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Notes -
The US didn't have mass shootings back in the past. Schools and public life could be much healthier.
The suicide rate of 15–19 year olds tripled between 1950 and 1990. It wasn't that mental health professionals were really good back in 1950, there just doesn't seem to have been such severe stress and suffering among young people back in the day.
Obviously 'fix society' or 'fix education' is not something the US is very good at, probably been going in the wrong direction for ages. Nevertheless, it's possible in principle.
Mental health treatment was much worse back then, and consisted heavily of involuntary confinement, surgery, or just enough benign neglect to let nature take its course. But it did have the effect of keeping it away from the rest of society to a higher degree.
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The Bath School Disaster in the 20s. Charles Whitman in the 60s. That guy who suicide bombed his kid’s school in Texas in the 50s. That racially motivated mass shooting on the train in San Francisco in the 70s. That McDonalds mass shooting in the 80s. That mass shooting at that college in Canada in the 70s. There were a lot of others, they just didn’t get much ores as a phenomenon.
Sure, I guess I was wrong in saying it didn't happen:
https://www.theviolenceproject.org/databases/mass-shooters
But it happens much more than it used to and young people are much less mentally healthy than they used to be.
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