Three people were killed and four seriously injured when a man shot wildly around him at the Field’s shopping center, against seemingly randomly selected victims.
The 22-year-old who was arrested with a weapon in his hand outside the shopping center was detained on Monday in a closed psychiatric ward for the next 24 days. He was previously “known” for psychiatry, according to police.
“Happens over and over again”
– It happens all too often that people do not get the help they need and it can end up with people becoming a danger to themselves and others, says Mia Kristina Hansen, chairman of Sind, an organization with a focus on mental illness.
– It happens again and again, and then psychiatry ends up in the media. And otherwise no one will take it. But there is a very large group of people who do not get the help they need.
Merete Nordentoft, who is a professor, chief physician and spokesperson for the industry organization Danish Psychiatric Society, says that she is inclined to agree with those who say that the system is so pressured that acts of violence like this can happen.
– We have work teams that have to deal with the long-term mentally ill, but they are under such pressure that they have to terminate a third of the patients every year to make room for new ones.
Emergency telephones
Both Mia Kristina Hansen and Merete Nordentoft believe that Denmark must get started with at least some points in the ten-year program for psychiatry on which the Social Democrats went to the polls.
These include emergency telephones in crisis situations, an increased capacity to pull out in the event of alarms from neighbors or relatives.
– If you think that someone is observing a difficult worrying behavior, then it must be possible to call for help immediately, says Nordentoft.
The Field’s shopping center will be closed for at least a week.