America: Where It's Easier to Get a Gun Than Good Mental Health Care
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Add Comment
I don't know about mental health care, but it's certainly easier to buy a gun than it is a vibrator. (And probably the only reason I'm running this story)
Lots more under the 'Sex Prudery' tag.
America: Where It's Easier to Get a Gun Than Good Mental Health Care
Gun violence is up. Access to good mental healthcare is down. What, exactly, are our priorities?
By Valerie Tarico
June 10, 2012
Last spring my younger sister Kathy jumped off a freeway bridge in Phoenix. For better or worse, she lived. Kathy made her first suicide gesture in high school, when she took a handful of, I think, aspirin in reaction to a bad haircut. At the time, she was already, obviously, mentally ill. In middle school, anorexia had drawn her down to a skeletal 38 pounds. Her hair fell out. Her sunken face took on a plastic texture from fat-soluble vitamins that her body couldn’t process. Force-feeding brought her back from the brink, but couldn’t heal her. In the years since, even during three pregnancies, she has never topped 100 pounds, nor has she ever been free of compulsions, body-loathing or debilitating bouts of depression.
Since that first handful of analgesics, Kathy has made an effort to die somewhere between 12 and 15 times: prescription pills, threatened jumps from an apartment balcony and a communications tower, an attempt at drowning, a car set on fire. Kathy is alive because even in the heart of Arizona’s Wild West no one will sell her a gun; a fact she finds immensely frustrating at times that her bipolar illness takes her into another trough of despair. more
Lots more under the 'Sex Prudery' tag.
0 Response to "America: Where It's Easier to Get a Gun Than Good Mental Health Care"
Post a Comment