The world is on edge as they face headlines about the Hantavirus outbreak, triggering post traumatic stress of the recent global COVID pandemic. However, the world is still battling a mental health illness epidemic that is significantly impacting individuals in the United States including 3.5 million U.S. veterans who have experienced a mental health illness in 2023 according to NAMI. This week, the funeral of the eight children murdered at the hands of military veteran Shamar Elkins was held in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Police would describe the tragedy as “the deadliest mass shooting since 2024. Eight children fatally shot, seven being the gunman’s own children. The symptoms of the pressure of adversity were there. Louisiana’s cycles of violence, poverty, trauma, and emotional dysregulation will continue unless there is investment in culturally competent, community-based, preventative mental healthcare for children and families before crisis occurs. It’s time to call attention to reactive mental healthcare treatment and the neglect of preventative care.
Mental healthcare treatment is reactive, not preventative. As a mental health therapist in Shreveport, Louisiana, I have witnessed the same pattern repeat itself. Following a tragedy there is an urgency to address the consequences of mental health challenges with post-intervention while ignoring any meaningful investment in early preventative measures.
Early preventative measures like local parish drug courts have established restorative programs to rehabilitate. The default response is to send patients to one of the many overwhelmed intensive outpatient, inpatient, and rehabilitation programs that are financially structured around crisis stabilization and insurance reimbursement, leaving less investment towards long-term community-based intervention.
To further compound the problem, community resources and education are limited and for some, inaccessible. For preventative care to be successful it must also be culturally competent. What we have in place is not enough to prevent tragedy.
Prevention must begin early, before a child is exposed to juvenile detention centers, prisons, or psychiatric hospitals. 22.1% of persons in Caddo Parish are experiencing poverty. Children growing up in environments with chronic exposure to housing instability, untreated trauma, and limited access to safe interventions turn into survival patterns that become generational. According to the National Academy of Medicine, investing in early intervention and prevention could save as much as $1 trillion per year in productivity and healthcare costs. If community-led preventative mental health intervention could reduce emergency room visits, hospitalization, incarceration, and lost productivity, then why are we not investing more into it?
Admittedly, mental health treatment stigma creates a significantly large barrier to people accessing care, particularly BIPOC people who face additional barriers – economic, geographical, historical, personal, and social. Resistance to change, fear of risk, and lack of reform does not produce outcomes; it only sustains unhealthy patterns. Preventative culturally competent mental health care could make a positive difference because it is not limited to a traditional therapy office. It includes safe after-school spaces, youth recreation, meaningful mentorship, accessible family counseling, trauma-informed schools, and trusted community leaders collaborating with mental health professionals.
Condolences and national prayer days will not change the rooted historic patterns in Louisiana. Louisiana does not need another cycle of tragedy followed by temporary outrage. Investing and implementing culturally competent preventative mental healthcare treatment and programs could halt the cycle. We have to respond, not react. Prevention can happen in neighborhoods, schools, churches, parks, and community spaces before it happens in emergency rooms or ends in tragedy.