St. Dympna's Solution to Mass Murder

St. Dymphna of Ireland. patron of the "mentally ill."

The recent US Navy Yard shooting seems to be giving people the idea that there is something wrong, not with the gun control laws, but with the mental health system. That, after all, is the common thread among seemingly all recent shooting rampages: that the perps were psychotic.

But it is not simply a matter of putting more money into the system; since we don't really know of any cure for “mental illness” anyway. Is it, then, a matter of reversing “deinstitutionalization,” the closing down of mental health beds? Seems logical on the face of it: as Anne Coulter has pointed out, the spike in mass murder corresponds closely to the releasing of more psychotics onto the streets.

But the problem with this is that a mental hospital looks and operates very much like a prison; and the people forcibly interred there have done nothing to deserve this. To lock them up on the presumption that they might commit a crime is Minority Report territory. And wide open to political abuse. Since we do not know what “mental illness” is, dissent from the majority opinion too easily becomes “mental illness.”

The essential need is simple, though: quarantine the psychotic. Keep them apart from any potential shooting victims. And this in itself is not repressive, since in general this is what the psychotic most want: a chance to get away from it all and grapple with their voices. Indeed, this is very likely to also be the shortest route to a cure.

But why make this a prison? Why not instead a remote townsite, a no-frills resort? Heaven knows, we have a lot of space for such a thing, at least in Canada. Good use for one of those abandoned mining towns, perhaps.

There is, as it happens, a model for this. The town of Gheel, in Belgium, has for centuries taken in the insane and placed them with local families, under the patronage of St. Dymphna. The system seems to be successful, and popular in the town, since it brings economic benefits.

No doubt there are risks to the townspeople; just as there are risks to the doctors and nurses in a psychiatric hospital. But in this non-coercive atmosphere, I suspect that confrontations are far less likely. And, in the atmosphere of a small town, it is easier to unobtrusively detect incipient trouble.

And as overseers and providers, rural families are a lot cheaper than doctors and nurses.