Whenever a shooting becomes national news, certain politicians will inevitably bring up mental healthcare.
But as John Oliver pointed out on Sunday’s episode of ‘Last Week Tonight’, this can be a dangerous and misleading mentality.
“The aftermath of a mass shooting might actually be the worst time to talk about mental health” he said. “The vast majority of mentally ill people are nonviolent and the vast majority of gun violence is committed by non-mentally ill people. In fact, mentally ill people are far likelier to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators.”
Oliver said that mental illness deserves to be part of the national conversation, though, because our mental healthcare system is need of major reforms.
“It is a clusterfuck, except that’s an insult to clusterfucks,” he said.