Mental health care policy (a response to Connecticut)

For me, it was a very bizarrely intense single school year. I was mildly bullied in 5th grade (which abruptly stopped when I finally lost my temper on the girl and took a swing at her ... apparently fighting back, in that case, was the way to make it stop), but 7th grade was fucking brutal. And then, for no reason, 8th grade was back to "not precisely popular, but certainly not picked on either." I still don't know what the hell was up with 7th grade.

Okay, jumping in here. My credentials: I have bipolar-type schizoaffective disorder (along with a few comorbid conditions), and have been dealing with the mental health system (mostly state-funded facilities) for 12 years. In addition, I worked for two years as a counselor for an ACT team, and I'm in my senior year as a psych major. I have given talks about mental illness to NAMI groups and to medical students. I have had articles published on the subject. I have been a trained leader of a NAMI peer-to-peer support group. In short, I'm fairly well-versed on the subject.

One thing that's going on with this discussion that I'm having trouble with is that you all are talking about mentally ill children. Yes, it's bad when children have these illnesses, but they're actually pretty rare. The organic illnesses that produce psychoses -- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and related diseases -- don't start in most people until college age. You'll notice a lot of male shooters are around 19-22 or so, give or take a couple of years. That's the textbook age when biological males develop these diseases. (Biological females tend to experience onset a few years later.) You usually can't tell when a child is 16 that s/he's going to develop schizophrenia when s/he's 20. You just can't. There often aren't any signs. In fact, for many people, there aren't any signs at all until they begin to develop psychoses and/or have a psychotic break.

BUT. Family history bears heavily on the development of mental illness. To use my own family as an example, mental illness runs on my father's side of the family. My full sister has OCD, and my half-sister is bipolar. Gee, thanks, dad. (We also all have polycystic ovaries from his genes. Siiiigh.) People who've had a suicide in their family history are a lot more likely to attempt suicide themselves. I'd be happy to look up numbers tomorrow; I've had a couple of drinks, and I don't feel like digging through PubMed at the moment. Ideally, parents could be taught what to watch for if brain disorders run in the family. And colleges need to offer better psychology services for students, because that's the age when most people get sick.

And it's 2:30 in the morning and I'm going to bed. But I'd be happy to talk about this more after some sleep...