Kyle Smith | Posted July 5, 2022 10:00 AM

The term semantics is one of my favorites and the concept has always fascinated me.  “Mental Illness” is called many things depending on who the person is that is observing it.  It has been called “crazy”, “insane”, “deranged”, “lunatic”, “unstable” and many more.  In the times of Christ people were said to be demon possessed. 

This past weekend we had another tragic shooting in a suburb called Highland Park just north of Chicago.   At least six people are dead and dozens others wounded. Do we really need to dig far into the shooters background to see that he was “troubled” or “unstable”?  Would it be a wild guess on my part to suggest that he did not attend a church on a regular basis nor was he active in any church?

Let us set aside church and faith for a minute and just focus on mental illness.  The United States has found it to be much less expensive to call mentally ill people “homeless”.  As society has gotten more advanced anxiety has become more prevalent not less. While our government spends less and less on trying to address the issue. 

Some real facts:

1977 – There are 650 community health facilities serving 1.9 million mentally ill patients a year.

1981 – Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act repeals Carter’s community health legislation and establishes block grants for the states, ending the federal government’s role in providing services to the mentally ill. Federal mental-health spending decreases by 30 percent.

1985 – Federal funding drops to 11 percent of community mental-health agency budgets.

2009 – In the aftermath of the Great Recession, states are forced to cut $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending over the next three years, the largest reduction in funding since deinstitutionalization.

2010 – There are 43,000 psychiatric beds in the United States, or about 14 beds per 100,000 people—the same ratio as in 1850.

Those that screams “more gun laws” the moment the bodies hit the ground are in no way interested in helping any victims, but rather they want to advance their own agendas which vary.         

As a Christian I strongly believe our nation can be quickly healed by turning to God.  I also understand that many would be cynical of such a solution to say the least.

What is needed is a two pronged approach one from a secular mental health approach and another from a spiritual revival approach.  If you are a husband and/or father and you are not taking your family to Church on a regular basis, you are missing out.  You are also hurting our nation.