Most hospitals lack an adequate number of “psychiatric beds.” Even in the most extensively resourced hospitals, demand for these beds far exceeds the supply.

Medical-insurance providers typically insist psychiatric incomers to hospitals be released far too soon – often in as little as six hours.

There is a severe shortage of professionals qualified to treat disturbed people.

Too often, counselors employed by institutions arbitrarily (and inaccurately) assess patients as “being OK” – as being able to be released.

The overall crisis that “60 Minutes” depicted touched me too closely, personally. Years ago, my oldest stepson tried to take his life. We had him taken to a local hospital by ambulance, with a police escort. When hours passed with no call, I phoned the hospital was put through to the psychiatric wing, and was told (at 3 a.m.), “He’s OK. We let him go.” Fortunately, the police officers had waited in the lobby and had intercepted my boy as he was about to walk out into the night, alone. Sensing his pathetic condition, they took him to another hospital, insisted on proper treatment.

What “60 Minutes” emphasized was the huge potential for aberrant behavior (including mass violence) that exists when a disturbed individual does not received adequate treatment and sufficiently extensive therapy. I concluded that it’s not the easy availability of guns that’s the root cause of the mall and school shootings we’re seeing. Nor is an extensively armed (in conceal-and-carry mode) civilian population a solution. The root cause is more deeply implicated in our culture and will require profound soul-searching on the part of each of us before it can be cured.

Tom Wright

Aztec