Letters to the Editor
-
People are very intolerant
I sympathize with the letter writer. Many people treat shy, awkward or strange people, not to speak of the mentally ill, as if they were moral failures deserving of contempt and scorn. They gossip behind your back, snub you, isolate you and grow incomprehensibly angry at you. This of course only exacerbates the person's anxieties and neuroses. Why can't people understand that it takes all kinds to make a world, and if someone behaves oddly or is especially introverted, it's not a reason to treat them as outcasts? I'm disturbed by the articles I see (e.g. in the NYT) making much of how the VT killer was quiet and a loner. Not all quiet loners are homicidal!
The killings were not, as Cary says, "meaningless." And the emphasis on the killer's personality, or lack thereof, distracts from the real questions: the alienating nature of US culture, and the effects of anti-depressants. They're known to cause psychotic episodes in some people. Many random killers have been on antidepressants like Prozac. Drug companies have been sued over it, but they settle out of court to keep the story out of the media. We need an investigation into the harmful effects of Prozac now!
-
What no one says
One thing no one has said, so I am going to say it anonymously, is that one of Cho's problems was that he was not perceived as attractive or good-looking in the environment he grew up in. He never had a girl-friend; he does not seem to ever have had a friend. I have not read any of his rants other than quotations in the general media, but what he seems to have resented was how the kids around him dressed and how they looked--how they appeared and how they acted. And then when he spoke, kids laughed at him. In some ways, his situation was unique, even for a school shooter. His parents didn't speak English and clearly had no sense of how he did or did not fit into the world outside the family, and possbly would have had no way to help him if they did understand. In American high schools, ugly kids get seriously mocked and ridiculed. I have no suggestions to alleviate this problem, except strict anti-bullying programs in all schools at all levels.
-
Important stuff
I'm glad this letter was written, posted, and answered so well by CT. I've been nervous about the rampage of "armchair" psychiatry that followed this tragedy, and about the effect that it would have on mentally ill people across the country.
About the first thing that anyone said to me about this event, knowing my background with mental health treatment, was "Isn't this schizophrenia?" Of course, I told that person that people with schizophrenia are rarely violent and are much more frequently the victims of violence than the perpetrators. I said that violence is a difficult issue that is not easily explained by any one diagnosis, although there are a couple for people who tend towards violence-- intermittent explosive disorder, and antisocial personality-- but not all violence can be traced back to those, or even to mental illness. I did what I could, but I could only respond to the one person who asked me.
Getting the word out, as often and loudly as possible, that the vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, is terribly important-- especially when it is only in the wake of an event like this that most people start thinking about mental health treatment in this country at all. Unless it's a matter of "protecting" ourselves from "them", most of us don't give those who suffer from brain disorders much attention. Then it makes a good "news" story.
Oddly enough, students on college campuses today probably have better access to mental health services than just about anyone else in the United States. The system is a mess, but this temporary concern that everyone has with it doesn't address the real issues, nor is it likely to make anything better for most of those people who suffer.
Thank you, Cary, for trying to make it, at least, less damaging for those people.
Everyone else-- think about the reasons that the flags are still at half mast for these people, although they are lowered only one day a year for those 3000+ Americans who have died in Iraq. In other words, don't trust the "news" to give you all the information that you need.
-
Brilliant
Cary,
Another response of yours I'm going to print out and keep.
Thank you.
-
Cognitive dissonance
First of all, I must disagree with some of Cary's advice. The Virginia Tech shootings weren't about "nothing". They stemmed directly from a society so disconnected from human emotion and personal identity that it has become deeply disaffected. People can live their whole lives on computers, rarely even seeing flesh-and-blood human beings. This passes for "human contact", and it is so ubiquitous that no one even questions it. We did not evolve to sit in front of cold screens, writing things that may not reflect anything about our true reality. We need real contact, which is the only way we can practice the intuition that tells us someone is seriously off base.
Secondly, saying the old "you have problems, I have problems" is quite insulting. It's like saying to a cancer patient, "You have cancer, I have eczema, it's all the same." This is deeply insulting to people who suffer from mental illness. Non-sufferers can't even imagine what they go through each day. They walk a swaying tightrope, whereas everyone else is on solid ground. If something knocks the balance-pole out of their hands and they fall, it's their own fault.
I am bipolar, and I will never forget the time I decided to try an experiment (against my doctor's advice) to go without my meds. This was met with nearly-universal congratulations from my friends, who said things like, "Thank God you're not taking that stuff any more," and "You can control this with diet and meditation". In a few months, I had the worst episode of my entire life and would have committed suicide, had I not been in the hospital for the first time in 15 years.
What is my point? The illness is so stigmatized that people encourage sufferers to throw away their pills and become "normal", as if the pills are at fault. Imagine if someone congratulated a diabetic for throwing away their insulin.
In fact, the stigma is embedded in the very name of the condition. "Mental" implies "not physical": i.e., something that you can control at will. If you don't, you are wilful and weak. We don't say "Parkinsonian illness" or "diabetic illness". How can you be "ill" and "well" at the same time? You can't, so you are damned to eternal sickness.
We need a new, more descriptive, morally neutral name. A friend of mine (a fellow sufferer)suggested "cognitive dissonance", and I came up with "disequilibrium". Not perfect, maybe, but far superior to the "you are ill, now and always" implications of "mental illness".