“Mental health” and gun control are the mottoes of the hour as different media try to come to terms with the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings. This blog will try to express one historian’s (my) view of “mental health.” A warning to the reader: I am a Romantic who still believes in individualism, but not a follower of R. D. Laing nor of Ken Kesey. (See https://clarespark.com/2012/02/19/the-romantic-repudiation-of-freud-co/.) 1. What is the size of the much contested character of “mental health?” To me, it is a popular term that denotes a world-view, a Weltanschauung that can be translated as ideology. To partisan “moderate” Democrats like Joe Biden, the President is identical to a Klansman, a would-be Hitler. But to “non-partisan” psychiatrists, a worldview is a perspective that should not be judged while in treatment. But who is non-partisan in a polarized society? And who can afford therapy with a thoroughly trained psychiatrist? Anyway, the “talking cure” is so over; “therapy” now is controlled by behaviorism, which treats individuals as if they are objects (to be acted upon by the environment, including rewards and punishment). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism.
2. A lack of connectedness to persons in favor of modern machines (along with responses to bullying (Trump again!), the internet or “violent” videogames are often blamed for mayhem. but no studies are quoted. I have opined on the subject, see https://clarespark.com/2016/06/30/disconnectedness/. Definitely off-limits are relationships within the family or anything that deviates from the norm. We make choices, and some of these are very bad, even lethal.
3. Of course, the President has chosen violent rhetoric, which supposedly inspires violence in others. Frankly, I don’t mind the rhetoric. Are words bullets? asked “Kennedy” on FNC, yesterday.
4. I wrote to a more liberal friend of mine from my college class, a psychiatrist of some prominence, who agrees that “mental health” is ideological, but who went on to responded (in part): “…The El Paso shooter’s choice of methods to support white supremacy and punish people of color is an indication he should not be considered mentally healthy but he is not necessarily mentally ill. None of the white supremacist ilk should be considered mentally healthy. Returning to the El Paso shooter, his brain enabled him to carry out the massacre. That he chose that method to make a statement is the evidence for the lack of health. I do not see him as that different from those who support access to assault weapons and 100 bullet magazines for the general public. They are on a continuum with the shooter.
“A more interesting question is the mental health of a society. Ours shows impaired mental health compared to some of the Nordic countries who have evolved a more just social system A large proportion of the mass murder problem in the US is not related to the mental illness/mental health issue. Much suicide and murder by guns, the overwhelming means for harming self and others, is related to mental illness and abnormal brain function. It is diagnosable and treatable. …”
The Clare Spark Blog 
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