We can reduce the incidence of mental health issues and make them easier for those afflicted if we fight poverty but our mental health system is completely inadequate. There has to be far quicker access to care and treatment has to be started before things become almost life and death or people actually kill themselves. The pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction from the old days when we threw people into the loony bin and forgot about them, now it is almost impossible to get treatment for your loved ones unless they are in imminent danger of suicide or killing somebody else and they have been in and out of Emerg multiple times! Forget about all that money the Senate Defence Committee wants to spend on the military (it must be in the $50 - $100 billion range but they conveniently didn't cost it!), if we can really find that kind of money, beef up mental health care and the rest of the health care system. Despite what the Senate thinks, we aren't going to be in a war.