A Face of Mental Illness?
Today I attended a conference at the Marquette University Law School about the newspaper series on mental health called Imminent Danger. There was a lot of good back and forth exchanges about when, how or if to commit a person with a brain disease to a hospital for treatment, when he or she refuses treatment. Some where upset that the article focused on two cases the one in Tucson Arizona and the one in Virginia Tech where two severely sick men killed a number of persons. Although it was made clear that these persons represent a small fraction of persons with mental illnesses that commit violent crimes, less than 1 per cent and lest than in the ‘normal population’ somewhere upset that these two cases were used as the faces of persons with mental health. I was one of them that was upset and had prepared some faces of persons operating in everyday life that have mental illnesses.
On the panel I was on I talked about the role of Stigma in mental illnesses. I pointed out how both sides of the controversy, to commit to rescue a person and not to commit a person against their will, both use the words ‘mentally ill’ to describe persons with a mental illness. I said how they would not use the words ‘cancerous’ to describe a person with cancer and thus should not use the words ‘mentally ill’ to describe a person with mental illnesses.
One of the few African Americans in attendance asked during the panel discussion I was on why African Americans were not represented in the audience or panels. Someone gave a lofty answer but I gave her one word answer ‘discrimination.’ Persons with mental illnesses are discriminated against as well as African Americans and poor persons. When you put all three together, poor African American with mental illnesses you get a group of the most discriminated persons in society. Our jails and prisons are full of persons with mental illnesses; many of them are African American males.
There have been civil right, gay rights, and workers rights and women movements in this country. Martin Luther King Jr., right before he was killed, was organizing a movement for poor persons of all races, ethnic and different parts of the country to come together to occupy Washington D.C. It did happen and was called “Resurrection City”. But without his charisma and leadership and with the death of Robert Kennedy that June the movement of poor occupying D.C. faded away.
Perhaps the “occupy” movement is a sign that we all can come together, poor, rich, middle class, white, black, Asian, Hispanics came once more come together to conform the ‘powers to be’ and demand radical change. Maybe this time we, people with mental illnesses, can be part of this new movement struggling for human rights and common good.
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