10/17/2026
Iām a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I believe deeply in the power of mental healthcare.
And Iām telling you: this wonāt stop with better mental healthcare.
We cannot prescribe away hatred. Medicate away indifference to human life. Or diagnose our way out of a culture that glorifies dominance, rewards aggression, and increasingly treats human connection as optional.
We are lonely. We are polarized. We teach too many boys that vulnerability is weakness and power means control over others. We normalize contempt, celebrate cruelty, and then act bewildered when violence follows.
And we have made extraordinarily lethal weapons accessible in a society already struggling with disconnection, resentment, and division.
Mental illness is not synonymous with hatred, entitlement, cruelty, or violence.
Psychological dysfunction is not psychiatric illness.
And blaming mental illness for every horrific act doesnāt just stigmatize millions of people living with psychiatric disorders. It distracts us from examining the social conditions, cultural beliefs, and access to lethal means that also demand our attention.
Today, children went to school. A place where they should have been safe.
And tonight, families are living through something no parent should ever have to experience.
If youāre feeling devastated, furious, terrified, helpless, or some incomprehensible combination of all four, I want you to know something:
Your emotions are normal and youāre not alone.
Grief is not a disorder. Anger at injustice is not a symptom. And feeling overwhelmed by repeated tragedy does not mean youāre failing to regulate your emotions.
Sometimes the most psychologically healthy response to something profoundly wrong is to recognize that it is profoundly wrong and feel it in your soul.
Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.
And please, for the love of our children, letās stop pretending that better mental healthcare will solve this problem.
We need mental healthcare. We need human connection. We need cultural change. And we need evidence-based gun violence prevention.
All of it.
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