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Friday, March 29, 2024

Have a different conversation: America's problems run deeper than guns

It seems like each time I turn on the news, incidences of gun violence flood the screen. They happen with such frequency that they no longer feel unusual. Sometimes they are not even considered nationally newsworthy. Yet one this week caught my attention.

On Monday morning, a Houston lawyer named Nathan DeSai went on a shooting spree near a mall and injured nine people — one of whom is in critical condition — before being gunned down after an ensuing shootout with law enforcement.

Neighbors admitted DeSai had been acting strange recently. Paranoid.

This allegedly stemmed from a broken relationship with his law firm.

During the shooting, he was dressed like a Nazi.

This incident comes on the heels of last week’s mall shooting in Washington state in which a 20-year-old man opened fire in a Macy’s. Five people were murdered.

Predictably, in the wake of these tragedies, there has been renewed clamor in the media and among lawmakers for increased gun regulations.

We had the conversation after this summer’s Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando.

We had it after last year’s massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. We had it after 20 children were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The rinse, repeat cycle happens like clockwork with every mass shooting.

But each time, we miss out on a chance to have a more substantive conversation — one that doesn’t get the national airtime it deserves. Maybe it’s because it’s not polarizing. It doesn’t bring in views or amass clicks online like two people arguing over the Second Amendment seems to. Yes, the gun control debate is important. But it fails to strike at the core of a more serious yet far less frequently discussed issue in America that can be a catalyst for incidences of violence: mental health.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 20 percent of American adults suffer from some type of mental illness. While that figure might not seem overwhelming, it’s 43.8 million people — no small number. Of these, a combined 8.5 million suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, while another 16 million live with major depression. But perhaps even more staggering, 60 percent of people with mental illness did not receive any form of treatment within the last year. And these issues are not limited to adults. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in the age 15 to 24 demographic. Ninety percent of those who die by suicide suffered from mental illness.

Not enough is being done to remedy America’s mental health problem. Look no further than this campus. According to a WUFT report published Sept. 20, UF has only one mental health professional for every 1,546 students. This can create a backlog, causing some students to go undiagnosed while others are unable to get the treatment they need. There has been a 48-percent rise in the number of students seeking counseling from Fall 2008 to the 2013-2014 school year.

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This university, as well as others across the country, can and should take a more proactive approach to treating mental health.

Obviously, not everyone with mental illness will commit gun violence against themselves or others. But simply calling for an increase in government firearms regulations only puts a Band-Aid on the issue. It’s a misguided attempt to correct the problem, because it doesn’t address the real issue. We often get too caught up in the wrong details of these stories: What type of gun? What caliber bullet? How much ammunition? These questions are imperative, but they don’t paint the whole picture.

Sometimes, it’s not enough to ask how these incidents of violence are taking place. It’s more important to ask why.

We’re not doing that enough.

Brian Lee is a UF English senior. His column appears on Thursdays.

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