Besides volunteering at the Open Door Community outreach to the homeless in Atlanta this week (while looking at urban poverty issues), I’ve been doing research on various sets of other issues facing our country.   At the forefront this week is the shooting in Arizona.   The New York Times   noted that preliminary data around the shooter, Jared Loughlin, 22, “…seems to point to a man with delusional thinking and mental illness.” This would be a time to note that we could be doing a whole   lot better when it comes to dealing with mental illness.   In an article for Emory University Magazine,   former First Lady Rosalyn Carter writes that there has been an explosive increase in scientific knowledge and understanding of mental illness of late.   Brain scan technologies, groundbreaking research into genetic and environmental influence, and the development of powerful medications and other treatments.   However, Carter said the system needs to catch up with these advances, ensuring their availability and affordability…   I am a former counselor who has worked extensively with drug, alcohol and dysfunctional family system dynamics.   (Initial reports also indicated Loughlin had illegal drug issues.)   What’s needed, I believe, is a tremendously heightened focus on these issues.   About 10 years ago, I spent three months researching the organization Take A Stand for Kids on the Monterey Peninsula in California.   Citizens there banded together to put on in-home meetings, public seminars, school seminars… to raise peoples awareness about drug addiction, alcoholism, compulsive gambling, work addiction, dysfunctional parenting patterns, mental illness (depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia…), including teaching about a host of recovery options.   This, in turn, made the peninsula a much healthier place emotionally.   Note:   All the latter issues lead to a tremendous amount of social problems — domestic abuse, crimes, shootings (there are 100,000 shootings a year in America).   It’s only common sense that we should step up our dealing with these things at their roots.   For all the little Christina Taylor Greens of our society.   I once told Ohio Magazine:   “Liz and I used to be concerned about how our kids did in English class.   Now we’re more concerned about them being shot to death in English class.”