John Oliver on Oregon shooting: 'Worst time to talk about mental health'

John Oliver is speaking out about the Oregon shooting, and he wants to change the conversation.

The Last Week Tonight host chose to dedicate the long-form section of his Sunday night show to mental health, which he calls "the thing actors pretend to have in order to win Oscars."

He pointed out that mental illness is often blamed in the wake of mass shootings, like the one at Umpqua Community College on Friday. But Oliver argues that right after a mass shooting is in fact the worst time to talk about mental health, considering, "the vast majority of mentally ill people are non-violent and the vast majority of gun violence is committed by non-mentally ill people. ... So the fact that we tend to only discuss mental illness in a mass shooting context is deeply misleading."

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But Oliver was happy to at least have an opportunity discuss the topic on Sunday, considering the fact that we rarely discuss it and "in 2013 an estimated 43.8 million American adults dealt with a mental illness."

Oliver goes on to argue that the way we deal with mental illness is "a mess and it always has been." He says state and federal governments usually fail to prioritize mental health care, instead opting for strategies like "Greyhound therapy," or putting people with mental illnesses on Greyhound buses to other states. He also says that one of the most likely places that people with mental illnesses end up is prison, which is ineffective in treating them, dangerous and expensive for the government.

The host argues for a massive overhaul in the entire system so that we can deal with mental illness better as a country. And, he notes, since we're talking about it now, it's probably a good time to come up with a plan. Because, as he says, "if we're going to constantly use mentally ill people to dodge conversations about gun control, the least we owe them is a (expletive) plan."

You can watch the full excerpt from Last Week Tonight below: