( Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images)
Newtown tragedy could put mental health in spotlight
Liz Szabo, USA TODAY12:05a.m. EST December 17, 2012
Could the nation’s mental health services be improved in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting?
Families and doctors who treat the mentally ill say they hope that Friday’s tragedy in Newtown, Conn., will refocus the nation’s attention on improving mental health services.
Police have not yet released details about the motives or mental state of shooter Adam Lanza. But the perpetrators of similar mass murders — at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University and a Tucson gathering for Rep. Gabby Giffords, for example — all suffered from serious mental health conditions.
“We wait for things like this to happen and then everyone talks about mental health,” says Priscilla Dass-Brailsford, an associate professor of psychology in the psychiatry department at Georgetown University Medical Center. “But they quickly forget.”
There are hundreds of multiple-casualty shootings every year, says forensic psychologist Dewey Cornell, director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project. People have become so desensitized to the horror, however
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/16/newtown-mental-health/1773479/