To the editor:

The letter by Ms. Patti Augustin (3/7/18) only intensifies the stigma of mental health in America. Such attitudes increase the number of people reluctant to seek help for stress and mental health conditions.

Most gun-related crimes, including mass shootings, are NOT at the hands of people who have been diagnosed with mental illness. Almost a quarter of Americans suffer from anxiety or depression at one point or another. Many do not seek medical treatment. Access to guns places them more at risk for suicide rather than homicide. Other countries with the same level of mental illness as the United States — but without lax gun laws — have fewer gun-related deaths. 

The math is simple: more access to guns in a society leads to more gun-related deaths. 

We need to help our family members wrestling with mental illness by providing better access to care rather than “locking them up.” Comments suggesting that we forcibly incarcerate even more people simply for having depression and mental health conditions belong in the 19th Century.

Streamlining and improving background checks could help reduce gun deaths. These restrictions should limit gun access for those with significant mental health conditions until such time that they are considered stable. To protect citizens, we currently allow the DMV to restrict a person with a significant medical condition from operating a vehicle on a public roadway; should not the same principle be applied to other instruments capable of harming others?

The proposal to arm teachers in order to create safer schools is problematic on many levels. Multiple studies show that guns dramatically increase the risk of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury for family members in homes where there are guns. The last thing I would want as a parent is for guns to be present in school. I feel this puts my kids at increased risk for gun violence.

Poverty, a history of incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcome and marginalization all contribute to gun violence. Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies are not allowed to study gun violence as a public health issue.

In regards to the writer’s desire for a “normal society,” I caution readers to ask who gets to define “normal” and what their motivations may be. We will not be able to bridge the huge divides in our country until we can accept that each of us has worth and value in our society, despite our racial, cultural, religious, gender and mental health differences. Until that happens it seems like we are all far from having a normal society. 

Carla Martin, MD

Barrington