As a psychiatrist, I have frequently seen psychotic patients brought into the emergency room by police, only to be released into the night because of a toxic combination of restrictive commitment laws and a desperate shortage of psychiatric beds. For the most part, such sad stories affect only the patients themselves and their families. On a few horrific occasions, they are a missed opportunity to prevent a larger, bloodier tragedy.
We will never know his precise motivations, yet it is becoming increasingly clear how Aaron Alexis, who police say shot and killed 12 people at the Navy Yard in Washington this week, fell through some cracks in our mental health system.
