Mother jones article/ Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.

[Neoma]

1. Article is pretty iffy.

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

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

Interesting place to put quotation marks eh?

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

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

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

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

Again, completely connecting the mentally ill with mass shootings.

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

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