But mental-health advocates say there are many outdated laws and funding gaps that explain why reporting someone who’s acting strangely “to authorities” doesn’t always work to get them treatment. To understand exactly how that breakdown occurs, I spoke with John Snook, the director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which pushes for more robust mental-health treatment. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Olga Khazan: The suspect in this shooting seemed to have strange things he did that did not qualify as criminal, but were nevertheless concerning. What can people do if their loved one is, say, talking a lot about guns, or acting strangely, but not necessarily in a criminal way, and they want to get them into some sort of psychiatric treatment?

John Snook: The law is actually different in every state. The system for getting someone [exhibiting signs of a potential mental illness] into care, especially if someone doesn’t want to go themselves, can be very different state to state. It’s called an “emergency evaluation.” In a state like Florida, the focus ends up being on whether the person is dangerous to themselves or someone else. That, unfortunately, becomes something of a barrier [to] getting care. The common story you hear from families is, “Obviously something is going on with my son, but every time I tried to do something, they said, ‘Well but he’s not dangerous yet.’”

Florida has done an inexcusably poor job at funding mental health. They are [44th in the nation], so it’s hard to get someone engaged in care unless they’re at a point where it’s obvious to everyone that they are sick and really dangerous. The examples you hear is if a person is convinced the CIA is after them and running around and yelling, that’s the level of sickness you need to have in Florida to get engaged in the system. That’s why in Florida, you so often see law enforcement being the means by which someone gets into care in the first place.

Khazan: Who is the person saying, “he’s not dangerous yet?” Is it the ER doctor?

Snook: In most states, you’ll have two basic doorways: going into an emergency room or a psychiatric facility. In Virgina, it’s a community-service board—it’s a mental-health system that’s set up to engage when a person seems like they need mental-health care.

In Florida, the system is so starved that you really are only getting care through law enforcement. Law enforcement needs to sign off on those situations. When it comes to mental health, every single part of the system is broken. In Florida, [as in much of the United States], you don’t have enough hospital beds. That is obviously a simple place to start. There also aren’t enough community services, there aren’t enough psychiatrists. Basically, every angle that you can think of for looking at the system for getting someone care for mental illness is essentially broken in Florida.