Tragedies Reveal Legal, Health Care Lapses

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But mental health experts say these tragedies have something else in common -- they all point to a mental health system that minimizes the chances that these outsiders can get access to proper psychological services, which would possibly stop the tragedies before they occur.

"The gamut of mental health services has been lacking severely across the country," Wolf said.

"There are many dollars that are allocated for physical services, but mental health has been significantly overlooked," she said. "What all of this highlights is a very significant need for increased funds to help people who suffer from mental illness."

This means they drug them with one or more of the new class of antidepressant drugs - drugs that make billions of dollars a year for the big pharma dealers who push them and are so fraught with side effects the effects should be accurately termed drug effects - but don't give them therapy because insurance company fascists have determined it is cheaper to drug them than talk to them.

And here in Amerikkka, home of the corporate Christian right crusader government that believes all regulation of business is an expression of godless communism, considerations are invariably filtered only through the cost to the bottom line.

Better to have a few hundred people dead from shooting rampages than to provide costly mental health treatment.

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Hawkins had reportedly been fired from his job at a McDonald's in the previous week, and had recently broken up with his girlfriend. According to reports by The Associated Press, Hawkins left a note in the home of his adopted family before the shooting spree. In it, he said he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore.

He also wrote, "Now I'll be famous."

"Robert was a desperate young man, who felt unseen and unloved by his parents, his girlfriend, his boss and the rest of the world," Lieberman said. "The only way he knew to become 'somebody' that others paid attention to was by creating news of his wreaking violence.

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