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Thu Apr 19 14:57:31 BST 2007

Dr Gross, I 100% agree with you on that!  I believe Russia has strict gun
control as well.  Only Military and police officers are the ones that are
allowed to carry guns.

-----Original Message-----
From: trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org [mailto:trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org]
On Behalf Of Ronald Gross
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 10:39 AM
To: trauma list
Subject: Re: Root Causes

Tony et al,

Schizophrenia is tough to live with; as one who truly believes in (1) our
Constitutional right to bear arms, and AT THE SAME TIME, (2) the fact that
pretty much NO ONE in a free and lawful society needs to own one, I feel, at
times, like I need the mental health care that Ken Mattox was referring to. 

The fact is that psychiatric disease is not restricted to the North or South
American continent or Australia or South Africa or the African peninsula.
It is found where ever there are people with a brain within the cranial
vault.  Here in the U.S. have this thing called the Constitution, and in
that document is an amendment that gives us the right to purchase and own
weapons that can be used to kill other people.  I am NOT going to get into
the gun control debate, per se.  I am merely going to state my 10
commandments of gun ownership - thoughts that I have always held to (not
that any of you really care, but what the heck):
1.   the Constitution grants every law-abiding American citizen the right to
bear arms
2.   because you CAN own a weapon never meant that you NEED TO or SHOULD own
a weapon
3.   guns don't kill - the people holding them do the killing
4.   no one except law enforcement officers, deployed members of the armed
forces, and members of sanctioned pistol competition teams need to own or
carry a sidearm or assault weapon in today's society
5.   hunters DO NOT need assault weapons to go hunting.
6.   ALL weapons MUST BE REGISTERED
7.   ALL weapon owners MUST BE REGISTERED
8.   ALL weapon owners MUST PASS a background check by the local police
department, to include a search of FBI criminal records 
9.   ALL weapon owners MUST PASS a psychological screening
10. the NRA gun lobby and the anti-helmet lobby are dangerous to the better
well-being of the general public, from a moral, ethical and financial
standpoint.  They should, therefore, subsidize any and all legal and medical
costs to the general public that result from those who use of firearms
illegally or those who fail to wear helmets while riding donorcycles.

OK, now all of you that are offended or take issue to my comments - have at
it.  But understand that there are now 32 more people that have died because
any one of these 10 items have gone unaddressed.

Take care,
Ron

>>> Tony Joseph <tjoseph at ihug.com.au> 4/17/2007 6:37 PM >>>
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
> 
> 
> 
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> http://www.aol.com.
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