As a biased person, I’ll stay out of the discussion about guns, but as a physician, I feel morally obligated to say something about mental health.
The shooter in Buffalo had been admitted to a mental hospital and then released: he said he hated black people.
He was able to buy a gun even though he had undergone a police-mandated mental evaluation.
Darrell Brooks’s (who said he hated white people) mother says, “…what has happened is because he was not given the help and resources he needed.”
The following chart shows the number of hospital beds per 100,000 people in various countries. Notice that every country has more than the US except for Mexico, Turkey, Italy, & Chile (the US is 5th from the lowest number of all the countries listed).
The US has less than 25; Japan has more than 250 beds per 100,000.
Do not let anyone tell you otherwise–Japan does not have ten times as many mentally ill people; the US simply turns these very vulnerable people out on the streets to hurt themselves and others.
Mental hospital beds per 100,000 people per country in 2014…
Switzerland———72
Trinidad———–65
The United Kingdom—–34
The United States—-2.2 (Iowa) to 34 (Wyoming). Most states have less than 20 beds per 100,000.
One study estimated that the US needs 64.1 beds per 100,000 people (click to read)<—
Question 1.
In 1955, the number of psychiatric beds per 100,000 in the US was 340 beds per 100,000 US citizens! Over ten times as many mental hospital beds per 100,000 as now. Yes, we have better medicines now, but are they really THAT much better? Research reports that we need at least 64 beds per 100,000; those who are not hospitalized and who need to be are a threat to themselves and to others.
Question 2.
Do we in the US really have 1/3 the rate of mental illness of Switzerland, or just 1/3 the number of mental hospital beds per 100,000 people? If our rate of mental illness is the same as Switzerland, then we could have 2/3 of our mentally ill people running free that Switzerland would have locked away for the patient’s safety and the safety of society.
The number of hospital beds available in the US for those suffering from mental illness has decreased by 500,000 (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND) since the 1950s. The number of beds continues to shrink<–
Question 3 If we increase the number of mental hospital beds, will that one thing make it easier for mental health workers to do their jobs and protect the mentally ill from themselves and others?