Last month, a psychiatric patient deemed dangerous, a man who had admitted to a brutal murder for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, slipped away unnoticed from the Hawaii State Hospital and managed to get all the way to California before anybody reported he was gone. That brought up heated discussion in political circles about how security needs to be beefed up at the state’s only locked psychiatric facility.

Which is true, obviously.

But more than stronger locks, bigger fences and vigilant staff, what is needed is greater capacity. Hawaii’s inadequate mental health services are at the heart of so many of the community’s troubles.

You can’t go downtown without seeing some poor bedraggled soul screaming at voices or swatting at hallucinations. It can’t feel good to be suffering through those episodes when the mind plays dirty tricks on itself. It is not a state of oblivion but rather one of torture, and just bearing witness to that sort of breakdown has an effect on bystanders even if there is no attack or threat or interaction of any kind. It hurts to watch people suffer like that.

All over the island, in doorways and parks and on median strips, are people who are in obvious need of medical attention and psychological evaluation. You see their feet, so swollen and purple as they shuffle across the street. You see the bent and crooked spine sticking up from ratty clothes as they push overloaded carts along the roadway. Sometimes, you see people who are filthy after soiling themselves and you wonder what the hell to say to the kids when they point and scream and ask questions. There are people who cannot take care of themselves, who are a danger to themselves and possibly others, and there are not enough places for them to go for treatment. There also aren’t ways to compassionately compel them to get help.

And then there are the grisly crimes that have no other explanation except the perpetrators must have been crazy, like the green-haired monster and his dead-eyed girlfriend charged with beating a hardworking lady to death in Haleiwa. When horrible stuff like this happens, do you know what we don’t say anymore? “Nothing like that EVER happens in Hawaii!” Because it does. Instead of being shocked that something like this could go down in the islands, our minds immediately turn to another time some deranged person committed a horrible act against innocent victims. And then a time before that. And another. And another. We can think up a whole litany of crimes that shouldn’t have happened and people who should have gotten help before things got really bad.

When the state Legislature kicks off the 2018 session in an election year where everybody is compelled to make big promises, let’s not forget that some of the gnarliest problems plaguing our community — homelessness, crime, drug use — are rooted in mental illness and that fixing a lot of problems starts there.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.