Mental Health

            Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has granted an injunction against the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate.  It is only temporary, but it prevents for now the requirement that religious institutions buy coverage for contraception and abortifacients.  Forcing nuns running charitable organizations to promote what they consider sinful is even sillier than making seniors buy coverage for pediatric care.  I cannot imagine that an appeal to lift the injunction has any chance of succeeding.

            Such is the wisdom embedded in ObamaCare.  Another one is the mandate to cover mental health care.  It's a fine idea, but unrealistic.  A person seeking the care of a psychiatrist, for example, would have little chance of getting it under the payment provisions of ObamaCare.  The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that nearly half of psychiatrists will not accept insurance payments; they will only treat patients who can pay cash.  That's fine for entertainers, professional athletes, and Wall Street tycoons, but not for the average citizen who can't afford to lay back on a couch to the tune of $1,000 an hour or more.
            The effective treatment of the "mentally-challenged" cannot be delivered by ObamaCare.  There are people roaming the streets today who should be in psychiatric care institutions.  But committing such people these days is almost impossible since the official government policy of deinstitutionalization has closed so many of these facilities.  There simply is no place for them to go for treatment and to keep themselves and the public safe. 
            In 2007 Seung-Hui Cho, a Korean college student suffering from severe anxiety, selective mutism, and a major depressive disorder, killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech.  His treatments had been discontinued.  In December of 2012 Adam Lanza , a severely deranged and possibly schizophrenic young man, killed 28 students and teachers in Sandy Hook Elementary School.  His murderous obsessions were never recognized or treated.  In just the last three years there have been 99 shootings resulting in 160 fatalities in schools alone, most of them by individuals with mental disorders.  Yet, anti-gun zealots scream for more gun control instead of focusing on the consequences of deinstitutionalization and the inaccessibility of psychiatric care.
            If we're going to stop these slaughters in our schools and on our streets, we need to get serious about fixing our broken mental health system. Well-intentioned laws and regulations will not do it.  They are no more effective than spitting in the wind.