The aftermath of the recent mass shootings in New York and Texas included assertions that the gunmen were mentally ill, and that government must address this problem.
“We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said after the deaths of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in his state. “We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it.”
A number of other Republican officials, all the way up to former President Donald Trump, have said the same thing — although mental health advocates have responded that mental illness itself is not nearly as much of an issue as is the easy access to high-powered weapons.
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell and Mississippi Today separately ask this relevant question: If mental illness truly is a key factor in mass shootings and other violence, how come the people talking about this problem haven’t been doing something about it?
Rampell’s column cited a report from a nonprofit group, Mental Health America, which listed Texas dead last among the states in overall access to mental health care. The rankings are based on information that includes the percentage of adults and children with mental health issues who have been unable to receive treatment.
And two months ago, the Texas governor transferred $211 million from the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees mental health care, to the deployment of the National Guard and law enforcement along the Mexican border.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Today had a story this week about the Mental Health America report, which came out in March. The story measured this state’s performance in a number of categories, and Mississippi often ranked poorly.
The report ranked Mississippi 48th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for access to mental health services among adults. It estimates that in 2019, 265,000 residents with any mental illness received no treatment. And of the 446,000 residents with any mental illness, 81,000 of them have no health insurance.
The most telling statistic in the report may be that none of the states ranked 39 through 51 for access to mental health care have expanded Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act. The link may be that Medicaid, which pays for health care for the poor and low-income, is the nation’s single-largest payer for mental health services.
If political leaders are correct in their assessment that they’ve got to pay more attention to mental health services, they have options. One of the most logical and least expensive to the states would be to expand Medicaid. The federal government is all but begging these states to do that through generous cost-share options that cover all but 10% of the cost of expansion, and even more than that in the first couple of years. If they won’t go for Medicaid expansion, they could simply put more money into state mental health programs.
Would any of this reduce the frequency of mass shootings? Mental health advocates are skeptical. But if the extra resources would help more people cope with their illness, that would be a positive development.
