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Wed Apr 18 13:48:18 BST 2007

Respectfully Tony, what our PM undertook was a political stunt to buy votes,
there was no science in the 1996 knee jerk reaction, and in fact there is
now very credible research published (Baker and Mcphedran, Brittish Journal
of Criminology Oct 2006- I can email the article in pdf if anyone wants it)
which has shown what happened here in 1996 was largely a waste of public
money.

I support injury prevention strategies which save lives, but lets not fall
into the trap of calling for actions and outcomes without evidence of
benefit. Regardless of individual views on firearms, sporting shooters have
as much right to their hobbies as you have to yours. Drink drivers, smoking
and illicit drugs still kill far more people in this country than any
firearm yet we spent half a billion dollars in 1996 buying legally owned
private property off our citizens for zero net gain in public health and
safety.......why dont we ban smoking if we wish to save lives? What could
cancer research achieve with a half billion dollar funding injection? Likely
it would contribute to saving more lives long term than the gun buy back
will.

I extend my thoughts and sympathy to those who lost loved ones in this
tragedy, but would suggest that decisions regarding action needed should be
considered after the emotions have calmed and logic can prevail.Banning
anything is rarely if ever an answer, illicit drugs are clearly an example
of that principle in action.

regards

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org
[mailto:trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org]On Behalf Of Tony Joseph
Sent: Wednesday, 18 April 2007 8:38 AM
To: trauma list
Subject: Re: Root Causes

Dear Ken

Sorry but I did try to restrain myself from commenting.

While I agree that there is  need for more mental health facilities
worldwide, I doubt if it would have helped the disturbed young man in
Virginia ( according to reports here he was a loner and wrote worrying plays
in creative writing classes about killing fellow students and a professor).

Anyway, the point is that he was able to purchase 2 semi-automatic hand guns
and kill 32 young people whatever the state of his mind.

USA has 4% of the world's population and 50% of the firearms- surely injury
prevention measures ( and common sense)  should be applied as in any other
trauma situation.

As I said previously when we had a similar incident here in Australia with
35 killed in Tasmania over 10 years ago, our Prime Minister to his credit
changed the gun laws overnight with the cooperation of our States making it
much more difficult to buy guns and virtually impossible to buy an handgun
as a private citizen.

If this group can't change the culture and the constitution in your country,
who can?

Regards
Tony Joseph
Sydney

On 18/4/07 6:48 AM, "KMATTOX at aol.com" <KMATTOX at aol.com> wrote:

> Although I should use my allocated bandwidth time to talk about trauma and
> to compliment those who have done a good job in Virginia's trauma
response, I
> want to talk about a totally different subject which has consumed
increasingly
>  more and more of my administrative time.
>
> The subject is Mental & Behavoral Health.
>
> Since the closure of state mental health and psychiatric hospitals, there
> has been an increasing effort to push the responsibility for
identification
> and
> treatment more to the local level.  That is perhaps as it should be, but
> funding has been sparse to negligible.   Hardly a family, and many of  our
> colleagues are affected by depression, and other mental health  diagnoses.
> Treatment is sporadic and expensive.
>
> Add a mental health problem as a co morbid factor to diabetes, heart
attack,
> pneumonia, trauma, etc, and we have a really big  problem.
>
> Houston is the 4th largest city in the US.   It has a fast growth  rate.
> In 2000, 3000 inpatient psychiatry beds  existed.   In 2007 there are 700,
> despite an almost doubling of the  population in those 7 years.   One
public
> psychiatric hospital (HCPC)  has more than 300 built beds, but less than
90
> are
> staffed and there are no iv  fluids, no syringes, no IM medications in
this
> hospital.  ANY , ANY co  morbid condition results in an attempted transfer
out
> instantaneously to BTGH  were there is tight overcrowding of mental health
> conditions.   Up to  37% of the admissions to medicine and surgery,
including
> trauma,
> have a mental  health component.
>
> We have 20 in hospital mental health beds, 12 Emergency Center closed
beds,
> and up to 12 close observation sites in the emergency center proper.    We
> have at any time more than 20-40 inpatients on the surgery or medical
wards
> who
> have both medical and mental health problems, often the mental health
> problems are severe.      If we tripled the number of  in-hospital mental
> health
> beds, they would be filled in 12  hours.
>
> Now back to the subject that prompted this post.   I suspect  that much of
> the violence, wild use of firearms, and other human/social  outbursts may
have
> a
> mental health overtone, an untreated or undertreated  condition.
>
> Finally:
>
> IF THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS IN HOUSTON, IN TEXAS, IN THE UNITED STATES IS
> NOT ADDRESSED SYSTEMATICALLY, MORE HUMAN OUTBURSTS ARE GOING TO  HAPPEN.
IN
> MY
> VIEW WHAT WE ARE SEEING IN VIOLENCE IN OUR SOCIETY HAS  AS ONE ROOT CAUSE,
> OUR BROKEN MENTAL HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE.
>
> Kenneth L. Mattox, MD
> Houston
>
>
>
> ************************************** See what's free at
http://www.aol.com.
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