Loughner and How America Treats Its Mentally Ill
When I was twenty years old, I smashed through a plate-glass tabletop with a hammer. It scared the hell out of my co-workers and, I must admit, it scared the hell out of me too. I did not do it for any logical reason. It was an eruption of raw emotion, mainly rage and frustration. The immediate cause was nothing less innocuous than hitting my thumb with a hammer. Almost immediately after it was over, and I looked down at the shards of glass and felt the eyes of other people on me, I felt nothing but confusion and shame. I had no idea what had come over me. But I knew that it was a sign that something was wrong. Very wrong. Looking back on it now, the fact that I was suffering from a form of mental illness is so obvious that I wonder how I managed to miss it, or deny it, at the time.
My illness is a relatively mild one, a form of chronic depression marked by occasional hypomanic episodes. It is somewhat more severe than ordinary depression, but a great deal less severe than bipolar disorder and other, far more terrifying diseases of the mind. It requires no more than two pills a day to keep it relatively under control, and the side effects, while irritating at times, are negligible. In many ways, I count myself lucky. It is perhaps for this reason that I found myself, somewhat against my will, identifying with Jared Loughner, the young man who shot and horribly wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others last Saturday.
I don’t wish to be misunderstood. I have no sympathy for what Loughner did. Even those suffering under severe mental illness can usually distinguish right from wrong. I could, even when it was at its most severe. I imagine Loughner could as well. Unless he turns out to have been completely delusional, he is morally responsible for what he did.
Nonetheless, I confess to having some sympathy for him. Perhaps this is because I recognize so many of the things we are now reading about his life: the youthful intelligence done in by academic failure, the social isolation, the inappropriate public behavior, the sudden bursts of emotion masquerading as ideas, the incomprehensible obsessions with bizarre subject matter, etc. More than anything else, however, I recognize the response of others. For the most part, people appear to have reacted to Loughner’s illness in the worst possible ways: indifference, contempt, and punitive action. His peers, teachers, parents, indeed everyone in his life, appear to have regarded him as, at best, a somewhat frightening nuisance. Even those who recognized his mental illness seem to have used it as nothing more than an excuse for getting rid of him.
This may prove to be untrue. There may have been those who tried to get him the help he needed and failed. Denial is a powerful thing, and I doubt there are many sufferers from mental illness who have not refused help or gone off their medication at some point in their lives. I did both quite a few times. At the moment, however, it seems that Loughner was simply discarded by most of the people who knew him.
Wow. What a fascinating article. I am inspired by your willingness to share what you’ve been through, as well as what this says about the recent tragedy in America.
America basically dismantled the mental health system in the 50s and decided to take care of the ‘problems’ sending them to prisons.
Thank you for the touching article.
I respectfully disagree. My wife worked for the chief of the psychiatric department at the Brentwood VA in California during the early 80s. From the mid-70s to mid-80s there was a strong ‘patients rights’ movement generated by the mental health advocate community. Although there were many facets to this movement, one of the primary elements was a re-examination of the criteria for institutionalizing patients.
The point of contention revolved around interpretations of what it meant for a patient to be able to ‘take care of himself.’ Prior to this the interpretation was rather strict; if a patient could not earn an income and provide shelter and food for himself (and if there were no family members able to care for him), then he would normally be institutionalized.
Begining in the late 70s, the advocacy groups began to demand a lower standard. As long as a patient could merely wash and dress himself, and could perform the mechanical tasks of shovelling food into his mouth, then every effort was made to force the institutions to release them. My wife’s boss spent many months both in court and testifying before the state assembly trying to stop this lowering of standards. Unsuccessfully.
Predictably, most of the newly discharged patients were unable to take care of themselves in any meaningful sense of the word, and became the homeless people on the street. It’s no coincidence that the decline in California’s mental health insitution population closely matched the sharp increase of homeless (in California, at least) during the same period. In fact, for about two years, my wife literally was on a first name basis with every homeless person we ran across in the Westwood/Santa Monica area. They were all former patients who had been ‘sprung’ from the VA by well meaning advocate groups who then simply walked away and left these guys hanging.
Reagan was not involved in this movement, nor was he a symptom or symbolic of it. Quite the contrary. The people who ‘liberated’ the inmates tended to be on the opposite end of the political spectum. In fact, it was the ACLU who provided legal representation to force the VA to release these patients.
We saw the same with the “deinstitutionalization” of the mentally retarded.
The severely retarded went to group homes, but a lot of the mild to moderate ones ended up living on the street, or in jail for petty crimes.
And, alas, many of them ended up victimized in jails because they could not defend themselves…
Alas, the “liberal” response is to not hold them accountable for their crimes, so we are given the choice to release them or jail them, not to find a place to live where they and the public could be protected.
I recall Geraldo Rivera got his big break investigating mental institutions and was probably more responsible than anyone for starting the trek to the practice of out-patient care. This did a tremendous amount of harm to those who needed constant supervision.
You’re fundamentally misinformed about the Willbrook State School story that Rivera reported, and his role in the push to de-institutionalize those with serious mental illnesses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School
Thank you for educating me a bit on this social dilemma. My brother is, by any sense of the definition, mentally ill. He is a brilliant man, but cannot function in the sense of holding a job or finish tasks which probably bore him. He medicates himself with alcohol, but will not seek psychiatric assistance that would likely allow him to live a productive, meaningful life. Because of the ACLU types out there, there is essentially nothing we as a family can do to get him the help he needs. He literally could be another rocket scientist otherwise.
This atrocity, properly named, occurred last Saturday. The tragedy everyone else says happened Saturday, happened instead years ago with the onset of his mental illness, further spawned by lots of bizarre and leftist influences. I cannot help, therefore, but identify leftist ideology as anything but pure evil. I would not wish such a fate on my worst enemies.
are you a philosopher?
I, to, have a close relative who suffers from mental illness. He is his own worst enemy in this regard. As with so many others, this was a brilliant young man, valedictorian of his high school class, accepted to one of the most prestigious universities in the country. During his sophomore year he had a “breakdown” and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Turns out, this was not all that unheard of at this particular university, where a surprising number of brilliant young minds, especially male, battle with mental illness. Because his breakdown was very public and he was deemed to be dangerous to himself or others, he was committed for a few months where he received treatment. Under medication he was able to return to school and graduate with his class, with honors, in his chosen field. Because the university required continued treatment as a condition of his remaining a student, he went to therapy and took his meds. Until graduation. Once he was out on his own, he immediately stopped taking meds, denying that there was anything wrong with him. He lost job after job, only being able to last for about 6 months before he started acting out at work and getting fired. Which, of course, he blames on people being “out to get him” not on his own illness and bizarre behavior. The entire family works very hard to convince him that he needs to be treated, he needs his meds, but he resists. We fear he will end up out on the street, and legally there is nothing we can do. He insists there is nothing wrong with him, it is everyone else in the world. I shudder to think what it will take to get him back under a doctor’s care.
Hello,
I, too, have a brother who is mentally ill. He is not as severe as many who are out on the street, but he still has the same disfunctions as your loved one. Our mother had it also, and never took medication. We have been fortunate that we were raised in a Christian home and all have a personal relationship with Jesus… otherwise, we would probably be maimed or dead. I am a firm believer in medication, therapy and a personal relationship with the LORD. I will keep your loved one in prayer.
My wife teaches emotionally disturbed children at an elementary school in a small city in Arizona. She generally gets the most disturbed children in the entire school district. She “teaches” extremely disturbed kids. Many of these kids are violent: they tear apart her classroom regulary, require physical restraint, are physically and verbally abusive to everyone around them.
Many of the parents are in bad shape themsevles: in abusive relationships, addicted to drugs and alchohol, unemployed, homeless. Sometimes the parents refuse to even come to conferences. Typically the parents will not admit that their children are disturbed, even when everyone is telling them that their child should probably be in an institution.
The Administration will only do so much, it will not intercede unless things are completely out of control. The teachers can only discipline the students in very mild ways and cannot force these kids to be institutionalized, even though they see them every day and know the ones that belong there.
It would be very telling to look at Loughner’s elementary and middle school records, I’ll bet those teachers could see what was coming.
The problem is that they are prevented by law and their administration from doing anything beyond getting these children through the system, even though they know that many will end up dead, in prison, or at some other dead end.
I sympathize with your wife’s teaching experience. Everyone should realize that generally BEFORE being placed in a special class for the mentally disturbed, a student is in a class with “average” students. Since parents must agree to the process of diagnosing the situation, if often takes months or even years for the student to be placed in a special class. This is far from an ideal learning situation. Although the student with the disability suffers, so do the other kids in that class who see and hear far too much. Various rights groups try to protect the rights of the disabled but no one really speaks up for the average kid.
Some sort of a panel will be formed to work on the situation but I bet it will not include advocates for the average child or if there is a “token” advocate, it will probably be a “wooly-headed” academic who has never faced a similar situation.
Thank you for this article. It is the best summary of the event and its meaning to us that I’ve read.
Bingo. It was almost entirely the left who turned these people out into the mean streets, and then they blamed Reagan for the sudden increase of homeless people during his administration.
Well said, Mr. Kerstein. I hope your commentary serves to turn the national discussion to how we can better care for the mentally ill. It’s disgraceful that our society is constrained from helping sick people in the name of civil liberties. The ACLU has a lot to answer for. Fellow students and teachers probably did little or nothing because they knew nothing could ever be done until there was a disaster.
Palin’s in the frame, and NOW the right cares about mental health.
Let’s see if this new-found deep concern for … health care … lasts beyond the media cycle.
Far out. Protect the queen, indeed. Every pawn to be sacrificed.
Oh just go **** yourself!
Don’t think. Just feel.
That’s the problem exactly…how we got into the mess. Thank you for sharing…but I believe I still prefer that thinking thing.
Or in your case, squeal.
Matt just saw “One Flew Over the Coocoo’s Nest” on tele. He loves Jack Nicholson, sooo, Matt’s now a fan of take care of them. No wait, Coocoo’s about letting them all out. Which is it, Matt? Take care or let ‘em out?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest wasn’t the only award winning movie to falsely depict mental illness. The idea that some people manage to be brilliantly creative even as they struggle with severe mental illness entered the mainstream thanks to the wildly misleading A Beautiful Mind. Ron Howard manipulated the facts about John Nash’s life to fit such a narrative even after his first attempt at movie about a creative paranoid schizophrenic ended when the real life subject of that script brutally murdered his girlfriend.
So how do your comments with regard to Sarah Palin have anything whatsoever to do with the topic of the article? Could you even be more non sequetor?
When was the last time you have been this happy, Matthew?
The first Christmas you can remember? Your first puppy? Your first boyfriend?
I don’t think he’s happy at this point. Matthew choose to try to work the crowd on PJM over the weekend with his buy in to the progressive left’s gleeful frenzy over the shooting and you yourself know that didn’t pan out well for him.
Trying to establish the meme on PJM that somehow Palin (in particular) and conservatives (in general) and/or the ‘vitriol’ they bring to the political process were responsible for the shooters actions doesn’t speak well for Matthew’s sagacity. Faced with unfolding facts showing that the position is an unsupportable, inane, and frankly rather stupid one, Matthew had the choice between either admitting that and backing down or continuing to push the meme on the comment threads of the PJM articles on the shooting. Matthew chose to double down on dishonesty and crossed the line into being a disingenuous liar. The dishonesty and disingenuity are increasingly progressive hallmarks as they lose their grip on the narrative. But unlike the sites he gets his talking points from, any meme requiring credulous stupidity does not and never will gain any traction on PJM. That’s something Matthew is probably mentally incapable of understanding.
He’s going to continue to flail away, but no, he’s not happy at this point. It won’t stop him from tripling down on the dishonesty and push the Palin/conservative connection for a while longer in the comment section of every PJM article even remotely addressing any aspect of the shooter’s motivations though – non sequitur be d@mned.
True enough but somehow I thought my response was pithier.
Don’t imagine that he cares what any conservative thinks.
Degenerates like Matthew revel in disagreeing with us, and they revel in refusing to acknowledge the evidence and facts.
He is as thrilled as Paul Krugman to have such a wonderful club to hammer conservatives with.
The 6 deaths make it so sweet for them.
Their only regret is that the congress woman hasn’t died.
I’m only surprised you didn’t manage to blame Bush in your post. BTW, if there was any attempt to re-institutionalize these people (i.e. commit them against their will), you and your ACLU buddies would be ADAMANTLY oppossed. These people are on the street because the Left is in denial and the Right doesn’t want to pay for effective treatment.
You are sick! Someone should find you and have you evaluated. It’s people like you that are the real danger.
Matthew: When YOU show us how much you care about the mentally ill THEN we’ll be more interested in your “criticisms”.
Come on now: where do you donate your time & money to help the less fortunate? I’d bet a week’s salary that the answer is NONE.
this article is so very true. I was surrounded by those who were ill, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. I saw them differently as those arround them did. Most shunned them but to me they were special. I was like the author but somehow I never was fired.
We failed as a society when we stopped caring and trying to help those in need. In the past when my aunts and uncles were younger the family forced them to get treatment even though it was shameful at that time. I remember how my aunt and my friend was thankful when ever they came out of treatment and were back on there meds.
How many more of these ticking time bombs even now walk the halls of our schools. Please try and help these kids before it is to late.
When you think of the vast possibilities for Understanding the American Way – until 1980? – that resides in movies and television, these chances for Identification – though not ‘rubberstamping’ – strike you as a sign of coldness in a nation with the most idealistic ethos conceived in the two last centuries..
What I’m driving at is a nudge on the part of Entertainment to Enlighten(!), so as to foster a Commonality among your people!
If disregard of Difficulty To Adjust is not taken seriously on a NATIONAL level, I’m afraid the Americas – already split by venom in politics – may
continue to disintegrate, cf. the South versus the West and the East, not to mention New England versus most everybody else…
It is obvious that psychiatry and research on mental disorder must go public in a much more serious way – not just as ‘sidekicks’ in movies about Cheerful Cranks, cf. ‘Rainman’ and similar movies made in Hollywood.
“Obviously, there are hugely complicated issues involved in identifying and treating the mentally ill. Not least of them is that of civil rights.”
I worked at a mental hospital in 1980. Three of the most scary words in the English language are “maximum hospital benefit.” I was always under the impression that it was President Carter who decided that mental hospitals are not prisons; therefore, we cannot keep people there against their will. Maybe my memory is faulty, but this seemed to have coincided with the epidemic of homelessness.
I think the bottom line is Political Correctness. It’s not considered “helping” to refer a person for psychiatric help. If we see a person exhibiting bizarre behavior, we are supposed to “allow them to be who they are” and “not pass judgment.” Duh.
http://vangrungy.blogspot.com/2011/01/large-award-given-to-arizonas-morana.html
Ask yourself why Loughner’s highschool failed him when his break from reality began…
If ever an article illustrating what feel-sorry for one’s self and looking for pity and sympathy from others was ever written; this is it.
You were spoiled back then Mr. Kerstein and you are spoiled now. Worse yet, you are trying to discredit the medical professions of psychology and psychiatry by reasoning that your own lack of backbone and/or gumption as products of their failures and shortcomings, not your own.
Still at it, you are using the sick minded actions of Mr. Loughner in Tuscon, AZ to further and propagate a career that begins and ends every single day searching for people you can identify with in a manner that produces outpourings of pity and sympathy for your persecuted plight in life.
What is it that Israel does so much better than the United States Mr. Kerstein? Two pills a day? You didn’t provide a single detail about either nation’s treatment methodologies or success rates. In most of the nations on Earth Mr. Loughner would either be stone dead or permanently locked up by now.
At best psychology and psychiatry are inexact medical science with diagnosis and treatment that depend almost 100% on the effort of the individual patient for success.
They are not professions that you can say are better performed by one nation than another or explain away mass murder as a symptomatic social problem of the United States or try and use the entire mess to excuse your own shortcomings in life.
“The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you” Mark 4:24
Scripture is always correct.
I have some sympathy for this (“Baloney”) post. Like Mr. Kerstein wrote, he like most human beings, could and can distinguish between right and wrong; as could Loughner. As heartless as it might seem, we can neither allow ourselves to have sympathy or pity for what Mr. Loughner did nor (more importantly) for Loughner himself. It is conceivable, Adolf Hitler would be diagnosed today with some form of mental illness. Are we to have sympathy for him? Jeannette above might argue in light of my harsh judgment of Herr Hitler, “The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” So be it. I had troubles as a youth. Often my anger would turn into temper tantrums. Fortunately, I had a wise step mother who had no sympathy for my behavior. In the midst of one temper tantrum – as she later recounted – she had a glass of ice water and she threw it in my face. I never again had a temper tantrum to my knowledge. What Loughner needed – and apparently did not get – from his parents was oversight and some “tough love.” The only tough love that is appropriate to his latest outburst is the capital kind of tough love.
Re: Steve
You are on the right track.
Loughen will spend the rest of his life living the life of Riley in a taxpayer supported 4-5 star hotel without any accountability, responsibility or worries.
How do I know that? Read the majority of the opt-ins to this article. Like flies at a country Baptist Church picnic the bleeding heart do-gooders come out of the woodwork in droves to “save” the world by having deep compassion and understanding for the poor slob. That while their own lives are usually a complete mess; albeit it too is always the fault of someone else and/or society.
Your mother was 100% right Steve. Had Ms. Kerstein thrown ice cold water in her son’s face when he had his little table smacking dickey fits the odds are that this article would have never been written; plus his life would have been vastly better than it was because he wouldn’t have run around the world with the “pity” me, two pill attitude that rules his life now.
Maybe the same thing used to apply to Mr. Lougher. However, right now the man is guilty of mass murder and society should put him to death for it.
Re: Jeannette
How about we agree to leave how God will judge me in the end up to him? I like it better that way.
What a sorry POS this makes you! Check the mirror pal.
Kerstein had something to say and signed his name to it.
Unlike “Baloney”
God bless you Benjamin Kerstein.
Re: Bill
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you, MAT 7:6.”
What Mr. Kerstein did was use his own inability to cope with life as an opportunity to bad mouth America; while also wasting his time defending a mass murderer. I have already heard tons of that kind of crap in the news for several days now.
Would there have been anything decent and helpful that he could have written about the victims and families of Mr. Loughner’s rampage which ALSO identified with and paralleled his own life, trails and tribulations?
Nothing at all?
BTW Bill, if I Google “Bill Lawrence” I get 370,000 results in 0.31 seconds and if I use “William Lawrence” I get 1,450,000 results in 0.34 seconds.
How do I know which Bill is you?
I don’t usually reply to insulting comments, and I don’t intend to do so now. But I do want to say to any of my readers who may be suffering from a mental illness, treated or untreated: Do not let people like this stop you from getting help for your disorder. It is not your fault that you have a mental illness, and you are not a bad person because of it. People like Mr. “Baloney” are out there and always will be. Your only responsibility is not to let them stop you from getting the help you need. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Get help. It does get better.
Mr. Kersten, you seem to be a decent and a caring human being. I agree with you that people suffering from a mental illness should seek help for their disorder. I myself have a tendency toward melancholy from time to time. Perhaps you are aware, great leaders like Lincoln and Churchill suffered from chronic depression. Whether it is or is not “my fault” that I am depressed in each and every instance, I cannot say. But this I can say. I am responsible for my behavior. I am responsible for what I do on those days that I am feeling depressed. That is the difference between conservatives and contemporary liberals. Conservatives believe in personal responsibility. That is why I maintain we cannot – we must not – feel any sympathy for Mr. Jared Loughner. Indeed Loughner has much to be ashamed of.
Re: Mr. Kerstein
How do your personal life experiences collimate within 2 or 3 days of Mr. Loughner’s rampage in a manner that says that you can make a qualified statement regarding the quality of mental healthcare in the United States of America isn’t as good as it is in Israel; plus feel that anyone who challenges your assertions have delivered an insult to your work?
There are hundreds, even thousands of ways that you could have made the exact same points of your article, plus provided the sincere “help” to others that you claim to be doing “without” making the comparison of Israel to the United States and/or the other way around. If nothing else you could have simply explained that you managed to put things together successfully later in life while doing whatever you were living in Israel. That would have also told me that you actually practiced what you preach in your article by listening to those who took time out to help you help yourself, instead of leaving the door wide open for your readers to figure out for themselves where you are at progress wise today.
Better yet; as I said earlier you could have chosen any of the victims of Mr. Loughner’s rampage, did a little homework and written an article that not only helped other people with their own debilitating mental health problems; but also graphically illustrated why overcoming the challenges of life are worthwhile without the necessity of identifying yourself to and with Mr. Loughner in any fashion, manner and way.
Perhaps someday you will look back and remember that just like the family members, friends and professionals along the way tried to help you, another cranky old bastard said the same things they did as a result of your article about Mr. Loughner today.
That you cannot see and understand this evidenced by your feeling that, by my disagreement I insulted you, or that you took even more advantage of what is going on by insinuating that somehow I wouldn’t encourage people to seek help when they need it is patently absurd.
In any event I wish you and yours well into the future; which is more than likely a hell of a lot more in earnest desire than you’ll ever be able to imagine.
Regarding an response to a comment by the author stating “it’s not your fault you have mental illness,” in case of Mr. Loughner it very well could have been.
According to statements from several of his high school classmates, Loughner was not exhibiting any sign of mental disturbance until he broke up with a girlfriend when 16 and then turned to drugs (pot in this instance). Once he did that, all of the stuff about “conscious dreaming” and the obsession with grammar started to materialize.
You can probably argue that he might have a mild form of depression prior to his drug use, but going on narcotics clearly brought out whatever demons were controlling him in the end. That was a choice he clearly made himself.
I have a sister who is bi-polar so I understand the dynamic. I also understand that she was mild UNTIL she started on drugs, first pot then LSD. This is why I don’t hold her as a victim. She made a choice to do something that she knew was wrong, and it affected her horribly.
Modern psychology’s approach to medicate mental illness whenever it appears doesn’t help the issue, in my opinion, as the medication approach makes addicts of many and can in fact aggravate many subjects. It’s true there’s bad cases out there, but the one-side-fits-all approach is what’s taken now, and it’s not an answer to what ills many.
Forgive me if this comes off like a crackpot but I do sincerely believe we deny our spiritual selves at great risk, assuming every “mental” illness is solely a problem of brain chemistry. What ailed this young man wasn’t that he wasn’t on the right meds, it was that he was ignored his whole life and his personhood folded in on itself in his need to feel accepted, even if he had to live in his own make-believe world. That doesn’t make him a victim, as he made each decision along the way, but with no one to intervene he’s making those decisions all alone, and invariably he’s going to go the wrong way in the end.
Baloney, the family life of the murderer was bizarre and one neighbor called the family “contemptuous”. Dad was a stay-at-home parent and would not let him play with neighbors at some point.
Another explanation is the students his age have had to put up with so many special needs children in their classrooms, they just shrug off anyone weird for fear of being labeled intolerant.
No surprise about Loughner’s father being paranoid also. Many mental disorders have a strong genetic component.
What Mr. Kerstein did was use his own inability to cope with life as an opportunity to bad mouth America; while also wasting his time defending a mass murderer.
You read something different than what I did, and Kerstein seems to be coping, actually.
How do I know which Bill is you?
Click on the link to my website.
Re: Bill Lawrence, click on website
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Interpretation meaning that without a court order there is no way to know who or where you are.
Looking at the opt-in posts here (today and most days) that is probably the wisest possible thing to do.
Baloney, Sherlock Holmes, you are not.
I’ve rarely seen more short-sighted, snide comments that weren’t posted by hard-left trolls. Congratulations- you may now go join Kos.
Had you paid attention while you read, the author did say that except in very extreme cases, even those with disorders know right from wrong. He did NOT ask give Loughner a pass- he stated that Loughner is morally culpable and unpardonable, illness or not. This isn’t hard left victimization.
He didn’t ask for sympathy, but described a problem. And it IS a problem. Criticism is not the same as attacking, it’s a way to say ‘there’s a problem, let’s look at it’. We do still have a stigma attached with mental illnesses in this country. We also can’t seem to determine where the intersection of public safety, protecting the mentally incompetent and individual rights should be. Currently, we err on the side of individual rights, which is why in places, like downtown Seattle (where I live) you’ll see a wide swath of homeless people who exhibit signs of severe disorder. Most are harmless, but can’t care for themselves properly. Some could be dangerously aggressive on occasion, and a rare few should probably be forcibly treated/confined for the safety of all concerned, but for we usually don’t do that until AFTER something tragic happens.
That you see breaking open this discussion as an attack on America is ludicrous. There are many, many wonderful things about this nation, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else, but systems are fallible, and we are continually looking for the right balance between personal liberty and responsibility, and public safety. Even the author notes that those with mental illnesses are ultimately responsible for their own actions, and I agree, but I also think that as a society, we are responsible for making sure they understand that. Doing so includes identifying and treating mental issues sooner, destigmatizing mental illness so that people aren’t afraid to seek treatment, and yes, holding them accountable at the appropriate times, such as in the case of Loughner, or perhaps even enforcing treatment (yes, I know, that’s a touchy subject, but bad brain chemistry is bad brain chemistry, and if someone willingly goes off their meds against their dr.’s orders, they are culpable for all actions thereafter, period).
Many thanks, Christopher. I was thinking of writing a further response, but I think you’ve said it all.
Baloney,
You obviously have had no personal experience in your life with mental illness – in either yourself or in a friend or family member.
Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you mental illness is REAL, it is DEVASTATING, and Mr. Kerstein characterized our society here in America very accurately. A close friend of mine suffered from onset of schizophrenia when he was 23. There was no history in his family and it was a complete shock to him, his friends, and especially to his identical twin brother.
You may not have ever had the misfortune to watch someone you know well turn into a completely different person virtually overnight – one who fears everything around him, has lost all ability to trust even his closest family members (even when he knows these people care for him) – but you do obviously suffer from the disease our culture manifests regularly with rapidity and vapidity – the inability to perceive, and thus have compassion for, suffering in another.
Several times I have been in the workplace with people who had mental disorders that caused them to lose control and attack co-workers, fortunately not badly enough that anybody suffered permanent damage. I spoke to the CEO about one such individual needing to get some help, and he told me that individuals like her (paranoid) refuse to believe that they are the ones with the problem.
The essence of paranoia is to believe that someone or something outside of oneself is the source of the danger.
You missed the part where the writer said he DECIDED to avail himself of mental health services. Similar services are available at most colleges in the U.S., but he didn’t make that DECISION until he happened to be in a different country.
Your attitude is typical of those who have no clue what mental illness is; in his case, depression. This should give you an idea:
If you have the guts, go back in your memory to a time when you lost someone very, very dear to you–a parent, grandparent, friend, spouse, child. Remember the agonizing grief? You cried a lot or at odd times, like when someone commented on the weather. Perhaps you couldn’t sleep; or if you did sleep, you had nightmares. Perhaps you couldn’t eat, or you ate and ate and ate. Perhaps you drank more alcohol than usual in a desperate attempt to dull the pain. You couldn’t concentrate on anything. Perhaps you said or did things out of character. Everything you cared for, like a job or other people, faded into the background because of the searing grief.
However, with depression, it feels that way all day, every day–FOR NO REASON. NONE.
Whenever I ask people to do this mental exercise, most of them can’t complete it because can’t bear to relive the pain. However, people with depression have no control over the pain. There’s no “snapping out of it” or “getting over it” or “time healing all wounds.”
How do I know this? I’ve had chronic major depression since 1973. By the grace of God, I didn’t off myself, though I tried. I wasn’t properly diagnosed and treated until 1996. That treatment includes medication, which has completely changed my life for the better.
Get educated about this illness before you make a bigger a$$ of yourself. Or worse, before it strikes someone you love–or even you.
I read that Loughner’s professors kept asking him to seek help, but he refused. This exception, however, in no way invalidates the author’s general points about our dealing with the mentally ill. But it is a difficult to always do the right thing with someone and never the wrong thing with someone else.
Is Jarad Lee Loughen the new Lee Harvey Oswald? Click my name and judge for yourself.
PS: I’ve got to wonder, what sort of a parent would allow his or her child to immerse himself in this kind of music?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEFgoen6thQ
If you play Sarah Palin’s speeches backwards you’ll hear her tell you to burn American flags in the desert while listening to death metal.
Glenn Beck too.
Seriously, the books we choose to read, the music we choose to listen to, the movies we choose to watch greatly influence the decisions we make.
Mr Lawrence, I agree that they may influence an individual to commit a violent crime, but it can’t force you to do it. You still have to make that choice as an individual. I listened to some death metal in high school, but I never went out and killed someone or commited a violent crime. It comes back to the age old adage, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. YOU make the choice to pull that trigger, not the gun. It’s high time for people to stop blaming everything or everyone else for their actions, and start taking responsibility for the things they do.
You still have to make that choice as an individual.
Sam, I don’t dispute that at all and I think it futile and counter-productive to attempt to ban death metal or any other form of speech.
The only cure for speech, in fact, is more speech. But this means, however, we all have an obligation to speak out against bad ideas and false claims, and advocate good ideas and truth.
This music is pretty mild compared to death metal, black metal, etc.
If you’re worried about pop music contributing to anti-social behavior, then be worried about rap. Rappers glorify killing, drug use, armed robbery, etc.; their fans commit those crimes every day in our cities. Extreme heavy metal mostly focuses on such things as zombies eating people or cartoonish Satanism, which is all purely fantasy.
Pop music does not cause people to commit violent crimes–that evil is within the individual. I think people who already have violent tendencies tend to gravitate towards violent music, rather than violent music creating violent tendencies. I think its safe to say that 0.00% of gangbangers listen to Bach, but 100% of them listen to gangster rap.
I remember when the Columbine shooting happened, many in the media tried to blame the influence of the shock rocker Marylin Manson. I think that was because our society has developed this idea that the individual is not responsible for his actions, but rather pop bands/peer pressure/Satan/guns are to blame.
You are right about rap. Our words matter.
And that’s why culture is important. It should be obvious that music, art, movies and books affect social behavior.
If Rush or Glenn or Sarah were defending bombings and murders, as Bill Ayers etux once did, the left might have a point about Tucson.
Of course none of them said anything that could possibly be even the slightest construed as advocating political or domestic violence. Nor, for that matter, has any major conservative.
So what we have are prominent leftists and leftist institutions using words to bear false witness — which is one of the 10 big no-nos– in attempt to destroy guiltless individuals.
Which is why it’s important to stand up to and defeat these leftists and end their influence.
We’ve suffered long enough from these liars.
I think that words (and other expressions) matter in that poorly-made expressions degrade the culture (there is no 21st century Bach), but in my opinion books, art and music (the pop-culture types, rather than the intellectual-types) often don’t have very much influence on somebody’s behavior (of course, there are always exceptions); instead, they reflect what already exists–they describe, in some way, somebody’s culture or attitudes at a given point in time. Gangster rappers glorify things that actually occur in real life and on a regular basis (please read the blog “Second City Cop”)–murder, crack-smoking, prostitution, and so forth. If your child is listening to gangster rap, then you have cause to be worried because its possible that his choice in music is a reflection of what he is already doing. It is then your responsibility as a parent to ignore the government and the wider culture, take action and enforce the values you use to organize your family. On the other hand, if your child is a Cannibal Corpse fan, I don’t think you should be too worried because it is highly unlikely that he is a zombie roaming the Earth feasting on dead babies.
I can’t help but wonder if the msm is being kind and gentle with the shooter’s parents. After all, we haven’t heard a word from them or about them, other than that they are local commissars in Arizona.
Now that you are rolling on the floor with laughter, I should say that it’s about 99% certain that the parent’s have something VERY interesting to say about Mr Loughner, and it’s something that the busy little bees in the liberals’ media don’t want to ever EVER be revealed. Whatever it is that has been sealed off in a cone of silence, you know that it doesn’t fit the liberals’ media’s pre-written template.
Mr. Kerstein wrote “One would not ignore someone who was suffering from cancer, or blindness, or pneumonia”. Oh, were that true. When healthcare becomes national, they most certainly will if it suits the administrator’s interests or goals.
Too often we confuse “doing something, anything” with helping, this is especially true with the mental health community. The last thing we need is a national conversation on how we treat our mentally ill, with the exception of how will we get the “nation” out of meddling with the way communities work with/cope with the mentally ill that are in their midst. If one really wants to screw up a situation, have a national conversation. If one is looking for solutions, to really make things better, communities, who are best acquainted with those that live in those communities need to have the latitude to treat the persons in question properly.
That “confusion and shame” felt by the author will never be felt by Obama because he is mentally ill himself. And he gets all the tele-prompter therapy he wants.
Any person, and likely ALL people, can be found to have some ‘sort’ of mental illness, depending upon the accuser, whether manic or compulsive or just odd. Going ‘crazy’ over building new or more mental institutions is just another form of mental illness.
That’s pretty much utter nonsense unless you’re describing a communist country where anyone with a disagreement with those in power was liable find themselves in a gulag, re-education facilty or commmitted to an insane asylum. We may all have ideosynchrosies but we are not all mad.
Your article dismissed the news that the murderer failed the military’s drug tests, and that friends said he had started using illegal drugs while in high school. It would be interesting to know if drug tests were done after his arrest. Was he truly mentally ill or was he under the influence of drugs?
Thanks for sharing your story and making a plea for a better way of dealing with mental illness. I suggest you take time to study the history of laws in the U.S. relating to this matter. Prior to the 1970′s, relatives with a doctor’s recommendation could commit the mentally ill to hospitals for treatment. My own state provided facilities. An ACLU lawsuit in Massachusetts claimed this was a violation of the civil liberties for the mentally ill , and a judge agreed. All of the sick people in my state were turned out to fend for themselves, creating a giant population of homeless.
A co-worker several years ago volunteered time in a city soup kitchen sponsored by her church. She asked a lot of questions and discovered the homeless who were not drug addicts often had the same story: The mental hospitals gave them meds and kept them stable, then released them, thus following the law. When the meds wore off, the illness returned. My co-worker said this is a vicious cycle for many, in and out of hospitals. In my area, free clinics abound, and if a person seeks help, he finds it. The problem is that mentally deranged people do not see the need for that help, and, by law, no one else can force them to do so.
A former college classmate of mine described his own behavior to me; he suffers from manic depression. When he is is in the ‘up’ mode, ie manic, he stops meds and then crashes into the ‘down’ or depressed mode. Once in a manic mode, he cashed in his retirement savings and blew it on frivolous stuff. He acknowledges he is living a non-logical life, even though he is an otherwise intelligent mathematician. He would be no more capable of murder than any non-mentally-ill person.
I think . . . I just read my life story. Thanks Benjamin for putting it in such succinct, heart felt way.
‘Had his illness been identified and treated earlier’
I would suggest that ‘untreated mental illness’ is close to the norm since we emptied the mental institutions back in the 70′s.
Lots of folks didn’t need to be there, but quite a few did and now they live on the street like shadows in our midst.
Killing by ‘shooters’and cars and bombs and knives and lead pipes will continue to happen until we understand that there are people who need help and can’t be counted on to take their meds and are a danger to society.
Generally there wasn’t and isn’t any place for Loughner or others to go (many aren’t as fortunate as him to have a home, but rather live on the street). So he practices his trade as best he can openly in society. Many knew he was dangerous, but hey, he hadn’t done anything wrong, YET. This will happen again.
Name calling by the media, shouts of gun control and shouts for calm are useless if you don’t address the core issue of mental instability walking our streets, everywhere. Many of these folks are harmless, some very very dangerous. Thanks
P.S. Afterthought; Ever stop to consider that we emptied the mental institutions in the 70′s and then the screaming and hand wringing began about the homeless. Especially under Reagan with the wailing of about the mass of homeless humanity living on the streets. The media of the time would lead us to believe that this was because America was evil and heartless and especially Republicans and particularly Reagan.
Mostly those homeless are still with us because we never did anything to resolve the issue of what you do when you empty your mental institutions. And Please I am not saying they are the answer, they were mostly hell. But neither is letting mentally unstable people wander our streets unmedicated.
Isn’t it interesting how things never change, once again America is evil in so many other ways.
And of course, once again, those dastardly conservatives are the cause.
Let me help you out here. We Americans have conssciously chosen a system that maximizes personal freedom. Our Bill of Rights, our Civil Liberties, our very culture. The problem is that as you move along the spectrum toward “pure” freedom, you move closer to chaos. In other words, a certain amount of mayhem (including violence) is the price we pay for the amount of freedom we want.
I’m sure you’ll point out Europe. Yes, there’s less mayhem there because of their huge socialist safety net They also have no Bill of Rights, no 1st ammendment, far fewer protections than we have. Europe is “free” in every meaningful sense of the word, but their freedoms are NOT protected in law. At least not to the degree that ours is.
THe ironic part is that if the govt tried to clamp down to provide greater security, it’s people like you who would gripe the loudest. The Left and the ACLU fight like tigers to limit govt’s power to police the individual…and then when we have a massacre they’re the first one to demand draconian measures.
Wow John,
Did you EVER miss my point or what. I have no idea where you are on the political spectrum, no more than I know where the lunatic in Arizona was coming from. For the record I am about as conservative as they come. I stated the obvious, we do next to nothing with the mentally ill walking the streets. I deal with this everyday and can guarantee you that is a fact. We let all the loons out of the loon nest and then complained the loons were killing us and they are homeless to boot. Does that help you understand? I’d guess not.
You Say “The Left and the ACLU fight like tigers to limit govt’s power to police the individual”
Wow again. You really believe that crap. The left and the ACLU, my friend, would lock up the Republican Party, the Tea Parties, Sarah Palin, and probably you and me without trial if they could and if we’d let them, but so far we haven’t.
And by the way please don’t ‘Help me Out’, I don’t need help from the likes of you and nothing to learn.
You and John, despite your disagreement, are getting to the heart of the issue, which is the balance between freedom and safety.
We generally see this type of issue play out on the economics battlefield, but it this case, it’s playing out in the mental health arena.
What never seems to enter these discussions is cost. If it was free to do a thorough evaluation of every person who exhibets symtoms of mental illness and to provide multiple layers of tender care from the occasional phone call to full-time supervision in a secure facility, then it would be easy, wouldn’t it? And if it cost a trillions dollars to do that for every individual, that would make it an easy choice as well.
But the truth is, mental health is a complex problem that can easily become prohibitively expensive and just as easily beome prohibitively dangerous, as we just saw in Tucson.
I dont know the answer, but that is the debate the country should be engaged in, not this nonsense about arresting Sarah Palin for doing what hundreds of other politicians have been doing for years, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the underlying cause of the murders.
But that debate will have to wait for a time when the country isn’t locked in a death match with people who want to destroy and loot it.
Proreason,
Now that was logical and insightful and I learned something. Whereas with Mr. John I have no idea what he is blathering about and would certainly not want to look at his facebook or youtube site as I am afraid of what might be on it.
Thank You
There was a time when asylums existed for at least the worst cases. Over time these were closed down for various reasons, often budgetary reasons. States and towns decided to cut the asylums and shift money to other pressing concerns, like giving money to people who can actually vote rather than looking after the sick who can’t. We’re seeing this yet again in the US as mental hospitals are on the block in many states.
Then there are certain places that seem to consider it more of a sin to put a criminally insane and dangerous person in an asylum where they can get treatment than to let that person roam the streets and eventually injure or kill someone. These tend to be more left leaning places so its not just evil conservatives who don’t look after the mentally ill.
“Over time these were closed down for various reasons, often budgetary reasons.”
Uh, no. Budget was a secondary reason. Fantasies about the caring community treatment option were the big reason.
Well that and the delusion that we had pharmaceutical ways to control the bad craziness. Trouble is the same people had a right to be homeless and not take their medication(s).
States and communities didn’t decide to close down their programs, they were required to do so. I’ve heard from many liberals that it was Reagan’s fault they were all emptied, but somehow it occurred before he was president, and anyway presidents have very little power. It was a mixture of executive departments and the courts that decided that those with severe mental illnesses were better off in the street than in any form of asylum. This particular problem was many years in the making, and there’s now no easy solutions. Seems like SOP for the left. Destroy anything imperfect, making the underlying problem 100 times worse than it was while merely imperfect, then promise to ride to the rescue. While the system in existence in the 60s and 70s was far from perfect, it was much improved over the 30s-50s, and might have improved to the point of being a good system. Instead it was dismantled due to lack of perfection and the Homeless are so useful to the left today!
Well said.
Being shunned by friends, parents, and their children do not help the mentally ill. But for many the treatment by family is what is the worst symptom of the illness.
A good article about an issue that needs to be discussed more, and to be clear, I am not sure what the answers are and I am not advocating any specific solutions. However, most of our laws and practices are based on the knowledge of mental illness as of the 1970′s, at best, and when you consider just how much has been learned about the brain functioning during the last 20 or 30 years, you realize how breathtakingly backwards we deal with this issue.
Great article. I wish more people were like you instead of their interest in scoring political points. This is one of many dialogs we need to have, but we’re all so brainwashed into fighting each other that we can’t ever sit down to have an honest discussion about anything, even something that should be blatantly non-partisan.
It’s expensive to keep someone committed, even if they are a threat to others. Once they are released, because the state has no money, and their doctor says it’s OK, and it’s not, and someone is killed, nothing can be done. Nobody is responsible. The survivors can just move on.
My sympathy to the victims. I’ve already been there.
I would like Benjamin Kerstein to contact me directly, with any details, pointers, articles etc. that describe what Israel does right on this complex issue.
Thanks,
Bob
“…the youthful intelligence done in by academic failure…”
-Say, Danny, how can you tell if a kid has youthful intelligence.
-Well, Fred, the best way is to look at the results of the kid’s intelligence test. One definition of “intelligence” is “that quality which is measured by an intelligence test”.
-Yeah, Danny, but what if there is no data about his intelligence available?
-Well, Fred, then you could look to the second best measure, the kid’s academic record.
-Yeah, Danny, but what if his academics suck?
-Well, Fred, in that case you could do what all the best librul thinkers on this subject do. You just assume the kid is remarkably intelligent and that society has somehow failed to measure the kid’s brilliance. After all society in every case is the enemy of we humans, isn’t it.
Wonderful article. Thank you for writing about your experiences and for imparting your hard-earned wisdom.
It is the parents who are likeliest to care about their childrens’ fates. And our laws say they can not FORCE them to take treatment.
I have heard remarks from neighbours that the Loughner family was unfriendly and isolated from others in the area. Well, consider. You have a son who is frightening, who has a skull in the back yard, who says VERY strange mantras. I guess you would not be Mr and Mrs Friendly Hostess under these circumstances. And consider the many people whose children, relatives, etc., have drifted to the streetlife, helpless in the face of terrible weather and extreme poverty.
Whatever many of the people on this thread may scoff at the very idea of insanity, it exists. And we treat these people the same way as our ancestors treated lepers.
Like the author I really wish mental illness were handled better. Some of the commenters seem to think that it can simply be overcome by an effort of will; an idea I used to share until I saw it up close. It remains a mystery how much free will is retained by a person in a psychotic state. Many claim that they retain zero free will, and are entirely beyond their own control. Some don’t believe in mental illness at all, and think it is merely a habit of mind. From my limited experience I don’t buy either end of the argument. I believe that even in the midst of a psychotic break a person keeps some ability to choose, but their choices are distorted by the false mental images/voices/beliefs that are running through their minds. Lately neurology has discovered that repetitive thinking can create channels in the brain so that neurons have a hard time escaping the well-worn path, so it’s possible that a significant portion of mental illness is self-inflicted in some or perhaps all cases, but there’s still no way to test the truth of that statement. Since psychiatry and psychology are not sciences in themselves, unless one stumbles upon an artist in the trade they cannot diagnose or treat anything with any reliability. A mental patient may go through many diagnoses over the years, and many combinations of medicines that are prescribed by trial and error. The brain and the mind remain little understood, and many people have been lost on the false trails blazed by those who are certain of the right course.
Several of the other commenters have questioned any sympathy for Loughner or people like Hitler. Well I do feel sympathy, or rather pity. Someday each of us is going to have to face God, and we’ll have to do it without the fog of earthly life over our eyes. Even if we weren’t aware of the full import of our wicked deeds, Satan the Accuser will be there to remind us. I can scarcely bear the thought of facing God with my own sins still red on my robe. Imagining what it would be like to face Him with mass murder and other horrors on my conscience is too awful to contemplate, not because they are simply worse sins, but because of the massive ripples they cause. I can easily imagine wishing a mountain would fall on me to hide me from His sight. And I feel pity for those who will have to face Him stained with evil deeds. Who needs Hell after having to face perfect love and perfect sorrow with the full knowledge of every ramification of our evil deeds? That’s eternal torment in a single instant. I don’t need to hate those who will face such a thing in order to feel sympathy for their victims. Sympathy and pity are not finite; I can do both without needing to presume that the one precludes the other.
We have a mentally ill family member who lives in his car in CA. He refuses to accept the bi-polar diagnosis. When he is depressed, we can almost get him to accept treatment. We actually got him somewhere once but he didn’t have insurance and we couldn’t attest that he was a danger to himself or others so they couldn’t/wouldn’t take him. It is so sad how sick you have to be to get treatment. I weep for his children because they are denied their father because he would rather be crazy. Do you have the right, when crazy, to choose to remain crazy? I don’t know the answer to this question. After years, we have all (almost all) washed our hands of him. One can only beat one’s head against the wall so long. We did what we had to do to protect our families’ mental health. Do we think he is a danger to others? No. Could we be wrong? Yes.
This could be my future as a parent of an adult child with Bipolar. How do we help him when he gets to a point of refusal?
I have read both this article and all previous comments. As a parent of a severely disturbed young man I see the issue first hand and up close.
My son was diagnosed with rapid cycling Bipolar Disorder and ADHD by the time he was 4. When he was little he had visions of “angels” and other things that talked to him we immediately began to get him help. Over many years and with lots of medication adjustments he is now, at 18, somewhat stable. I say somewhat, because when he’s feeling good he wants to quit taking his meds. He also has severe learning disabilities. All this wraps up into a perfect storm of problems. (I say this, currently he’s not dangerous to anyone but himself).
The problem with all of this is…he’s 18. He’s 18 and only as long as he’s willing can we continue to help him. His entire team of caregivers agrees that he needs help and will need it the rest of his life, but won’t go so far as to help us get guardianship of him to keep him and potentially others protected.
As a parent, I hear of other parents who have been and are in similar situations with no recourse, not even the court, because of what happened in the ’70′s. I don’t know about this Loughner character other than he did a despicable thing. Could it have been prevented? maybe, maybe not. What I do know…even if his parents had been on the ball, ready to help him, as long as he refused care their hands were tied. He is of legal age.
I’m not sure what the answer is. I don’t want my son’s rights taken away, but I also want to make sure he is protected from people who would take advantage of him nor do I want him set loose on the world when he’s in the midst of illness.
When someone has a real answer, I would love to hear it. Because when common sense lost it’s place in the courtroom we lost all hope for helping people who desperately need it. I think anything the ACLU has a hand in stopping they should also be responsible for cleaning up the mess it makes.
This article misses the mark. perhaps it’s due to the author being removed from the education system for
some time and unable to see the present situation.
Individuals with KNOWN mental issues are given far more attention, understanding and sympathy than described here.
Go to ANY public education institution and you’ll see a myriad of mental/physical handicapped individuals in regular education environments. Reason being mental/physically impaired institutions are being more selective of their patients due to overcrowding, underfunding and a myriad of other reasons.
So, the individuals DISPLAYING mild-moderate physical/mental issues are blended with the regular educated students.. to ‘prove’ how normal they are. Tragically, this type of, ‘were all the same’ mantra of PC do gooders allowed this individual to mock the system. And there are tens of thousands like Loughner..
Talk to ANY Mild/Moderate Special Education Teacher/Administrator for validity to my take..
As a parent, as I’ve already stated above, and an educational interpreter for the deaf, I can tell you…you are absolutely right. Students with mental and health disabilities are mainstreamed in the regular classrooms, but to say that kids are more understanding because they are closer to the situation is, at best, mistaken.
Kids are the same as they have always been, cruel. Not because they are evil, rotten little children but because they are more concerned with fitting in and having friends than they are with whether they are being nice to poor special ed students.
In fact, my son, who has been in the same school district his entire life, a small school district, is still ostracized, still has trouble with friendships and still longs to be a part of the group…any group…that will accept him.
No things for kids who need help have not changed…
Hi KansasTerp. FTR, I didn’t intend nor insinuate the regular ed-like classmates are more ‘acclimated’ or ‘understanding’ of the special needs children.
This cruel behavior you speak of is in large part due to their parents being too busy, too stupid, myopic, not able to/wanting care enough to understand/conceive why their kid(s) would be so mean. As well as the DoEd forcing this situation upon our undeveloped, selfish young minded kids to fathom.
I only hope private/home schooling will be on a terror these coming years. Public school is a joke.
Today, again, I’ve read ‘Maryland’s public school’s are #1′. What the article ‘fails’ to mention is the Maryland public school system provides ‘waivers’ to their students who can’t pass the graduate proficiency exams due to their being unable to speak the English language, excessive unwarranted absences, etc.,
All this from a state that looks the other way of gang activity, illegal aliens (or as Gov. O’Malley calls ‘em, ‘New Americans’), the productive/successful FLEEING Maryland due to excessive taxes..
I apologize if I misunderstood.
Kids with mental illness and learning disabilities are more and more prevalent….the reasons for that are debatable…however, you’re right our school systems are a mess and it’s because parents are not really responsible. More and more is required of school systems with less and less funding. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I want to know where the constitution says we are required to provide free education. For most parents it’s a babysitting service.
My son does go to a special school for part of the day for kids like him. It’s a great program and I wish there was more schools like it. But you can tell the kids who have parents who care and the kids who have parents that don’t.
But…as long as courts continue to take rights and responsibilities away from parents, there is no incentive to be a good a parent. And hey isn’t that where the socialists want us to be anyway, Warehousing children where the state raises them and teaches them to not think for themselves?
Benjamin Kerstein should be commended for having to courage to discuss a sensitive subject that all too many Americans are ashamed or afraid to talk about. Being conservative does not automatically make one callous to the plight of the mentally ill – I have had a keen interest in mental health for over 40 years. Our fury should be reserved to our education system and the mass media, which have done a poor job of educating the public, and so many live in fear and ignorance. The Lord has commanded us to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate than ourselves, or face the judgments of God! I believe in lending a hand up, not a handout, so I constantly preach independence and interdependence, working to the best of one’s capacity, self-empowerment, and continuous education as parts of the solution.
Emily says, “Maybe Baloney’s real name is Bologna?” Oh, never mind.
With the advent of a host of promising drugs, the US de-institutionalized its population of mentally ill in the 1950s. Tens of thousands of patients were released, myriad facilities closed, and staffs let go. Now get this straight; get it crystal clear in your minds. The Left AND the RIght LOVED this!!
The Left loved it because it meshed with their devotion to civil rights and released thousands locked up against their will. They also loved it because these govt run institutions had widespread abuse; they were a national disgrace. The Right loved it because it saved huge amounts of federal funds and downsized govt.
And let’s get one furhter thing straight. Any attempt to address the mentally ill in a meaningful way will by UTTERLY stymied by the aforementioned political coalitions.
BTW, I have family members and acquaintences who suffer from a variety of mental disabilities and I’ll tell you now it’s a living curse trying to keep these people on their meds. You CANNOT force them, and the sad fact is the person making the final decision is the person with the mental illness.
Now let’s get this straight!!!! we here on this blog are not idiots and don’t need you to lecture or talk down to us. Got it Cowboy.
which is the crux of the problem…now where are the solutions
Mental illness is devastating to any family and community. However, putting emotions to the side, the DSM manual can virtually diagnose every human with some form and degree of mental distress today. In fact, it has become a social crutch for ones inability to be individually responsible. The danger from any mental distress today, comes from a national social breakdown of core values in the family and communities.
Case in point. I doubt seriously that any faction of the scientific community could diagnose that the shooter in Tucson suffers from [any]
bio-neuro psychological disorder but rather, an environmental socio enhanced disability. Take a look around and discern the gross numbers of young children and adults totally captured by the fiction crammed on our society and parents willingness to ignore it…rather than responsible parenting.
On the other side of the coin! There is a total breakdown of community and governmental response to legitimate acute mental health care. Criminalizing acute mental health wherever and whenever possible is dastardly solution! Likewise, isolating the acute mentally impaired that don’t get snared in the criminal system, to homelessness and ill prepared community resources is equally a dastardly solution.
Just as our society has no regards or concerns for the root causes of criminal behavior and ultimately their incarceration, they have no concern for mental health issues. Something has to change in our collective social fabric of values!
We are too tolerant and not loving enough with the mentally ill. Loughner was tolerated. It’s not clear if anyone tried to help him. It’s also not clear how open he was to help and how open the legal system was to helping him if he was uncooperative. All I can say is that all kinds of bizarre behavior is tolerated today that was not tolerated before the mental hospitals were closed.
Mental illness should not be an excuse or a mitigating factor in determining punishment. I know it sounds cold, but don’t we believe in equal protection under the law?
Good article Benjamin, my respect. It’s quite a difficult topic to comment on. I could tell stories of me and a buddy going to a mental clinic just to be told we are wrong there (was because of his rage, which he claimed to have, but never acted out). Another man I know is rly mentally ill, but he seems to be totally capable of judging what is right and what is wrong, at least on most occasions, but that’s allright, since he is rly ill. Quite many ill people do not pose a threat to society, others do. The first are harmless and should be included in society as much as possible. The latter need help, the professional kind and not the slammer kind or even homelesness. Seems you have a thing or two to fix in the States.
So what does one do when there are no meds? PTSD is a complex anxiety disorder with no magic med.
As soon as you tell anyone you have chronic PTSD, the shunning begins. The self-imposed social isolation makes it worse, but necessary because my greatest fear is having a PTSD outburst be misunderstood by someone with the authority to force me into a medical facility where they can force you to take meds, regardless of whether they work or, in my case, cause life-threatening side effects – which is what happened in 2002.
I thought of moving to Israel, thinking maybe the prevalence of PTSD would make it a less isolating condition.
Anyway, Loughner clearly does not have PTSD, and seems to have acted in a premeditated manner, so my comment is solely in response to Kerstein’s post. I am a great admirer of Kerstein’s prose, and decided to read what I needed from this.
“It’s not considered “helping” to refer a person for psychiatric help. If we see a person exhibiting bizarre behavior, we are supposed to “allow them to be who they are” and “not pass judgment.” Duh.”
Yep, so instead these people are left to self-medicate with addictive drugs rather than getting compassionate help. You can see these people every day on the streets in a major city — smelling of urine ad worse, self medicating with alcohol, crack and pot where they should be getting professional help but for the “homeless rights” industry who keeps them on the streets, trapped by their own mental problems.
Thank you Mr. Kerstein, for your willingness to share your own experience with mental illness and the lack of compassion in those around you.
One of the saddest testaments to our culture today is how we view the “mentally disturbed”.
Schizophrenia is not uncommon among people in their early twenties. A close friend suffered from this illness and its onset during his 23rd year was a complete shock to him and to his family. But they dealt with it, once it was understood what was happening. As with many situations in life, education is key. People who deal with adolescents and young adults regularly should be aware of this possibility and have a “PC” way of responding to behavior that might indicate a problem exists. A mature and truly compassionate society would make provision for this.
The most curious thing about all this, I believe, is that advances in medical science will eventually show even the most doubting person that these illnesses are the result of biological processes in the brain and are – in essence – no different from a person suffering from cancer, blindness, or pneumonia. The symptoms involve bizarre behavior rather than the use of a cane, a high fever, weakness, coughing, or suspicious lumps. But how many others (besides the patient himself) may lose their lives as a result of those diseases?
This viewpoint does not relieve Loughner of his responsibility with the choices he made and the pain and loss he has caused. These consequences rest on him and no one else. But society shares in the responsibility for the progression of his illness reaching such an extent he was able to bring such harm down upon others.
My wife worked for the chief of the psychiatric department at the Brentwood VA in California during the early 80s. From the mid-70s to mid-80s there was a strong ‘patients rights’ movement generated by the mental health advocate community. Although there were many facets to this movement, one of the primary elements was a re-examination of the criteria for institutionalizing patients.
The point of contention revolved around interpretations of what it meant for a patient to be able to ‘take care of himself.’ Prior to this the interpretation was rather strict; if a patient could not earn an income and provide shelter and food for himself (and if there were no family members able to care for him), then he would normally be institutionalized.
Begining in the late 70s, the advocacy groups began to demand a lower standard. As long as a patient could merely wash and dress himself, and could perform the mechanical tasks of shovelling food into his mouth, then every effort was made to force the institutions to release them. My wife’s boss spent many months both in court and testifying before the state assembly trying to stop this lowering of standards. Unsuccessfully.
Predictably, most of the newly discharged patients were unable to take care of themselves in any meaningful sense of the word, and became the homeless people on the street. It’s no coincidence that the decline in California’s mental health insitution population closely matched the sharp increase of homeless (in California, at least) during the same period. In fact, for about two years, my wife literally was on a first name basis with every homeless person we ran across in the Westwood/Santa Monica area. They were all former patients who had been ‘sprung’ from the VA by well meaning advocate groups who then simply walked away and left these guys hanging.
Reagan was not involved in this movement, nor was he a symptom or symbolic of it. Quite the contrary. The people who ‘liberated’ the inmates tended to be on the opposite end of the political spectum. In fact, it was the ACLU who provided legal representation to force the VA to release these patients.
Most of these comments and all of this article truthfully depicts a complex and difficult challenge for us all as our brothers keeper. Yes we are failing in many cases but there are many cases where we are having some success as the author himself exemplifies with his own story.
I believe strongly that we are capable of more and have the knowledge and resources to do so. It is not an easy fix and maintaining the proper respect for balance in patients rights vs doing what is good for him/her will always be a complex ethical challenge for all of us. It is not reason to let the present inadequate situation remain unchanged.
Debating and exploring solutions for the complexity of this subject is the debate we should be focused on, not the moronic left vs right posturing we seem to be obsessed with.
Jim,
Sadly, as the author himself pointed out, he had to go to Israel before he found the help he needed, so the “success” we may experience in this country with our mentally ill is the result of happenstance and conscientious adults seeing someone in trouble and making an effort to help. For that reason I have to disagree with your notion “Yes we are failing in many cases but there are many cases where we are having some success as the author himself exemplifies with his own story.”.
But I agree completely with your other observation: “Debating and exploring solutions for the complexity of this subject is the debate we should be focused on, not the moronic left vs right posturing we seem to be obsessed with.”
My own experience has shown that many are being successfully diagnosed and treated here, not every person with a problem is left untreated and ignored. The process is not what it should be and many still fall through the cracks due to a) diagnosis and finding the right treatment is not always easy b) the limited options legally available to friends and family when the afflicted refuse treatment. Much improvement needed on both of these points.
Agreed. Let us hope this tragic event is the spur to bring these improvements about. I am actually hoping and praying that if Gabby Gifford recovers and is well enough, she might become an advocate to help address this shortcoming in our society.
Yes, the liberals are against administering medication against their will and incarcerating against their will. In a way, this could be corrupted–as it is in Russia where political dissidents are frequently injected with antipsychotics (which will make them psychotic) and “institutionalized” (imprisoned) but we have swung to the other extreme, closing the doors to the institutions and making mentally ill patients homeless and neglected. Perhaps if we tried to follow the “Golden Rule” and were truly righteous people, we could find some middle of the road. We need to care and love our fellow man, be honest and then perhaps society would be trusted use not abuse a license to care for our ill.
Why do we allow madmen to bear arms?
I’m a high school teacher. Far too often growing up gives rise to mental illness. Too many parents are unwilling to accept it. They bail kids out. They make excuses. They ignore the problem desperately hoping it will go away. But it doesn’t. Instead other children in school or even in the home are unwilling victims of the unmanaged rage these people feel. Far too often nobody worries until someone gets hurt.
I’ve seen this scenario play out too often. The current laws make it virtually impossible for the average family to have a member institutionalized even when imminent danger to others is manifested. Too many of the mental health establishment believe that the mentally ill will take meds, do their programs and stay healthy. I am tired of seeing vicious abuse and murder excused for reasons of “insanity.” I am tired of the excuses that inflict seriously deranged individuals on society at large. This explains in part the rise in homelessness. It also explains some of the more heinous murders like the disembowelment of a man by a mentally ill homeless man in a suburban Dallas apartment or the cruel murder of a baby by her own mother. Such are the laws now that even such crimes only get you committed to state facilities. The woman in the last case worked her way up to a desk job then stole a car to return to her family-who were terrified at her presence. Like it or not, the mentally ill can be dangerous and by refusing to accept that, we expose too many of our most helpless people to becoming victims. Something has to change.
Mental illness dually diagnosed with substance abuse generally is a progressive(not political meaning)disease-it gets worse if left untreated. I worked for 3 years with teens age 13-19 who were chemically dependent and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.
The teens that did well, stayed with the program and began a true recovery process,had one thing in common, involved, truthful parents who were willing to join in the parents groups and discuss what was actually going on behind closed doors. Most of the parents were in total denial about their children. They could not face their children’s illness because they could not face their own.The majority of parents had substance abuse problems and exhibited depression and anger issues.
The majority of our teens came from such dysfunctional families it broke our hearts to send them back. And this was a treatment center that cost 25,000 for a 30-day stay. This was the majority-there were exceptions but very few. We had parents actually who showed up drunk for parents night-so I know it is not PC to look at the parents but no one else is raising these kids-they were not dropped out of the sky-some are living in homes where there is no real love, spirituality or hope. I think the author’s parents seem like they were involved even though they were frustrated-whether he knows it or not, a very little love goes a long way in a person getting help.
cathnealon….I happen to think that a overwhelming majority of mental distress is a byproduct of the more recent modern society where all in the family are on their own including the children. So much of the mind develops from the influences of the the environment surrounding it. The single most national pandemic in America is the dysfunctional family and society at large….a vastly complex topic for another day though. So, I agree with your observations wholeheartedly!
Sadly, like the criminals released from jails and prisons, the mentally and emotionally challenged are sent/forced right back into the very same precise environment from which they came and what is expected…expect a different outcome?
America’s general society has created a mess for themselves and as a rather old patriot, it breaks my heart to know I will be checking out probably in the very near coming years, having to observe what this once great nation has become.
Good article – Kerstein is honest and compassionate – but I disagree that this tragedy was due to lack of mental illness treatment. There is no evidence supporting the notion that the USA and our citizenry is complicit in this murder. Some people are dangerous.
A recent reporting of which I don’t remember the sourcing, indicated that American “children” are the most medicated in the world. It is no secret that America’s adult society is also the most medicated in the world.
Amazing what America was for 200 years and what it has become during the past 100 years…more notable, the 50 years since the 60′s and 70′s.
Just thought I would throw this presumable fact into the mix of all the comments made thus far.
Yes, all governments do not deal with mental health issues in a complete manner but I take issue with personal responsibility. The responsibility to get appropriate care. The responsibility to take ones prescribed meds. The responsibility of friends & family to closely monitor the relative /loved one and to report him, or commit him if necessary.
I’m sick to death of hearing about all the innocent victims of people with mental health issues who do not have to take their meds because it is against their civil rights to force them to do so.
If there’s the slightest suggestion that someone might cause harm to someone else they should be hospitalized & treated until that threat is gone. This guy left a trail thick with signs & indications that he was a ticking time bomb. Someone else is also to blame for his actions, the people who did nothing about his frightening behavior.
Very nice article Mr. Kerstein, both brave and articulate. Pay no heed to the critics – only one who has or is closely affiliated with the problem of mental illness can understand your point.
And it is a point well taken.
Along with the tragedy of senseless deaths, the fact that we should be discussing what we could do to help prevent this will be buried. And the prevention is not more gun regulation or political demagoguery. It’s that we are doing a rotten job of identification of mental illness. Frankly, I’m surprised more horrific episodes like the Arizon shooting don’t happen, given that there are probably several million people in the U.S. alone that have some degree of clinically defined mental illness.
Thanks for writing this…
The author contradict himself. He vaguely refers to the many times he refused while at the same time blaming everyone he ever came in contact with for rebuffing him. Sure he got fired for smashing a glass table with a hammer! I have a feeling someone at that workplace said “Dude…you need help!” And the author has no friggin’ clue if the family tried to get him treatment.
Fine line between a person with mental illness making a choice to refuse treatment and the illness talking. That’s why interventions were started with alcoholics…the person can’t see truth thru the fog of the illness and the hope is that if heaps of truth are given to the person, that a little will sink in. Many times it does not. The family tries to convince the person but it just feeds the illness and the person just gets more angry.
As others have stated, it is the mental health commitment laws that are a huge problem in this country. The police have to wait until the person who is threatening others actually harms someone. The mental hospitals won’t commit someone unless they are at “imminent” risk of harming themselves or others…meaning 3 seconds before something really terrible happens…or usually after something terrible happens. This shooter was known to threaten people, had a gun, drank alcohol, smoked dope, and had a little skull shrine in the backyard next to the petunias.
And the law says there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.
Benjamin,
It was courageous of you to author this under your own name.
Mental illness is a very complex issue, and I would not pretend to simplify the issue.
The one good simple idea in your article is that screening and referral can often help. Hope you are well.
Best Regards,
O.K. Lets consider how lefty group-think programming works…
Lefties consider themselves the enlightened ones because they are taught that God is an imaginary creation of primitive and superstitious men. Therefore the highest authentic wisdom can only come from the collective knowledge of secular humanity.
Therefore anyone who believes in a deity (or believes enough to act on it) must be unenlightened superstitious and primitive possibly even genetically regressive compared to themselves.
Therefore lefty-secular Progressive are the only truly enlightened (IE: not ignorant, superstitious and religious) lovers of all global humanity who really understand and care about you and mother earth and sincerely seek all that you and she need in a harmonious balance (IE: a lot less people, cars, individual houses etc…).
Therefore since they alone are authentically compassionate and insightful, they alone aught be given unfettered access to enough power to express their compassion and love for the planet and humanity through sweeping economic and social engineering policies guided by the best and the brightest of the enlightened ones (Note: evidently mostly humanist-atheist eugenicist Statists) among us.
Therefore if you disagree and wont acquiesce to social pressure and politically correct norms and all of there enlightened efforts to do genuine good you are evil. Unfortunately to the lefty much of the population is unenlightened and desire freedoms that really aren’t good for them such as:
· Freedom to own guns: (only governments led by enlightened people should have and use them) see Chicago, DC ec
· Freedom to speak: (dangerous unenlightened ideas need to be suppressed passively and actively with strong social political taboos and strong government control on the distribution of speech rights.) see fairness doctrine
· Freedom to trade: (Enlightened trade must never be without regulation, must not harm mother earth, ever be unfair or generate profits too large for individuals to ethically have unless they are very special enlightened people)
· Freedom to own private property: (Eliminating property rights is essential as only the enlightened ones in government can determine on behalf of the collective the best use of lands and waters and distribute rights to their use fairly and with the protection of and needs of mother earth foremost)
· Free to support national sovereignty and identities: (Borders must be lowered and we must all coalesce into one unified, science-driven world. Patriotism, and national identity is passé and hinders the enlightened goals of the left)
· Freedom to choose what to eat: (only the enlightened ones have the wisdom to determine what average people should be allowed to eat based on balancing what’s good for the Mother Earth and what humans need to maintain existence.)
· Freedom to choose where to live: (only the enlightened can choose for themselves and determine where humanity should live based on what makes the least impact on mother earth and what civil structure best facilitates control of the population.)
· Freedom to choose what to use as transportation and where to go. (Freedom of travel should be limited to as far as you can travel by foot or bike unless traveling on public transportation. In order to prevent global climate change long distance and individual transportation should be limited to government approved travel for average people, and the enlightened class)
The enlightened liberal has two problems with the Declaration of Independence and the US constitution. They that they base this country’s charter on protecting individual rights Given by an imaginary God making it unenlightened. And because it stands in the way of all they wish to do for(to) us by severely limiting the scope and power of the federal (IE: see Barrack Obama’s earlier comments on the constitution and redistributive justice)
Therefore because the left are the authentic good guys and seek only the greater good it is not immoral or unenlightened for the left to do any or all of the following:
· Ignore or hide the facts perversions, errors in judgment, and injuries caused by the left. The greater good is more important.
· Constantly demonize, mischaracterize, and fabricate stories about the right. After all they are unenlightened and evil.
· Assume every successful conservative politician is an evil genius since they fooled the public into voting for him or her when they were clearly evil (IE: not an enlightened lefty Democrat).
· Assume every successful conservative politician is an idiot; after all they aren’t a lefty and therefore unenlightened and probably believe in the imaginary sky God, so therefore also ignorant and superstitious.
· Always present their agenda as favorable to minorities with just enough payoffs to minority political operatives to have a constantly affirming and deceiving voice in their communities. Although the enlightened deeply disrespect the spirituality of these peoples they recognize a strong base of political support in blacks and Hispanics and don’t want to lose it.
· Accuse any opponent of their agenda of grievous racial and economic animosity since they are the enlightened patrons of minority welfare and socialistic largesse.
· Use and manufacture real or perceived crises (see Cloward and Piven) in order to expand the control and power of the enlightened ones through Government.
· Lie, Obfuscate, and delay any full disclosure of their greater motivations of building some form of totalitarian government that controls every aspect of our lives, thoughts, beliefs and dreams because the unenlightened must not see it being built they might become unmanageable. (IE: see FEMA camps. And TSA)
There are so many more but hopefully you get the point. The Lefties wont. They’ll agree with it all and not understand what s wrong with it. For them I have one word…
FREEDOM
Thank you for a very good article. I think it benefits us all regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum when an honest dialogue is started on the vexing problem of mental illness. You spoke of finding someone who led you to healing and then a willingness to be healed. I think both of those components are vital if an individual is to find any relief. Your honesty and courage in telling your story is appreciated.
Wrote about this myself today. I wish you hadn’t used his name. I fear these shooters get off on the attention…
The main reason mental patients don’t have better care is that they have no vote.
Even when they do, they cannot be depended on to vote the “proper’ way.
But, given the mentally unstable remarks coming from ‘The Left’, they will debunk my facts.
Mr Kerstein:
One question: What have YOU done to treat and deal with your illness?
All throughout your article you talk about how everyone failed you to treat your illness. There isn’t a single word on what you did and the results of those attempts. Like it or not NO ONE OWES YOU ANYTHING. If you’re not willing to take charge of your issues you should not expect anyone else to help.
Patients who have a medical issue know (Or had better know) that they are responsible for their well being. It’s up to them to take charge of their treatment, gather the help they need, and not rely on others to initiate help.
From the looks of your article the person most responsible for your care and treatment, AKA YOU, failed.
The mentally ill are not like a diabetic who can easily monitor blood glucose levels and then rationally modify diet and exercise. There are moments of lucidity but most of the time the disease itself tells the person everyone else is the problem. That’s why someone else usually has to take the first steps to see that they get treatment. After they are stabilized there always remains the risk the disease will again take over. Why do you think the idea that schizophrenics could be released from institutions didn’t work?
I know a person with bipolar disorder who after a long stable period struggled with the conviction she no longer needed her maintenance medication. Getting her past that point and back to stability took a heavy toll on her loved ones.
For a number of years, I was a Supervisor running the front desk of a major homeless shelter. I can freely say that most of this population with mental health issues are dealt with in a very “hands off” manner. Or, so heavily medicated as to be a cure worse than the original problem.
And, yes, because of the hand-off attitude, clients would and did act out, sometimes quite violently. You could see it coming, but we were never allowed to do anything proactive, just reactive.
I was talking with a leftie today and she was having trouble accepting the fact, one that I thought everyone readily believed, that schizophrenia is mainly genetic and a disease of brain chemistry and while stressors may play a role not something caused by bad parenting. I think the left is hoping to prove next, if facts … well damn the facts, if anything might indicate that his folks were … favorable to the Tea Party or conservatives.
And while folks are swinging around the “Dead Cat of Blame” lets hit Jimma’ Carter with it. Thanks to his compassion we have had generations of mentally ill folks living on the streets. While institutions were not the best option, they were better than starving, freezing and being terminally unmedicated.
Yes Jimma’ Carter’s to blame.
Yes but, a killer is a killer !, and needs to be delt with.
Im not sure what would make a person do what he did. Things go on in some peoples minds that most of us cant even comprehend.
The Bible says to put every murderer to death. I live in Arizona, in Tucson, the city where this man murdered people. He should not be “treated,” he should be executed, as the Bible says. I don’t care why he did it or even whether he is mentally ill. ALL those who commit murder need to be executed. Nothing else matters. If a mentally ill person is kept alive after murdering someone, then you have a mentally ill murderer on society’s hands. It is not safe to have murderers living amongst us. Treating the mentally ill is fine, but once they murder someone the only proper response that both follows God’s law and protects society is to execute the murderer. He killed people in a crowded grocery store parking lot on a Saturday morning. Put him to death.
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