pbs高端访谈:立法者很难界定最需要帮助的个人

 　　RAY SUAREZ: And we turn to the reaction to the president's proposals on guns, mental health and school safety.

　　JAY CARNEY, White House: The fact that's it's not easy doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

　　RAY SUAREZ:A day after President Obama announced his plan to attack gun violence, his spokesman acknowledged how hard it will be to get Congress to go along.

　　JAY CARNEY:If having an assault weapons ban become law again were easy, it would never have expired. If the variety of other actions that the president proposes we take as a nation were without conflict, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

　　RAY SUAREZ:That call for a new stricter prohibition¹ against military assault-style weapons is already being rejected by House Republicans. It's also gotten a mixed response even among Senate Democrats², not to mention the gun lobby.

　　DAVID KEENE, National Rifle Association: Most of the proposals that have to do with firearms are simply feel-good proposals that have been tried in the past and won't work or won't have any real impact.

　　RAY SUAREZ:On "CBS This Morning," the National Rifle Association president, David Keene, did say the group might support universal background checks, if they could be made to work.

　　DAVID KEENE: The difficulty comes in when you're talking about you and me as next-door neighbors and you buy a new shotgun and want to sell one to me. How do you enforce a background check on that? We want to see the proposal. But, as a general proposition, the NRA has been very supportive of doing background checks.

　　RAY SUAREZ:Meanwhile, the head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington said the president had answered the group's written appeal for action.

　　Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter³:

　　MAYOR MICHAEL NUTTER, Philadelphia: The plan that President Obama unveiled yesterday includes much of what we asked for in that letter. We will work with the president and the Congress to get critically needed legislation reforms enacted⁴ now.

　　RAY SUAREZ:And Vice⁵ President Joe Biden told the mayors not to believe the voices of doubt.

　　VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: There are some who say the most powerful voice in this debate belongs to the gun lobby and those that demand a stop to these commonsense⁶ approaches to save lives. I think they're wrong. This time, this time will not be like times that have come before.

　　RAY SUAREZ:And away from Washington, in Aurora⁷, Colorado, the movie theater where 12 people were killed last July reopened this evening, with a ceremony for the victims.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:We hone in now on some of the mental health issues involved.

　　Among the president's proposals, adding new psychologists to schools, asking teachers to help identify which students may need mental health treatment and easing the process for states to make information about individuals with mental illnesses available to the background check system.

　　To look at some of this, we're joined by Dr. Paramjit Joshi, director of psychiatry⁸ at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and president-elect of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. And Barry Rosenfeld, professor of psychology⁹ and director of clinical training at Fordham University, he is a clinical forensic¹⁰ psychologist whose recent work has focused on assessing the risk of violence in patients.

　　And, Barry Rosenfeld, I would like to start right there. What's the problem that we need to understand in trying to determine in advance who might be capable of violence as we saw in Newtown?

　　BARRY ROSENFELD, Fordham University: Well, the essence of the problem is that it's a needle in a stay stack. So we have got almost an infinite number of people -- I shouldn't say infinite -- a very large number of people who are going to fit any profile that we might generate, and we want to find the one person who's potentially going to be homicidal.

　　There just isn't really a way statistically¹² to identify or clinically to identify that person with any real accuracy.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Dr. Joshi, same question to you. Does that mean such limits—we can't know? What can be done then?

　　DR. PARAMJIT JOSHI, Children's National Medical Center: The issue, however, is that—young children and adolescents who sometimes will have aggressive behaviors early on.

　　And I think whole issue of trying to access care early on would go a long way in trying to prevent some of the more aggressive and violent behaviors as these youngsters get older. So I really applaud President Obama's recommendations and proposals that he's put forth¹³ about early intervention¹⁴, early identification, and increasing the number of resources, both in schools and also generally in the mental health system.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Well, just to put a little bit more detail on there, in schools, for example, what in what he said would most help, do you think, would be most important?

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI:I think the most important thing is really to provide the services in the school systems by having counselors¹⁵, by having psychologists, mental health social workers in the school setting, because that's where children spend most of their day.

　　It's easily accessible. And, in fact, there was a mental health in school act that was proposed in the 112th Congress that put forth funding for this particular intervention. And I'm hoping that this sad, horrific event will make us rethink supporting this particular bill, so we can put the resources in the school system.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:What about that, Barry Rosenfeld? What are the possibilities there? What are the limitation there?

　　BARRY ROSENFELD:Well, I certainly would agree and applaud the president for the idea of expanding mental health services.

　　It's an indirect solution to a much more present problem. I think that, of course, the more we can improve general mental health functioning among kids, among young people, among adults, among our returning war veterans, the better we are at the macro level.

　　But we still have that same problem of individuals who most need these services being very, very hard to identify. And once the difficulties have started to crystallize, I don't know that we are going to have very much success by having an extra counselor¹⁶ in the school.

　　I think we have got to put a lot more resources into understanding violence to begin with. I'm always shocked by how little of our, for example, National Institutes of Health money goes towards understanding violence and understanding the causes and the treatments for it.

　　We have just not prioritized the understanding side of things and the prevention side of things. So I certainly applaud the mental health services.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Go ahead, Dr. Joshi.

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI:But, at the same time, it's a well-known fact that 50 percent of those who have eventually a mental illness start before the age of 14, and about three-quarters have mental illnesses by the time they reach 24.

　　So, in my mind and from my perspective, mental health is really a children's issue. And so if we can catch them young and we can intervene early on, I think we will go a long way in not seeing adults becoming aggressive, violent, because we will be able to treat some of the illnesses early on.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Well, let me ask both of you, starting with you, Barry Rosenfeld.

　　All these things we're talking about, about identifying people with problems, then there's the question of reporting and how that might work and if you get the right people and if you cast too wide a net. Tell us a little bit what you see in what the president talked about, what in your state, in New York, they're looking at. What is possible and what are the concerns there?

　　BARRY ROSENFELD:Well, I think there's a lot of concerns and I think there's a few possibilities.

　　And, of course, we all want to identify potentially violent people. The idea, though, that we're going to cast this very wide net of anyone that raises any concern and have limited resources as to what to do with that, I worry quite a bit that we're going to be increasingly infringing¹⁷ on people's rights out of this fear that, well, what if this is the one person? What if this is the needle in the haystack?

　　So, I think there's a lot of potential ramifications¹⁸. I think there's a lot of concerns that it will inhibit¹⁹ people from getting mental health treatment if they feel like going and talking to their doctor about, for example, thoughts to hurt themselves. Well, we know that there's a link between the desire to hurt oneself and the actions against other people.

　　So are we going to deter¹¹ people from seeking treatment for their depression because they don't want to be hospitalized as potentially homicidal? I certainly don't—I certainly think that it's a well-intentioned approach, but I don't know that it's going to solve a lot of these problems in terms of capturing the one person, that needle in haystack, as it is, that we're really interested in.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Well, Paramjit Joshi, what do you think about the concerns about reporting?

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI:You know, I would agree that the net is being cast really wide, and it very well may deter people from coming forth to talk about how they're feeling.

　　It's sort of walking a really fine line about keeping the public safe and at the same time protecting their privacy. And with children and adolescents, we get consent from the parents to be able to treat young patients. So, in some sense, it's a little less of an issue with our children and teenagers as it is with the grownups.

　　But I do agree that it might really deter people from speaking very openly to their psychiatrist²⁰ and their other mental health providers about what's really going on in their mind.

　　BARRY ROSENFELD:If I could add something...

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI:Sure, please.

　　BARRY ROSENFELD:If I could add something, I think that we do have a real risk with children and adolescents.

　　Someone is identified in the school, and now are they going to be sent out of the school, so now they're not able to return to the school because the psychologist expressed concern? That could impact an incredibly large number of children, I think, many of whom, the vast, vast majority of whom aren't a risk.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: Let me just—just briefly²¹, Dr. Joshi, of course, at the same time, there's all this need to find these people and to identify them and to let authorities know.

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI:Again, as I said earlier, it's sort of walking a fine line, balancing the individuality and the privacy of the patient and at the same time keeping folks safe.

　　So, I think we have to be deliberate. We have to be thoughtful about how we proceed. And we will have to see how best to really identify, at the same time be able to provide services. But my sense is, before we even get to the point of severe aggression²² in some of these youngsters, hopefully, we can catch it early so it doesn't get to that point. And that's where early identification and prevention comes in.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:OK. We will leave it there.

　　Paramjit Joshi, Barry Rosenfeld, thank you both very much.

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI:My pleasure.

　　BARRY ROSENFELD:Thank you.

　　PARAMJIT JOSHI: Thank you.

1 prohibition   

n.禁止；禁令，禁律

参考例句：

• The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
• They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。

2 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 nutter   

n.疯子

参考例句：

• Don't call him nutter because it is such a bad term.别叫他“疯子”，这不是个好词。
• But it's awfully ruthless and cold-blooded for a nutter from the other side.但是对那边的疯子们来说，却也实在太冷血无情了。

4 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

5 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

6 commonsense   

adj.有常识的；明白事理的；注重实际的

参考例句：

• It is commonsense to carry an umbrella in this weather.这种天气带把伞是很自然的。
• These results are no more than a vindication of commonsense analysis.这些结果只不过是按常理分析得出的事实。

7 aurora   

n.极光

参考例句：

• The aurora is one of nature's most awesome spectacles.极光是自然界最可畏的奇观之一。
• Over the polar regions we should see aurora.在极地高空,我们会看到极光。

8 psychiatry   

n.精神病学，精神病疗法

参考例句：

• The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
• A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。

9 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

10 forensic   

adj.法庭的，雄辩的

参考例句：

• The report included his interpretation of the forensic evidence.该报告包括他对法庭证据的诠释。
• The judge concluded the proceeding on 10:30 Am after one hour of forensic debate.经过近一个小时的法庭辩论后，法官于10时30分宣布休庭。

11 deter   

vt.阻止，使不敢，吓住

参考例句：

• Failure did not deter us from trying it again.失败并没有能阻挡我们再次进行试验。
• Dogs can deter unwelcome intruders.狗能够阻拦不受欢迎的闯入者。

12 statistically   

ad.根据统计数据来看，从统计学的观点来看

参考例句：

• The sample of building permits is larger and therefore, statistically satisfying. 建筑许可数的样本比较大，所以统计数据更令人满意。
• The results of each test would have to be statistically independent. 每次试验的结果在统计上必须是独立的。

13 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

14 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

15 counselors   

n.顾问( counselor的名词复数 )；律师；（使馆等的）参赞；（协助学生解决问题的）指导老师

参考例句：

• Counselors began an inquiry into industrial needs. 顾问们开始调查工业方面的需要。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• We have experienced counselors available day and night. ) 这里有经验的法律顾问全天候值班。） 来自超越目标英语 第4册

16 counselor   

n.顾问，法律顾问

参考例句：

• The counselor gave us some disinterested advice.顾问给了我们一些无私的忠告。
• Chinese commercial counselor's office in foreign countries.中国驻国外商务参赞处。

17 infringing   

v.违反（规章等）( infringe的现在分词 )；侵犯（某人的权利）；侵害（某人的自由、权益等）

参考例句：

• The material can be copied without infringing copyright. 这份材料可以复制，不会侵犯版权。
• The media is accused of infringing on people's privacy. 人们指责媒体侵犯了大家的隐私。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 ramifications   

n.结果，后果( ramification的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• These changes are bound to have widespread social ramifications. 这些变化注定会造成许多难以预料的社会后果。
• What are the ramifications of our decision to join the union? 我们决定加入工会会引起哪些后果呢？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 inhibit   

vt.阻止，妨碍，抑制

参考例句：

• Don't let ego and greed inhibit clear thinking and hard work.不要让自我和贪婪妨碍清晰的思维和刻苦的工作。
• They passed a law to inhibit people from parking in the street.他们通过一项法令以阻止人们在街上停车。

20 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

21 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

22 aggression   

n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害

参考例句：

• So long as we are firmly united, we need fear no aggression.只要我们紧密地团结，就不必惧怕外来侵略。
• Her view is that aggression is part of human nature.她认为攻击性是人类本性的一部份。