Mental Health Reform Needs Supportive Housing

If we’re going to talk about changing our culture post-Newtown, we need to talk about supportive housing. It shouldn’t be that difficult a conversation. Unlike the state’s heated discussions about potential gun legislation, we have consensus that something must be done about Connecticut’s mental health care system – which isn’t really a system at all. While the public’s attention to mental health in the wake of the horrific Newtown school shooting is important, the irony is that we don’t know if the Newtown shooter was mentally ill. What he did was horrific, but, as Kate Mattias, executive director of the National Alliance On Mental Illness-CT, said, “You don’t have to have a mental illness to do something sociopathic.