One of the most interesting and sensitive blog commentary that I've read about the tragedy in Arizona has been from bloggers who have had their own struggles with mental health.

Like Dan, I'm not convinced that this incident tells us much about increasing violence in the United States. As Dan says, political violence in the United States is rare and even less a part of our culture than in the past.

Perhaps the real message behind the AZ tragedy is that we need to be better at identifying those with mental illnesses and helping them receive treatment, even as the growing isolation of Americans makes those tasks more difficult.

Dooce writes,

If any good dialogue comes out of this mess, please let part of it be about mental illness and access to treatment.

Did Loughner have access to mental health care? Did he seek it? Did he even know to seek it? Did anyone who cared about him urge him to get help? If he had wanted help, would he have been able to afford it?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but for most people who suffer from a mental illness, the answer to each and every one of them is almost always NO. And the result is all too often a life of debilitating sadness, occasionally suicide, and in this rare instance a mass killing.

Penelope Trunk refers to a suicide letter written by a poor man who was driven mad by his abuse as a child. (The link to this letter has been traded by many of my twitter-types. The chattering class is a small and insular group.) Trunk, like Dooce, has struggled with mental health issues and has been urged to find help through random strangers on the Internet. Like Dooce, she also thinks that the mental health system needs reform.

The mental health system is broken. Few people have enough money to get good mental health care. And few dollars are spent to encourage people to use those expensive benefits. But we can help change that by spreading the word that going to therapy is a hard first-step, but it’s life-saving.

While I am admittedly a neurotic, I'm a happy neurotic. Mental health has never been a concern of mine, so I can't add any personal anecdotes on these matters. However, I've needed support while raising a child with special needs and frequently this support has come from virtual communities. That's why Malcolm Gladwell is dead wrong about the Internet only creating weak ties between individuals. At the same time, there are limits to what a virtual community can do. We need strong ties in the community, as well as real mechanisms to assist these disturbed individuals.

UPDATE: More reactions on Loughner's mental health problems. His poor parents.