Sunday 13 January 2013

The Status of the Loonie



No, I’m not talking about the value of the Canadian dollar (over parity!), but the American National Rifle Association’s (NRA) call for a national registry of the mentally ill after the Newtown shooting.   Resisting requests for stricter gun control, Wayne Lapierre from the NRA blamed gun violence on the inability of the National Instant Check System to “screen out one of those lunatics”.

The political battle on gun control has been debated extensively in recent weeks.   This brief post will focus on the simplistic clustering of people of various forms and levels of mental illness and the derogatory casting of these people as “lunatics” who require special monitoring.  Lapierre talked of “an unknown number of genuine monsters - people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them.”

Many people may doubt that they can ever comprehend Lapierre, who wants to put armed guards in schools.  (Columbine had armed guards.)  While I cringe at the ignorant slur, my concern is not about being politically correct.  My worry is that the demonization of a diverse group of people as deranged criminals-in-waiting may further discriminate and marginalize those in need of mental health services, and also lead to ineffective violence-prevention strategies.

Some point out that quite a few mass shooters in the last few years were mentally ill, even though the Newtown shooter’s alleged Asperger’s syndrome is a developmental disorder rather than mental illness, and it is not associated with violence.  Moreover, most people with exactly the same profiles as mass shooters do not commit violent crimes.  Making people with mental illness scapegoats ignore that mental illness describes a very broad range of conditions, ranging from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias, eating disorder, schizophrenia, border-line personality disorder, and more.  (Just imagine calling the survivors of the Newtown shooting, who may now suffer from PTSD, lunatics.) The type, intensity and duration of symptoms vary among people, but it is noteworthy that people with mental illness are more often victims of violence rather than perpetrators.   Patients with severe mental illness commit 5% of violent crimes, with the risks being higher for patients with schizophrenia and bipolar when other non-clinical or socio-environmental factors are at play.  So, most crimes are not committed by people with mental illness.  In fact, people with no mental disorder who abuse alcohol or drugs are reportedly nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.  Why don’t we return to prohibition? 

And while we are at it, why not also ban franchise sports, as riots often break out after soccer matches or hockey tournaments?  Things have been so much calmer in Vancouver during the NHL lockout.  Now we may need to brace ourselves once again…


Most homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people with access to deadly weapons in the grip of rage.  Certainly, mental health is a multi-dimensional public health issue, and we need to help families, schools, and the general public recognize potential signs of increasing disturbance and to provide access to treatments for those who experience such disturbance.  However, stigmatization and demonization most likely would discourage those who can benefit from seeking help.  It would also conveniently neglect the roles we all play in the culture of violence.  

A reader of an earlier blogpost said we should solve the world’s problems and move on.  So my questions for you are: how might we change the culture of violence?  And what would be some plausible ways to promote better understanding and treatment of people with mental illness?

Image Sources: Lunacy, Prohibition, Vancouver Riot

15 comments:

  1. The elephant the NRA is not discussing is money. The lobbying money, and all the money to be made on the assault weapons and massive magazines. (Aside- gun mongers are going nuts over the possibility of legislation and buying every gun available. Makes me feel so much safer - NOT! Heard about this on NPR last night that there was a gun show in San Francisco and the lines to get into the parking lot were like six blocks long. People were paying $1850 for the assualt rifle Lansa used in Connecticut - normally sells for around $800. And they were buying so much ammunition that they needed dollies to haul it out.)

    In addressing how to change a culture of violence I think it needs to start with challenging the socialization of gender binaries. How does a male prove masculinaty in this culture? Being the tough guy stereotype- through a show of force or at least intimidation. Because anything less might suggest he's female-like or gay - aka - weak. So, my bottom line goes back to sexism and homophobia. I blame Hollywood and the toy manufacturers. I would like to see gun control start there! No more toy guns. Let boys use their imagination if they must and use sticks or whatever they can fashion into a gun, but why do we provide little kids with fake weapons?? We need to move beyond the pink and blue crap and value honorable characteristics that all genders can aspire to without fear of being put down. Strong women are seen as bitchy or nurturing boys seen as effeminate - which is code for weak.

    I wonder for those who were bullied or harrassed, what words were used to taunt them? Possibly the same ones that are most hurtful for boys to be called on the playground. Any guesses?

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    1. And have you seen the new thing about the NRA video game? Players can learn to shoot at targets. Yes, it's a macho thing. It's not just women who are socialized into certain roles. Men are too. As much as we say we should allow people to be who they are, it still isn't totally acceptable if you are a man and you don't seem tough. On the west coast here, it's easier. But not as much if you are in the red states.

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    2. Points well taken, Donna and RC. I don't get the gun games, video games, etc., either. Growing up, I kept getting mixed messages. Some would perhaps argue that competitiveness is necessary as part of the evolutionary process. But then game theorists and many others have also explained that cooperation can actually get us all further.

      Maybe that's why I've always loved purple -- mixing the blue and pink ;)

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  2. I believe this will discourage a lot of people in need of help from seeking it. There is already a fear of being stereotyped when you seek help for mental illness that discourages many. The few that are courageous enough to seek help might second guess themselves if this passes. To do this wont help the situation it will just force people to hide their problems and not seek help to avoid been placed on this registry. By hiding or avoiding help that could make the situation worse not better. I think they need to go back to the drawing board with this!!

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    1. You brought up an important point, Tinia. Many people who have any mental health concerns don't even want to admit that they need help, and sometimes they don't know whether they actually need help, since there are many situations where the person's mental states do fluctuate.

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  3. ive been following this, nothing makes me more mad and upset right now!

    this is on my mind a lot and upsetting me altho my husband says it will never pass...we thought a lot of things would never pass! I am looking for petitions to sign and committees to join. please share any information you guys get!

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    1. What will never pass? The NRA suggestion? The NY State now has a bill that does require mental health professionals to report when a patient is potentially violent. It is different from what the NRA is suggesting, but it does raise important questions as well. It may be partly about whether these professionals can accurately predict (as Pat suggests in his/her comments here).

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  4. I think there are people now out here who are worried about the new bill. It wants therapists to report patients. I read that's really not a new thing. But some psychiatrists apparently even admitted that they are often wrogn in predicting whose threat is real or not. And yeah, who would seek help if they worry about being reported?

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    1. That's true, Pat. The Tarasoff case in the US in the 1970s established a duty to warn. The court determined that a patient's right to confidentiality must yield to the duty to prevent foreseeable and imminent danger to others. That case focused on warning the potential victims. There was a similar case that started in Vancovuer (Smith v. Jones) and then went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in the late 1990s, which also said that the right to patient-psychiatrist confidentiality can be trumped for public safety.

      Of course, a big question is whether these predictions are correct, and if we are using the least restrictive measures to ensure safety. An NPR report cited a study which showed that even experienced psychiatrists at a major urban psychiatric facility were wrong about which patients would become violent about 30 percent of the time.
      http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/17/169529792/mental-health-gun-laws-unlikely-to-reduce-shootings

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  5. I wonder if the same person who knows what hurt and how s/he was hurt and tells / talks back, talks about it a lot, as a story – this is what happened to me, this is what hurt, this is what I feel about it is the same person who picks up an AK17 and mows down a classroom of children, or does many lesser things that hurt, either himself, by eating or drinking beyond the point of no harm done, or bullies and or maims others.

    Imagine a world where the hurt that happens because the now perpetrator was once in his turn, at another time, a victim, if that hurt that is getting back, didn't happen. It would be a different world.

    I worry that rather than a rush to judgement, there is often a rush to circle the wagons around the parents. What we learn as children, what we learn about how we matter, what we learn about the feelings of others, of empathy; what we learn / see modeled about anger, what to do with what hurts, when we are hurt is not irrelevant. Adam Lanza's mother thought guns were an answer to something. We don't anything about his father - people will say he had been out of the house for 2 years, for 2 of Adam's 19 (?) years. We learn a lot from our fathers, and our mothers, childhood and what if felt like to be a child in the house where we grew up IS NEVER NOT PART OF THE STORY, anyone's story.
    I wonder if the same person, who does what I do, talk out loud, get words around what happened to me, is still happening to other children, is the same person who re-injures themselves continuing what someone else started, all the ways we do that, by eating and drinking past the point where no harm is done,
    or the same person who bullies and maims and murders others. I wonder if the key isn’t empathy. Once you know / recognize that you have been hurt, that something hurt, and speak back / out loud about it, implying you are someone at least you feel something for, and claim a right to empathy / not to be hurt (particularly by the ones you love / depend on, and who in their role as parent (then spouse) are the last people who have any business being indifferent to how you are hurt), are you more likely to feel empathy for others, and therefore less likely to perpetrate hurt on them? Possibly.

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  6. whoops...that ended up a little garbled and confusing (forgot to delete paragraph I moved). My question is simply if people who talk and talk back, get language around how they hurt and what hurt and keep talking, also hurt themselves and others, when they are VERY clear: This hurt, you hurt me. Do they kill and maim others and themselves? Probably sometimes. But sometimes the things we keep in our heads and never speak about make us crazy, so I was just wondering about these murdering types do they tell. I just heard that Lance Armstrong explained all of his nonsense and lying on being abandoned by his father. It is a piece of it perhaps, what he did angry / with anger, lied and made something of himself. Sinatra said, "Success is the best revenge." Success is not healing – there are ways to bear and bear up with what hurts without hurting others, by taking up the hurt where and as close to with whom it happened, so that it doesn't come out sideways for the rest of your life. (I have no idea what site this is or whose it is.)

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    1. Thanks for your thoughts, Anonymous. If I understand your point correctly, there is a question of whether people who can tell their stories about being hurt would become killers. If they have a chance to discuss what harmed them, and that others listen to them, perhaps they don't have to keep these thoughts only in their heads and go "crazy" because of that.

      This raises two related thoughts I didn't cover in the original post:

      1. Some of the people involved in recent mass shootings were reportedly loners who seemed troubled. They didn't have friends, or people they could talk to. People teased them or avoided them. As another reader of this blog mentioned (see Donna's comments on this post above), perhaps some people have been bullied, haunted, etc., and they had no outlets or guidance on how to deal with their troubles and resulting rage.

      2. Then there is your point about empathy. Many of us often exclude those who seem different, and those who had been hurt may feel ashamed or too frightened to tell their story, exactly because they don't know if others would accept them. Instead of being empathetic and accepting towards people who were hurt, we fear them and exclude them even further. That may start a vicious cycle, since those who are feared can get defensive, have even more trouble reaching out or for help. And it may continue the "us versus them" mentality, and we further hurt those who might have already been hurt.

      Thanks for your thoughts. (PS -- if you want to find out more about the blog, please feel free to read other entries -- or click on "View my complete profile" under the "About Me" tab on the right of this screen.)

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  7. Sandra Collisson20 January 2013 at 11:28

    Very much agree. The gun zealots (they like calling anti-gun people "zealots," so it's fun to call them the same thing) are saying it's the drugs that are the problem (the medications). Like you said, many of the massacre-bent killers seemed "normal, quiet," to those who knew them before they lashed out.

    My best guess is their whole belief system, way of life, is to blame for the frequent random killings. Trying to be the 1% because it is the "promised land of opportunity," "be normal or be judged," "my material possessions are more important than your life," "it's new, so I have to have it," "why does he get it for free, when I have to work for it?" "Why should I have to work harder because they came to the USA to be my competition?" etc etc etc...

    There is so much wrong with the average conservative thinking (their left-wings are like our right-wings, their right-wings are off the charts!), their ideal is so unachievable. People are bound to break, just a matter of time.

    As for guns themselves, I figure take the guns away, fix the problem, then gradually give the guns back... but by then, they won't be so paranoid anymore and won't *need* to have them.

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  8. Yes, Sandra, there are all these other issues involvevd that are surrounding the whole gun issue. It's not just about guns, but the whole way of life and ideology. So in a way, perhaps there is no such thing called "random" killings -- all these killings are part of the larger picture, of how we treat each other as fellow human beings. I want to believe that things are gradually changing for the better -- that there is more awareness, discussion, etc. Hopefully, with more people speaking out and asking questions, we can find better solutions than have assault weapons roaming around. (Did you hear about the story in NY where a mother allegedly forgot to remove a couple guns and bullets out of her 7 year-old son's backpack before school, so he unwittingly brought them to school and showed the classmate?)

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  9. I think that you need to be born with a predisposition to violence, how much can vary greatly regardless of whether you have a mental illness or not. Some people will just be violent. To quote Lady Gaga they are "born this way".
    Can we solve this? Not until science can find a way to suppress the violent gene or whatever it is that causes it. Even then we have to learn how to recognise those who have it, not an easy task.
    So meantime at least, all we can do is try to educate people, make them understand that having a mental illness does not make you someone you should be afraid of. It's not a solution but it's a start.

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