELBAUM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND JEFFREY A. LIEBERMAN, AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION
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  Require Therapists to Warn of Danger

  D.J. JAFFE, MENTAL ILLNESS POLICY.ORG
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  Improve Access, Erase the Stigma

  ERLANGER A. TURNER, PSYCHOLOGIST
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  It Shouldn’t Take a Tragedy to Improve Treatment

  HARVEY ROSENTHAL, NEW YORK ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHIATRIC REHABILITATION SERVICES
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  Improve Care for It’s Own Sake, Not for Safety

  JIM PARSONS, VERA INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE

INTRODUCTION

Susan Walsh/Associated PressPresident Obama greeted Grant Fritz and other children who to wrote him about gun control on Wednesday when he announced proposals to reduce gun violence.

In the days after 20 children and four adults were shot dead in a Connecticut school, calls by gun control opponents for a focus on mental health care were seen as a diversionary tactic to avoid legislation limiting America’s arsenal. But elements of both President’s Obama’s proposals to address gun violence and new laws on the issue in New York deal with mental health care. Some are widely welcomed, some are more contentious.

But can changes in the American mental health system reduce gun violence without creating more problems?