Author: Maria Yang, MD

Categories
Policy Systems

Guns, Mental Illness, and Background Checks.

To my knowledge, I’ve only had one “long-term” patient attempt suicide with a gun. [1. I have worked with other people who have tried to kill themselves with guns. They usually report that these attempts had occurred years ago. Other people told me that they owned guns, but had no desire to kill themselves in the time we worked together. Still others owned guns and were struggling with ideas of suicide. Thankfully, we were able to work through this together and these people chose life. Then there are people who own guns and want to kill themselves, but share neither detail with me. I don’t know who they are because I either (1) never meet them in the first place or (2) I never see them again.]

This Person Who Attempted Suicide with a Gun did not show up for an appointment one day. For reasons I could not explain, I had great concerns that This Person had attempted suicide. After leaving several phone messages, I got a phone call from This Person, who was in the hospital.

“I swallowed a bullet,” This Person said.

“What?”

“I don’t know how it happened, but I swallowed a bullet.”

When I later spoke to This Person’s hospital physician, I learned that This Person had not swallowed a bullet. A bullet had gone through This Person’s chest wall, through a lung, and out the back.

I told This Person what I had learned.

“It was my friend’s gun,” This Person said. “I went over when no one was at home.”

The New York Times has a short article about “Why People With Mental Illness Are Able to Obtain Guns“. [2. While the title of this article, “Why People With Mental Illness Are Able to Obtain Guns”, is simply an accurate description of the piece, I still feel annoyed with it. I think my reaction is due to the pairing of “mental illness” and “guns”. There is no reference that most deaths from guns are due to suicide. Where are the articles that pair guns with other conditions? “Why People With Substance Use Disorders Are Able to Obtain Guns”? “Why People With Incurable, Painful Diseases Are Able to Obtain Guns”? “Why People in Financial Ruin Are Able to Obtain Guns”?] One reason offered is “Their Mental Health Records Are Not Accessible”. The author, unfortunately, does not provide much elaboration on this, which alarmed me. Just what records would the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System have access to? If it is accurate that about one in five Americans will experience any mental illness in a year, how much private health information will the FBI have access to?

The government released a document, “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)“, that clarifies some of this. The summary from the document notes:

Among the persons subject to the Federal mental health prohibitor established under the Gun Control Act of 1968 and implementing regulations issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) are individuals who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution; found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity; or otherwise have been determined by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority to be a danger to themselves or others or to lack the mental capacity to contract or manage their own affairs, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease. (emphasis mine)

Thus, three populations of people will have their “mental health records” accessible to the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System:

  1. people who have been hospitalized against their wills for psychiatric reasons
  2. people who are deemed by a court to be incompetent to stand trial, or the court ruled that they are not guilty by reason of insanity
  3. people who are deemed by a lawful authority to be a danger to themselves or others, or are “gravely disabled” (unable to care for themselves)

The summary adds:

The disclosure is restricted to limited demographic and certain other information needed for NICS purposes. The rule specifically prohibits the disclosure of diagnostic or clinical information, from medical records or other sources, and any mental health information beyond the indication that the individual is subject to the Federal mental health prohibitor.

This offers partial relief, though I still have concerns:

  • What is the “limited demographic” information? Name? Age? Sex? Race?
  • What is the “certain other information”? Country of birth? Political party registration? Contacts with law enforcement in the past year? Religious affiliation?

This Person who “swallowed a bullet” was ultimately “involuntarily committed to a mental institution”. Under Washington State law, This Person lost the right to own a firearm because of the involuntary detention.

As such, I generally agree with the three populations described above in the “mental health prohibitor”. There is data that argues that people who own guns are more likely to complete suicide. There is also data that argues that people are more likely to complete suicide in the first few weeks after discharge from a psychiatric hospital. I would not want This Person to purchase a gun and attempt suicide again.

However, This Person used someone else’s gun in the suicide attempt. Neither Washington State law nor this new Federal rule has relevance.

I don’t know what the answer is.

Increasing the amount of data in background checks may help reduce suicides and homicides. The current implementation, however, may only increase stigma for people with mental health conditions. We want to increase the awareness and acceptance of mental health conditions. We don’t want to increase fear.

It does not appear that banning guns outright is possible. I am also not totally convinced that an outright firearm ban would result in less gun homicides due to some of the reasons listed here. Would a ban on guns decrease suicides? Maybe, as states with firearm registration and licensing regulations seem to have less suicides.

As I have noted elsewhere, a psychiatric diagnosis alone does not explain why people kill other people, whether with guns or other means. Yes, there are sociopaths who kill people, but they are extremely uncommon. Does the mental health of a society affect and shape the mental health of an individual? Does context matter?

If so, how can we as a society help change the context?

Categories
Observations Reading Reflection

Year in (partial) Review.

One of my goals in 2015 was to post something here at least once a week, for a total of 52 entries. Including this one, I posted 48 entries this year. (I did not have a similar goal in 2014 and, as a consequence, I posted only 25 entries last year.)

The post I wrote this year that received the most views discussed whether people choose to be homeless.

The post from this year that came in second place for most views discussed the experience of grief.

The post that received the most views this year wasn’t even a post I wrote this year; it was a post from 2013 about the DSM-5 criteria for schizophrenia.

Another goal I had for 2015 was to read more books. I didn’t keep track of the number of books I read in 2014, but I think I read more books this year (23) simply because I had a goal. In addition to the books listed in the footnote here, I also read:

Stitches (Lamott)
Bossypants (Fey)
The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life (Sterner)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou)
Boundary Spanning Leadership (Ernst) – not yet finished

I do recommend all of them, with the exception of the last one, only because I have yet to finish it.

Thank you for reading my writing this year, particularly those of you who have been reading my words and sentences for over ten years. See you in 2016.

Categories
Lessons Medicine Nonfiction Reflection

Repost: Control.

I wrote the post below over ten years ago during my last year of medical school. I was on an elective hospice rotation. This came to mind this weekend after I visited a mentor who is dying from cancer. Someone from a hospice service also visited him while I was there.

I will miss him.

We all die.

Really. We all die.

And people know this. Sort of. Kind of. Maybe.

Some people accept this fact that yes, we all die, with calm grace. Some, indeed, genuinely welcome death and look forward to shedding this mortal coil. Some don’t necessarily want to die, but they recognize the inevitable fact and actively choose to spend the rest of their days living, not dying.

And then there are people who fight death. Or maybe it’s not death itself that they fight; they fight their mortality. They struggle with the fact that life will end. They don’t want to relinquish control over their existences. They want to know how much time they have left, what exactly will happen, and how things will progress between this moment and that last breath.

Family members of dying people (but really, aren’t we all dying?) seem to feel more—sadness? anger? frustration?—whatever; they often seem to feel more than the patients. The Type A’s get super Type A, jumping all over the place, asking How? When? Why? What? How much? How often? How quickly? How slowly? Can I do this? What about this? And that? The angry people get angrier, but I don’t think the core emotion is anger. The sad people try not to feel more sad, but their cheery smiles are obviously superficial. And the crazy people just get crazier.[1. I wince at what words I used to describe people in the past. I hope the wincing means that I’ve gained some wisdom over the years.]

It’s not fair to say that this grief is entirely selfish, but in a way, it is: If the loved one dies, it is a theft from the person in question. There will no longer be any shared moments, quiet glances, bursts of laughter, or shouting matches. And if the loved one dies, it only reminds us of our own mortality.

Because we all die. We just don’t believe it.

A hospice nurse and I sat in a family’s house for nearly an hour this afternoon. The patient, an aging woman, lay on the gurney in the living room. She’s had multiple strokes and doesn’t interact with the world. Her eyes fix upon yours, but she’s not looking at you. Her pale lips, smeared with Vaseline, are parted. Her left foot writhes in the bed, as if forming cursive letters on the white sheets. Her skin is cool and she doesn’t really react to the touch of another human hand.

Her daughters keep extensive notes about her: How much did she pee? poop? sleep? Has her skin changed color? Is she throwing up? How much morphine has she gotten? (They won”t say “morphine” in the room; they call it “M”.)

They don’t want to give her too much morphine because they fear that they will kill her. And yet they want her to be comfortable—and the grimaces on her face suggest that she is not. The daughter who is administering the morphine will not—cannot—give her any more.

“It’s about HER comfort, not YOURS,” her sister said, trying not to shout at her.

“Well, you don’t want to give it to her, so I am, and this is what I’m comfortable with,” the sister replied.

“I know she’s declining… I know she is…” and yet she cannot accept this fact completely and buries herself in her dying mother’s urine and fecal output, her blood pressure and pulse measurements, the dosages of her medicines.

It’s about control. Lack thereof, really. And to sit there, actively listen, and be present with these patients is exhausting. You literally feel what they feel, and yet you also feel what you feel in response to their feelings, and your brain is running through the algorithms of disease. So you monitor yourself while you monitor them, staying in the moment, completely unsure of how the next moment will unfold. Part of you wants to comfort them and part of you wants to scream in frustration. Part of you wants to run away and enjoy the gorgeous world outside and part of you wants to give everyone in the room a big hug. Part of you wants to give up completely and part of you wants to fight for the life that remains.

God, it is so beautiful to be alive.

Categories
Consult-Liaison Education Lessons Observations

More About Questions.

Last week I riffed on the importance of “what is the question“. This week I will riff on a related topic: “How will the answer affect what you do next?”

If the answer to your question won’t change what you will do, then perhaps you don’t need to ask the question.[1. This I definitely learned in medical school. It was usually phrased, “How will this affect your management?” If you’ve made the decision to prescribe an antibiotic for pneumonia, then there’s no reason to get a chest X-ray. It doesn’t matter what the answer is to the question, “What will we see on the chest X-ray?” Thus, don’t order the X-ray.]

If you know that you friend isn’t the biggest fan of cake, but you’re going to serve cake at the party anyway, there’s no point in asking your friend, “Do you like cake?” or “Do you mind if I serve cake?”

Sometimes we ask questions not because we want to learn the answer, but because we want to say something. In the above example the question “Do you mind if I serve cake?” may actually mean “I hope you won’t feel angry or disappointed that I am serving cake”.

Consider meetings or conferences where audience members have opportunities to ask the speaker questions. Sometimes the people who raise their hands to ask questions either (1) never ask an actual question, or (2) ask a question that they then answer themselves, whether the group wants to hear it or not.

To be clear, I’m not saying that we should never ask questions unless the answer will influence our next actions. Asking questions is how we learn about ourselves and the world around us.

When I first moved to New York from Seattle, many of my colleagues in New York asked me about how much it rains in Seattle.

“It actually rains more in New York than it does in Seattle,” I would reply, sometimes with unnecessary smugness.[2. I do like the Merriam-Webster definition of smug. It makes it clear that it is always annoying and never necessary to be smug.]

The question was, “Does it rain more in Seattle than it does in New York?” The answer was “no”, but it didn’t change anything anyone did. No one moved from New York to Seattle to experience less annual precipitation. It didn’t stop me from moving to New York. I still wore trench coats in both cities (though got one with more style in New York) and covered my head as needed. That there is more annual precipitation in New York is just interesting.

It is nonetheless worthwhile to consider the reasons behind questions you ask. Sometimes the answers to your questions will affect what you do next. Sometimes your questions help you learn more about other people or phenomena in the world. Sometimes your questions address only your own psychological needs, which often has bad outcomes for everyone involved in the conversation (e.g., “Do I look fat in this?” or “Are you getting your period?”).

Be careful what you ask for.

Categories
Consult-Liaison Education Informal-curriculum Lessons Medicine Reflection

What is the Question?

I can think of only two times in my life where I received formal instruction on how to ask questions.[1. Without a doubt there have been more than two occasions when someone taught me how to ask questions, but it appears that I either was not paying attention or the lesson was not memorable.]

The first instance was when my parents taught me how to order food in a restaurant. They told me to make a single choice and have my order ready before the wait staff appeared. (“Don’t waste their time.”) They told me to phrase my order in the form of a question:

RIGHT: “Can I have the grilled cheese sandwich, please?”

WRONG: “I want the grilled cheese sandwich.”

My parents also told me to look at the faces of the wait staff and to speak loud enough so they could hear me. They also told me to thank them after they took my order.

(When I became more finicky about sentence construction, I changed the beginning of my orders to “May I…?”. This is mostly due to my 6th grade English teacher who, in his booming voice, would challenge any student who said, “Can I…?” “I don’t know, CAN you? CAN you go to the bathroom? If you CANNOT, perhaps you should see a DOCTOR. MAY you go to the bathroom? Yes, you MAY.”)

In sum, I was supposed to know what I wanted and exercise good manners.

The second time I received formal instruction on how to ask questions was during my third year of medical school.[2. Of course I received formal instruction on how to ask questions throughout my training as a medical student and as a psychiatry resident. However, that was over the course of years and done with varying quality. There were also all the people who taught me how to ask questions and I didn’t understand at the time that they were teaching me how to do that. Communication is difficult. This also explains why my efforts to ask boys out on dates in my youth often resulted in said boys looking at me askance and running away.] Interns and residents often asked medical students (e.g., me) to call consults.

Here’s the thing: When you’re a medical student, you don’t know how to do things like call consults because you don’t entirely know what you’re doing. Mastery comes with practice. Mastery also results from direct feedback, which often comes from exasperated and impatient residents.

When you call a consult you’re asking another service to help you with your patient. For example, if I’m a surgeon and I have a patient who stabbed himself multiple times in the abdomen in an attempt to kill himself, I’ll do the surgery to look around inside and make sure there aren’t injuries to internal organs. However, as a surgeon, I don’t know what to do about my patient’s urges to stab himself, so I’m going to call the psychiatrist to ask her for help.

WHAT IS THE QUESTION?

A surgical intern named Tom[3. Tom had cropped blonde hair. He wore leather pants sometimes. He often went dancing when he wasn’t working. He was smart and, perhaps more importantly, he was kind.] taught me how to call a consult while we were speeding around the hospital one day.

“Before you call a consult, you have to know what you want. What is the question you want answered? The patient is your patient, so you have to provide most of the care. But if you need help, what do you need help with? Don’t just say that the patient has diabetes and high blood pressure. That’s not a question and it’s not clear what you want. Make your question very clear:

‘My patient has diabetes and high blood pressure. He took insulin regularly before he came to the hospital, but now his blood sugars are high. They haven’t been below 300 since he’s been here. Can you help us bring his blood sugars back down?’

See how that’s a clear question? If you ask a clear question, you’ll get answers that will actually help you.

And be nice. Some of the residents you talk to won’t be nice, but that’s just because they’re tired and stressed out. Don’t take it personally.”

In sum, I was supposed to know what I wanted and exercise good manners.

To be clear, it’s not like I had this one conversation with Tom and I thereafter called in stellar consults. I still went on for too long and didn’t share pertinent pieces of information. Residents interrupted me before I had spoken for five seconds and they often made no effort to mask their annoyance.

But! It set me on the path of continually clarifying for myself what I wanted and how to craft better questions. Focusing on “WHAT IS THE QUESTION” has helped me as a psychiatrist (much of the work is often helping other people clarify for themselves what they want), a teacher (if people don’t understand something and get stuck, it’s often because they don’t know what they want to know), and as a human being (when meeting someone new, the question might be as simple as, “How can I make this person feel comfortable so maybe we can become friends?”).

Sometimes asking questions is more complicated than just knowing what you want and exercising good manners (e.g., “Will you marry me?”). Doing both, though, is an excellent place to start.