Height of Insanity: Virginia’s repeated unwillingness to address mental health

Most of us have heard the old chestnut regarding insanity: insanity is repeating the same mistake over and over again. If applied to Virginia’s repeated unwillingness to appropriately address the issue of mental health and the commonwealth’s mental health system, then the state is literally insane.

With the events of state Sen. Creigh Deed’s tragedy still fresh on the minds of Virginians and occupying the headlines of Virginia’s newsmakers, the insanity of Virginia’s mental health system have once again been catapulted into the uncomfortable spotlight of…reason.

It stands to reason, for instance, that if “mental health patients” are being turned away from state institutions due to a lack of adequate resources, then more resources should be purchased. We’re only discussing the lives of human beings, however. Indeed, having enough beds to house mental health patients seems to be something akin to a ‘critical need’.

Within the cultural narrative of individual responsibility in Virginia, an inability to account, much less financially provide, for individuals deemed “mentally unstable” has grown alongside. These two conceptually disparate phenomena have left Virginia’s political ‘leaders’ and bureaucrats uncertain on how to proceed. On the one hand, each individual is considered rational and responsible for his or her own success or failure in the game of life. On the other hand, there is the pesky phenomenon of mental illness, which reduces or eliminates the ability of individuals to make rational decisions.

The point is that there seem to be more than a few political leaders in Virginia who believe mental illness is more or less a hoax that does not require extensive state attention or funding. Unfortunately for all Virginians, mental illness is a very real phenomenon that deserves extensive attention and, if necessary, funding.

At this point in this issues history, how many more people have to be harmed before Virginians and their political representatives begin taking mental health seriously? If you prefer the cold-hearted pragmatic question: how many more taxpayer dollars do we have to lose related to mental health related tragedies before Virginia begins taking mental health seriously?