Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates Charlie Baker and Martha Coakley both endorse mental health background checks for gun purchasers. But their mental health policies differ from there, perhaps showing the partisan divide between what is a public, governmental concern and what is private. While Democrats seem to describe mental health as a personal health issue, Republicans tend to address it as a security issue.
The topics under “Healthcare” on Coakley’s campaign website, the ones to which she is presumably most committed, are “Affordability” and “Mental Health.” She speaks in the latter section of her brother’s struggle with depression and death by suicide, saying, “I have come to understand the challenges people face.” Nowhere on Baker’s website can mental health be found as a medical issue, let alone a personally charged concern.
In discussing Second Amendment rights, Baker asserts that mental health reform is vital for preventing gun violence. Coakley agrees, though she elaborates where he does not. By supporting counseling for people leaving prison, for example, her approach goes further in treating mental health as an individual health problem, rather than a community-based security problem.
Thomas Foley (R) and Gov. Dannel Malloy (D), candidates for governor of Connecticut, are similarly split. Both support mental health reform. Yet Foley addresses the issue only when discussing crime, while Malloy considers it essential to adequate healthcare. In Alaska’s gubernatorial race, the difference in approach proves greater. The Bill Walker (Ind.)-Byron Mallott (D) ticket seeks to increase the state’s mental health services. Gov. Sean Parnell (R), running against them, does not address the subject.
Violence is not the most significant concern associated with mental illness. Only 16.1 percent of the severely mentally ill are considered violent, and this 16.1 percent commit just three to five percent of ‘violent acts’, according to MentalHealth.gov. But the political split between considering mental health a private medical issue or primarily a public safety problem exists. And it seems to be, at least somewhat, a partisan one.