Mental illness is often blamed for mass shootings like the one that occurred at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. last week. This is a narrative some Republican presidential candidate hopefuls like Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee have continued in the media, as we saw during Sunday night's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
"The aftermath of a mass shooting might actually be the worst time to talk about mental health," host John Oliver said during Last Week Tonight's top story segment Sunday night.
As Oliver would go on to point out, that's because the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent, the vast majority of gun violence is committed by non-mentally ill people and mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. But, since mental health has been brought into the public consciousness once again, Oliver took this opportunity to examine the ways in which we discuss the topic (if at all) and our broken system to deal with it.
Oliver pointed out some of the more shocking forms of "mental health therapy" in this country, including what's known as "Greyhound therapy," or discharging severly ill patients from care with a one-way bus ticket out of town, and the large number of mentally ill people that end up in prison. Overall, Oliver showed that the U.S. mental health system can be "ineffective, expensive and dangerous" and in need of a massive overhaul.
Since a few GOP candidates have been so vocal about mental health issues recently, Oliver challenged them to actually put a plan in place to improve the country's system. We'll have to wait and see what they have to say about that.
Watch the full Last Week Tonight segment below.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
