The Ruth Institute grieves with the community of the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. As we mourn the lives lost and the innocence shattered, our hearts are with the families, teachers, and students who will never be the same.

But our grief must not hinder us from taking a sober-minded look at the situation. A moral catastrophe of this magnitude has multiple contributing factors. Although new information continues to emerge, we can say with confidence that family breakdown, mental illness, and the transgender ideology all played a role.

Claiming that people can resolve their distress by 'transitioning' to the opposite sex masks existing mental illnesses.

I have a long history of speaking out on each of these issues. Even before I founded the Ruth Institute in 2008, I was deeply concerned about the impact of family breakdown on children.

Primal bond

My first book, Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, explained the importance of solid attachments between infants and their mothers. That primal bond contributes to the development of a conscience and self-control. A society cannot manage large numbers of people who do not care about others and who do anything they can get away with.

Since then, I've continued to study the risks associated with family breakdown. Divorce can shatter a child's understanding of their identity, with long-lasting negative effects. I have interviewed numerous people who have left a gay or lesbian identity behind; in many cases, their initial confusion stemmed from their parents' divorce. "When my parents divorced, I had no identity," one woman told me. She embraced a lesbian identity, struggled with drug addiction, and was haunted by the idea that she might want to become a man.

A broken family

As has been widely reported, Robert Westman's parents were divorced in 2013, when he was 13 years old.

Reading Westman's manifesto reveals a deeply disturbed person, consumed with hatred for others — both individuals and groups — and for himself. I have not seen reports of whether he had any kind of mental health diagnosis. But he was clearly not well, with a documented history of minor mental health-related incidents.

Too little, too late

As is too often the case, we can only discuss Westman's mental health now that it is too late. This is a persistent problem with the American approach to mental illness in general. We have yet to find a balance between respecting individual autonomy and preventing the psychologically disturbed from hurting themselves or others before they have demonstrated this potential.

As I once wrote,

We don't have facilities for people who pose a threat to others, but who haven't done anything yet. Many mentally ill people cycle between homelessness and the county jail, incarcerated for petty crimes, but receiving no long-term help. ... As many as a third of the homeless suffer from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. But we can't make the mentally ill take their medications, even if those medications can mean the difference between a rational person who can function normally and a delusional person who is a danger to others.

That article was in response to the Virginia Tech mass shooting back in 2007. Evidently, the situation has not appreciably improved.

Sowing confusion

This brings me to the most destructive change I've seen over the years: the promotion of a transparently false ideology by political, business, media, and even medical leaders. I am speaking, of course, of transgender ideology, which claims, without the slightest hint of proof, that a person can be "born in the wrong body."

This ideology has created enormous confusion and done incalculable harm. Claiming that people can resolve their distress by "transitioning" to the opposite sex masks existing mental illnesses. Teaching young people that changing the sex of the body is even possible creates a whole new set of problems.

Backed by business and foundations, this ideology has torn families apart and corrupted the medical profession. Trump's executive order withdrawing federal support for such ideology illustrated just how deeply the U.S. government had been actively promoting it.

RELATED: The idols and lies behind the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting

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No refuge for parents

Westman's home state of Minnesota has created a particularly toxic environment. Parents of a 17-year-old boy who thinks he is a girl cannot engage a licensed therapist to help him explore his feelings and help steer him back to comfort with his body. A therapist who offered such services could lose his or her license. That's because Minnesota bans "conversion therapy," defined as efforts to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

For parents who are divorced and not in agreement about their child's gender confusion, the family courts get involved. In blue states like Minnesota, family courts all too often favor the parent who wants to medicalize the child's confusion. Even more telling, Minnesota has officially declared itself a "trans refuge."

The stated aim of this legislation is to help families in states that limit their "access" to "gender-affirming care," better known as cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery. However, parents who want these medical interventions for their children were already able to come to Minnesota any time they wanted. The real purpose of this and other "sanctuary laws" is to facilitate a child seeking such intervention without parental supervision and even against the wishes of the child's parents.

Pray for healing — and change

It is no exaggeration to say that the trans lobby gets what the trans lobby wants. Yet the post-Annunciation political conversation seems to be all about guns. In my opinion, this is a deflection from the weighty problem of trans-domination of state politics.

As we continue to pray for healing, we implore the public to enter into a serious conversation about these important issues in the days and weeks ahead. Let us not compound this atrocity by neglecting the opportunity to learn from it.