In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy and the movie theatre massacre in Colorado, accounts of mentally ill perpetrators are offered as partial explanations as to how these horrific events came to pass. The public outcry for revised gun control measures is understandable and well placed. I don’t disagree. Yet, the predictability of which firearm aficionados may also harbor a latent predisposition toward violence may be an unreasonable task for agencies tasked with licensing weapon worthy citizens, particularly when it comes to assessing someone with a history of mental illness. The paradox of a system which relies on questions about a personal history of psychiatric treatment does not mean an individual has not needed care.  If behavioral health services are not accessible or available, there would not be any record of such intervention. This does not mean that such intervention has not been suggested, desired, or otherwise indicated.  That said, a history of mental health treatment ought to not automatically suggest the applicant should be denied a right offered other citizens.  Focusing funding and effort on firearm marketplace controls may override the much needed attention on community mental health care which are lacking across the nation.  Ensuring our nation also has accessible, high quality behavioral health treatment programs will have benefits which extend far beyond the gun control debates.  Though we may never be able to fully disentangle the issues of gun rights and mental illness, perhaps we can maximize this opportunity to press our leaders into putting some real muscle, in the form of dollars, behind mental health treatment programs.  

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Over the last thirty years or so, eating disorders have received increased attention both clinically and in the mainstream media. The apparent surge in diagnosing eating disorders has long been blamed on unrealistic social pressures, media representations equating body type and attractiveness, however, the effect on males has gone largely unnoticed until recently. A paper published in the journal Eating Disorders in 2012 offers some useful insight into the problematic gender disparities for men who have eating disorders. 

In the paper “Eating Disorders in Men: Underdiagnosed, Undertreated, and Misunderstood” by Strother, Lemberg, Stanford, and Turberville several issues that are unique to males with eating disorders. In order to address the issues specific to men, the authors propose several key topics which are notably relevant in these patients. First, understanding the patient’s weight history is presented because the research has indicated men who develop eating disorders were often overweight at one time in their life, unlike women with eating disorders who often have normal weight histories. Weight concerns for men are often associated with avoiding health problems experienced by their fathers or athletic achievement, unlike the goals of “achieving thinness” in females.