You might have noticed, if you're paying attention, that the U.S. has a major set of medical crises. An epidemic of mass killings from clearly deranged perpetrators who've slipped through the net of the psych/neuro professionals unnoticed. And an epidemic of broken vets returning home from the killing fields with PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). . The response from the medical profession (using this term advisedly)? Silence.
NAMI reports that nearly 14 million Americans live with chronic mental illness such as Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar or major depression disorders. Millions more undiagnosed. The VA reports that nearly a million veterans using their services are diagnosed with PTSD/or TBI. A similar number out there undiagnosed.
It is not like these poor souls are new to our society. Decades have elapsed for sufferers of this pain to be better understood by so called medical science. I say so called because a friend of mine graduating from medical school told me his field was largely not driven by science, but rather, medicine was an "art". Yet they've sold it to us as a science and we're paying dearly for it. I believe he's right. But art or not, what have you heard from the halls of medical learning lately about either of these crises? Nothing. Nada.
Stone cold silence from our medical schools, institutes of neuroscience and schools of psychiatry. No public discussion led by them as you might expect or wish. No media blitzes with either insights on causes or remedies. They just keep making money and stay very quiet, as if to go unnoticed. We'll, I'm noticing and I am appalled. The graphic here in this blog is intended to represent these cowards, not the broken souls they fail to serve.
I'll leave the connection to gun violence to other forums. And discussions about an obviously overwhelmed and understaffed VA to address their inability to either certify the presence of these disorders with any kind of science or provide adequate lifetime treatment.
I read about Bush's knee surgery and Cheney's new heart, but I read nothing about their deliberate abuse of power sending our young men and women off to kill, be killed and immersed in the horrors of slaughter. I don't give a rats ass about either of them and have no expectation that we'll ever hear any expressions of remorse for their crime against these young people, the civilians in Iraq or Af/Pak or our broken society.
It is time for the Psych/Neuro practitioners to stand up, be accountable and own up to their failure. It is time for reform and leadership among their ranks to address these long neglected issues. It is time for research funding as needed and outreach from the cloistered, insular halls of medical learning.
