In all the talk about mental illness,

[BlueStreak]

7. From what I have seen, his mother is the one who needed the mental help

As I see it, there are three broad areas contributing to this peculiarly American gun violence problem:

- Our gun laws

- The media obsession with violence

- Our approach to mental problems as a weakness rather than a disorder or disease needing treatment.

We have to take action on all three. There are some obvious things that should be done with the gun laws and I won't go back over that ground here. It has been discussed at length on other threads.

The media situation was the main thesis of "Bowling for Columbine" and I think Moore was mostly right. In my mind, the worst of the worst is the video games, for 2 reasons. 1) They specifically target children and adults who think like children -- i.e. exactly the profile of most of these killers. The second point was reinforced in a conversation I had with a psychiatrist friend this weekend. He said that the active nature of the video games is much more insidious than passively watching violence on teeveee or the movies. In the video games, often the whole point is to simulate the act of committing gruesome murders, and then --- voila -- there are no consequences. This is really sick.

I am not at all qualified to comment on what can be done regarding our system of recognizing mental health problems and addressing them. My sense is that we do next to nothing. Again, much of my information comes from this psychiatrist. He is heavily involved in the penal system. His practice is mostly involved in therapy, which he believes is essential in most cases to get any lasting result. But he feels constant pressure to just medicate his patients and move on.