gale saltz, and jeffrey lieberman and doris fuller. so solutions. dr.s some magic wand, brooke, we could wave. but one of the things i have an issue with is physicians being able to mandate care for patients that really need it. i would say we need to have some sort of law to help physicians, maybe two orthree opinions or something, when a patient really needs care, that you can make the patient gets the care. even if they don't want it, if it's to their own good and the good of the community. >> doris, are we overdiagnosing, overprescribing? >> those are two different questions. let me come at this through a back door, brooke. we're talking about stigma. everybody is concerned about stigma. stigma is a terrible burden for people living with mental illness. the fact of the matter is the leading reason for stigma is violence. how many people with mental illness commit violent acts? not very many. so we're looking at a fraction of the population with mental illness who commit these acts that make headlines that create the impression that people with menta

doris fuller treatment advocacy center. ladies, thank you for joining us. he crux of the problem in helping those with mental illnesses like the shooter at l.a.x., what is the barrier in terms of getting the help they need particularly before an event like this happens again? >> well, we really don't know enough about the shooter at l.a.x. to know exactly what his problem was. he actually did reach out for help, let someone in the family know he was sueicidal and there was follow-up. in some other cases, jared loughner, others, what we're looking at is people who have untreated mental illness and are not getting what they need to intervene before tragedy occurs. >> debbie, you believe there's a lot of attention being placed on mental health but in the wrong area. can you talk to us about that? >> sure, maria. we are getting a lot of attention but it's very negative attention and skewed. it is true we have had some high-profile incidents in recent times. however, to listen to the news, one might get the impression there's a great deal of violence with mental

. >> reporter: treatment advocate doris fuller says cuts in psychiatric care have been happening forecause of neglect and abuse, she says, they didn't build adequate replacements. >> today, we have about 450,000 people with mental illness living in jails and prisons. >> reporter: why did the united states just cut resources for the mentally ill over the past several decades? >> let's look at who those hospitals served. they serve a population that has no voice, a population that does not vote. >> reporter: the result, according to fuller, an increase in rampage shootings and other killings committed by the mentally ill. she says right now, about 10% of all homicides in the u.s. are committed by people with untreated mental illness. >> it's a problem we have to solve. brian todd, thank you very much. appreciate it. >>> this topic is so critical to the debate over what's causing mass shootings we wanted to spend more time on this with dr. drew pinski, cook county illinois sheriff thomas dart and richard blumenthal of connecticut, home state of where the newtown tragedy occurred. thank

joining me now, two guests here, doris fuller, executive director of the treatment advocacy center. ical and forensic psychologist. it's a tragic stroery all the way around, but this was one of my first questions. you have this report from the washington post, suggesting this massive breakdown in the system, doris, to you first, put this in perspective. is this a rarity to not have hospital beds? a one time thing, or does this happen more than we realize? >> it happens all the time, brooke. we live in a country where we have 7.7 million people who have severe mental illness. about half of them are in treatment at any given time. the other half are not. we have 43,000 public hospital beds for people in psychiatric crisis. we have been eliminating them for 50 years. there's not enough today. it happens every day. we probably wouldn't even be talking about this if it hadn't been for senator deeds, because somewhere in america, every day, multiple times a day, someone who's in crisis and needs a hospital bed, doesn't get a hospital bed. >> and the state of virginia specifically, jeff gar