Trying to exit the ‘dinosaur age’
In the wake of the Santa Barbara shootings, mental health issues again take center stage.
“A lot of times, people want to know what we can do,” said Mono County Behavioral Health (MCBH) Mental Health Director Robin Roberts, speaking to the aftermath of the May 23 UC Santa Barbara stabbing and shooting that left six UCSB students dead.
“One thing we can all do is treat people humanely,” Roberts said.
Roberts addressed an audience at the Mammoth Lakes Library on Tuesday night with a presentation on stigma and discrimination reduction intended to provide information about what MCBH does, and open up discussions about mental health and mental illness.
“There is either a stigma from within; ‘I don’t need that kind of help,’ or from without; ‘Look at that crazy person; she’s so weird,’” Roberts said. “We are trying to build a connection with community members so that they feel more comfortable asking for our services and so that we can continue to help our communities embrace all members.”
MCBH provides therapeutic services and counseling in English and Spanish to all residents of Mono County. MCBH also provides outpatient services for those struggling with addiction, and is the provider for all court ordered mandated services, such as DUI and Drug Diversion.
MCBH offers drop-in wellness groups at its Walker and Mammoth Wellness Centers, and does a monthly community dinner in Bridgeport every third Wednesday of the month, and in Benton every last Friday of the month, “in an effort to provide a place for healthy, safe community connections,” Roberts said.
“Our mission is to serve all residents and all of the communities that make up Mono County with excellent, affordable, and accessible care in an effort to provide meaning, hope and purpose to the lives of those who struggle with emotional, mental and addictive issues in their lives,” she said.
Roberts began her Tuesday presentation with an exercise in which audience members volunteered aspects of their personalities that they felt they had possessed since birth. Once the list was done, Roberts noted how mild, moderate, or severe mental health issues can block our access to those qualities, but that those qualities, such as compassion, adventurousness, creativity, or determination, never go away.
“Some people are born with a predisposition to mental illness,” she said. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, or a predisposition to alcohol or drug addiction, are just a few. “They may lose functions [because of their illness],” she said, “But it’s important to remember there’s actually a person in there. This person has these symptoms, and not the other way around.”
Roberts added that, particularly given tragedies like that at UCSB, “We’re taught to be afraid” of people with mental illness. “We’re taught not to be compassionate,” she said.
Like our personal approach to mental illness, its study and treatment also has a long way to go, she added.
“We’re in the dinosaur age, in terms of [our knowledge of] severe mental health issues,” Roberts said. “I think in the next 30 years we’re going to see more delineation around severe mental health diagnoses.”
For instance, Roberts said, some claim the perpetrator of the UCSB tragedy, Elliot Rodger, had Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder defined by difficulties with social interactions. Roberts said that it was more likely Rodger had a level of sociopathy. “It’s not Asperger’s, but we don’t know what else to call it,” she said.
Roberts believes mental health treatment will improve vastly with a better knowledge of the intricacies of such illnesses, particularly the role genetics plays in determining these illnesses, and with improved access to health care through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
“The ACA has mandates for both county mental health providers and physical health care to be integrated,” she said. “That is, we have developed a system to integrate physical health care and medical issues into our treatment.” Roberts noted that MCBH won a Challenge Grant Award from California State Association for Counties for its work on this integration last year.
“Another aspect of the ACA is that with increased access and with there being parity for mental health issues, there is the potential for more research to be funded regarding severe mental illness and potential medications that are more specific to each diagnosis,” Roberts said. “Right now there is some new work being done to determine the genetic factors and genetics of severe mental illness which will, in turn, enhance the ability to target specific types of illness and symptoms with medications that are much more exact.”
Roberts also pointed to other innovations, such as mental health courts and health care vans that provide services to disadvantaged communities.
However, whether changes like these will prevent future school shootings, Roberts couldn’t say. She noted that both Elliot Rodger and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter were already in psychological treatment; “As far as I can tell from what I’ve read in the mainstream press, everyone involved with the fellow from UCSB did everything right and everything they could in their power to address what they saw as an escalation in his symptoms and violent tendencies,” she said.
Given that, “At this time, it isn’t access to treatment for these guys that is the issue,” she said. “For the shooters I know about, including the one who shot [Arizona Congresswoman] Gabby Giffords—he was also in treatment—I think it is trying to figure out how to address that most people who have severe mental illness would never in one million years do something like this, but at the same time, those who have done these things have fallen through the cracks of our ability to take away the rights, such as gun rights and/or forcing medications, for certain types of people who have certain types of mental illness.”
Roberts also offered a poignant reminder that tragedies like the UCSB stabbing and shooting are just the tip of the iceberg. “Let’s not forget that kids who live in inner cities know a lot about gun violence and see and experience the effects of gun violence and killings on a daily basis,” she said. “We do have a public health issue when it comes to these kids being killed or in some way negatively affected by guns in their schools and neighborhoods. These crimes don’t tend to happen en masse, like UCSB, so we don’t pay the same attention. Still, black and African American male youth are killed at an alarming rate here in the U.S. and it doesn’t make the news like these types of terrible crimes do.
I’m not trying to say that they are one and the same, they are not; still, we have a terrible problem in our country where some kids are not safe in their environments every single day and there needs to be, in my opinion, outcry and attention regarding this in addition to what we see with these mass murders on our school campuses.”
Coming back to the question of “what can we do?” raised in the aftermath of such tragedies, Roberts again stressed the need for compassion and connection. She asked those in the audience to consider how they interact on a daily basis with individuals with mental health issues.
“Remembering their name, looking them in the eye … that’s something we all can do,” she said.
Roberts added that kids with mild, moderate, or severe mental health issues, or even with no health issues at all, also benefit from this kind of interaction. “What we can do, right now, every day, as a community, is make and keep ‘cool,’ involved, engaged connections with all the kids we adults come into contact with,” she said. “It’s not only the right thing to do as a community member, it’s helpful to our communities’ health overall.
“I’m talking about the kids on the sidewalk who go by you, the kids working at Vons or the movie theater or library, not just kids you might know or who live on your block or who are in families you associate with …. all kids, the goofy and the popular, the tough and the scared. That’s one thing we all can do, every day.”
Mono County Behavioral Health is open Monday – Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.. For more information, call 760.924.1740.
