(HorizonPost.com) – After last week’s mass shootings in Maine, Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called for “reviving mental health institutions,” The Washington Examiner reported.
While Republican politicians frequently discuss mental health issues after a mass shooting, Ramaswamy’s approach has been more overt.
Throughout the 20th Century, mental institutions were a feature of American life but by the 1980s, most were shut down.
With the increase in deadly mass shootings carried out by those suffering from mental health issues, Republicans have in recent years been advocating for the return of mental institutions.
Ramaswamy said last Thursday that violent, “psychiatrically deranged” individuals must be removed from the community, and governments must “be willing to involuntarily commit them.”
He added that the way to accomplish this would be to revive mental institutions while becoming less reliant on the use of pharmaceuticals and more reliant “on faith-based approaches” aimed at restoring their lives.
GOP candidate Donald Trump, who advocated for a so-called “Red Flag” law when president, has said in the past that mass shootings are “not a gun problem” but a “mental health problem.”
In a recent interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity, GOP candidate Nikki Haley asserted that 80 percent of mass shootings are carried out by someone suffering mental health-related issues, and in 70 percent of mass shootings, the killer is suicidal. Haley told Hannity that the country must acknowledge “what this all means” and how to address it.
In an interview on CNN last week, Governor Ron DeSantis touted Florida’s Baker Law which allows for the state to involuntarily commit those suffering from mental health issues.
Unlike Trump, DeSantis does not support a national red flag law. Instead, he told CNN host Kaitlan Collins that we should be institutionalizing more people with mental health problems.
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