Mother jones article/ Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.

[easttexaslefty]

"THE THING THAT STRUCK ME when I first met my cousin Houston was his size. He wasn't much taller than me, if at all, and was slight of frame. On the other side of the visitors' glass, he looked surprisingly small, young for his 22 years. The much more remarkable thing about him turned out to be his vocabulary, vast and lovely, lyrical almost—until it came to an agitated or distracted halt. In any case, all things considered, he seemed altogether extremely unlike a person who had recently murdered someone."


http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/mental-health-crisis-mac-mcclelland-cousin-murder

[Neoma]

1. Article is pretty iffy.

It immediately equates violence with the mentally ill by pointing out the most extreme of the mentally ill. That's the entire point of the article in fact. It says stuff about stigma, sure. But this article is definately perpetuating it. Says right off the bat "insane" for the first guy, then "crazy" for the woman. Who the heck is writing this again? Is this also meant to portray all schizophrenics this way? With the words "classic symptoms" and "happens everyday" it sure does.

Obviously, lots of violence is perpetrated by the "sane." And most violence committed by the severely mentally ill is committed against themselves.

Interesting place to put quotation marks eh?

According to this article, having bipolar is on the severe side of mental illness. Generalizing like this is never good. When it comes to mental illnesses, they are a case by case basis, and that statement is enforcing a stigma enforced stereotype.

We all know mental healthcare is crap after Reagan and the mess of how many mentally ill people are in prison and homeless. But then going off about Mass shootings and connecting them to the mentally ill automatically is a huge no-no to me. It's a NRA scapegoat that people who don't know any better, clings onto.

Closer to the middle-end of the article is the more interesting bits. More because the writer is quoting NAMI. Then it says this:

We didn't talk about how Houston had so gruesomely killed him, or, as unspeakable as that was, that sometimes unchecked illness can lead to far worse, given access to guns plus delusions about a movie theater or a temple or an elementary school.

Again, completely connecting the mentally ill with mass shootings.

Then the infamous "but what if he doesn't take his medicine?" argument. I'm sick to death of that one mainly because while medicine makes you stable, all cases are not "you are unstable if you don't take your meds." To a good many it simply makes life easier, and that's that. The whole notion that everyone is unstable without medication roots down to the- mostly an insult, "did you go off your meds?" Question.

It does get hopeful in the, "we can do so much better than this" way. Very true. We do seem to neglect a lot of fragile people. Don't get me wrong, I really want better mental healthcare in this country. I agree it's totally fucked up. But it shouldn't be because of the fear of being stabbed. It's a fear tactic that's enforcing good while at the same time stigmatizing mental illness even more.

[HereSince1628]

2. There is no formal standard for severe mental illness

although conversations among non-professionals and even law-makers bandy-about such a phrase as if there is.

Because there is no standard, every time the phrase 'severe mental illness' is used it really needs to be defined.

Even so, getting a correct list isn't the only concern when looking at severe mental illness "by the numbers". The numbers are almost always collected from subpopulations that are not infrequently made up of dx's in special settings such as prisons and mental hospitals. Those settings DO influence the reporting and thereby the descriptive statistics on occurrence of violent events. They also limit the associations of occurrence of violence to the group analyzed and discussion of the numbers beyond their context should be considered critically.

Swanson in an often referenced book chapter on violence and mental illness from 1994 defines severe mental illnesses as: Schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder; major depression, mania, bipolar; obsessive compulsive disorder; panic disorders and phobias.

Such a list may be unsettling to various readers. No one wants to be considered severely mentally ill, that labeling comes with severe social penalties. But Swanson's list can probably be criticized for both its inclusions and exclusions.


One of the things happening in American society this spring, that we must keep in mind, is that Americans are more than ever frightened by mental illness. Much of the professed concern about the reduced state of care for mental illness in this nation is built upon that fear. Americans want to be safe from what Wayne LaPierre calls the lunatics among us.

This creates a strange social/political climate referred to in a handful of other articles in this group about advocating doing the right thing (funding mental health care) for the wrong reason (because society fears the mentally ill).

I think the MJ article in the op is situated within that mixed sentiment.

[easttexaslefty]

3. I think it's a rational,

Personal discussion of the issues.
I see my son struggle daily to provide care and services within a state budget restraint for the underinsured and uninsured. His clients are the above. It is sad beyond measure the amount of support given to people with profound and pervasive mental health issues.
I include myself in the group. People may try to stigmatise me. But I refuse to be stigmatized. I am mentally ill. I have no shame about that. I have no reason to feel shame.

[HereSince1628]

4. Stigma isn't just about feeling shame...

I'm glad you are well adapted to your mental disorder.

But stigma is about being labeled, and in particular being labeled by others. That label is used to make judgments (often prejudiced, and discriminating) about what the others believe to be personal traits that are predicted associations with the label.

The labeling facilitates attitudes and discrimination that handicap the lives of many mentally ill persons who face problems such as: discrimination at work (hiring, opportunities, promotion) or similar difficulties in school, difficulty finding housing, bullying, physical violence or harassment, and institutionalized discrimination such as denial of health insurance.

A person with mental illness may have great self-esteem and may find personal acceptance and make good adjustments to the limits their disorders place on their lives. Nonetheless they may still find themselves excluded by others from activities with relatives, social clubs, neighborhood parties/coffee clatches, etc.

Unfortunately, it's quite possible for such stigmatic labels to end up incorporated into laws and regulations in ways that impinge upon civil rights.