Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the Uvalde school shooter had a "mental health challenge" and the state needed to "do a better job with mental health" — yet in April he slashed $211 million from the department that oversees mental health programs.

In addition, Texas ranked last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia for overall access to mental health care, according to the 2021 State of Mental Health in America report.

"We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health," Abbott said during a news conference at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday......

Last year, The Houston Chronicle published a three-part series that showed Texas leaders failed to adequately fund or manage the state’s eroding mental health system......

In Uvalde County, a mostly rural area where a fifth of the 24,456 mostly Latino residents live in poverty, the money budgeted for “health and welfare” has ranged in recent years from $2.8 million to $3.8 million, records show.

“I hesitate to comment on how much a county should be spending because mental illness cannot fairly be blamed as the primary driver of mass shootings,” said Greg Hansch, who heads the Texas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “People with mental illness are more likely to be victims of mass shootings than perpetrators of mass shootings. Less than 10 percent of shootings involved a suspect who had mental health issues."