“As a public health researcher and the leader of the nation’s largest community development organization, we are making an urgent call for locally led, anti-racist approaches to stopping the gunfire that for years has ripped through our communities...” Continue reading
In September, a 22-year-old white woman named Gabby Petito was reported missing by her family. A few months earlier, she had set off in a camper van she renovated with her high school sweetheart, Brian Laundrie, to explore the wild spaces of the American West. She updated her Instagram as she went with smiling photos of herself and Laundrie, framed by canyons and lit by sunsets, and touched base with her family back east every few days.
“As the coronavirus pandemic begins to wane in the U.S., a number of public mass shootings have once again reminded us of the epidemic of gun violence in our country. The FedEx shooting in Indianapolis, the massage parlor shooting in Atlanta, and the Boulder supermarket shooting were only a few of the 160 mass shootings (defined as four or more people killed) in the first four months of 2021.
“As a psychiatrist, I’ve long known that helping people with their mental health often requires meeting their basic needs. During the pandemic, we started to do that..." Continue reading
“Some leaders are calling for an end to stay-at-home orders to save the economy, while public health experts argue this will result in a surge of COVID deaths. The implication is that we have to choose between a financial crisis and a public health crisis, and that lives are more important than money. But economic crises are public health crises.
“Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has people around the world feeling vulnerable and scared. In America, individualism and firearm culture have generated a unique response to this threat: stockpiling firearms and ammunition.1
“A few days ago, Salon published an interview with psychiatrist Bandy Lee, who argued that Nancy Pelosi should put President Trump on an involuntary 72-hour mental health hold after he ordered a drone strike in Iraq. While there are plenty of reasons to see Trump’s presidency as a problem, this is the wrong approach to solving it.
“People who knew him as a child described him as “odd” and, later, “disturbed.” Only after it happened did they use the word “scary.” As a teenager, he was picked on and teased for his sullen demeanor and his love of military gear. He lashed out, fighting with classmates and destroying property...” Continue reading
“The police picked him up from his high school after a terrified student told her principal he had threatened to slit her throat. She showed them his Instagram, where he had posted pictures of the Charleston Church shooter with the word “hero” underneath it, and a picture of their science lab with the caption “Columbine 2.0”.
“Before I went to medical school, I had a seemingly unrelated job as a backcountry mountaineering instructor for Outward Bound. At the beginning of each season, I’d sublet my apartment, freeze my credit cards, breakup with my boyfriend, and drive my truck out to Colorado. I’d spend the summer traveling on foot through the high mountain passes and rough-hewn peaks of the Rocky Mountains, carrying everything I needed on my back. I slept in meadows under the stars, drank from streams, and wore the same socks for 3 weeks at a time.
“J.P. had begun to believe that the mafia was monitoring him and that they had deployed operatives to follow him to Oregon when he moved from California. He thought a tracking chip had been implanted in his neck, that robotic birds were conducting surveillance on him, and that he was being watched through his cell phone, which he destroyed in a fit of rage.
