I wrote yesterday that there are no acceptable changes to current law that would have prevented Saturday’s horrific events, but Clayton Cramer says that perhaps there is one:
In 1950, a person who was behaving oddly stood a good chance of being hospitalized. It might be for observation for a few days or a few weeks. If the doctors decided that this person was mentally ill, they would be committed, perhaps for a few months, perhaps longer. Hospital space was always at a premium, so generally, if someone was kept, there was a reason for it. The notion that large numbers of sane people were kept for no reason just has not survived my research efforts.
I will not claim that the public mental hospitals back then were wonderful places. They were chronically underfunded from the 1930s through the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, conditions in some were the shame of civilized people everywhere. (Ken Kesey wrote the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest after taking LSD and going to work at a mental hospital, and the film by that name is not a documentary.) But it did mean that many people who were mentally ill were either locked up (where they did not have access to guns, knives, or gasoline) or at least not sleeping on a park bench, catching pneumonia.
A large fraction of the “homeless” population are people who in earlier times would have had “homes,” though little or no freedom. But it’s not clear the degree to which people who are slaves to the roiling and chaotic chemical impulses of their brains can be said to be free, either, and some percentage of them endanger the rest of us, as we saw. But speaking as someone with a history of this in his family, it’s a very tough problem.
[Tuesday morning update]
“Politically incorrect” thoughts from Dr. Helen.
[Bumped]
It’s amazing how much effort has gone into making sure anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs are not addictive.. the result is predictable: people go off their meds. If you have mentally unstable people in the family you’ve no doubt heard the reasons why.. without the rollercoasters of emotion they feel dead inside.
For the record, you and Cramer make some good points here.
To expand on my pervious point – one of the reasons deinstitutionalization became so popular was anti-psychotic drugs. Prior to the drugs, “treatment” consisted largely of “locking them up” with a side order of icepick lobotomies.
Then you could give a lunatic a pill and suddenly he wasn’t a lunatic. This made it harder to justify (in cost or in civil liberties) locking somebody up.
“Then you could give a lunatic a pill and suddenly he wasn’t a lunatic.”
you taking a pill won’t make this statement less idiotic.
One of my sisters fried her brains on drugs, but with medication she is functional. She does need supervision.
The notion that large numbers of sane people were kept for no reason just has not survived my research efforts.
While this is generally true there are documented exceptions like that told in the story the ‘Changeling.’ This involved locking up woman that police found annoying, like old girlfriends and such. Or in the case of the title character, telling her she was nuts and locking her up when they returned a boy to her that was not her kidnapped son.
Overall though, separation of dangerous people from society is a good idea. I’d rather send most of them to the isle of lost boys however. Even with the best of intentions they are going to be abused in an institution. Caregivers are human, meaning some may be angels but enough of them are not that abuse is pretty much a constant.
Her son was the actual title character, but ya get the point. I’ve observed many health providers and the front office demeanor is often not what the patient sees.
Actually, people were institutionalized for no reason at all. When he frist became governor of California, Reagan was shocked to learn that parents who had kids who were smarter than them had them committed to asylums simply because they “could not handle” them. Reagan deinstitutionalized them while governor of California and did the same on the national level once he became president.
I have a graph (I found it on Volokh.com a few years ago) that showed the institutional rate in the 1950’s was higher than the prison rate is today and that the combined institutional and prison rate in the 1950’s was higher than it is today, in absolute numbers, which is astonishing given that the U.S. population was less than 2/3s of what it is today.
It’s a regularly thing here for police to hold annoying people for “psychological evaluation”. Such an evaluation can take anywhere up to two weeks.. and the police don’t need any sort of warrant from a judge. If someone turns out to be perfectly sane they have no recourse against the department or the officer, etc.
I am sick and tired of people making excuses for evil. Who gives a rat’s ass if a murderer is insane? It doesn’t matter to the people he killed, they’re just as dead. Would they be any less dead if he was simply tripping out on PCP or LSD? No, and it wouldn’t have been “drugs” pulling the trigger over and over, either, any more than “mental illness” pulled the trigger. Would they be any less dead if he had been pushed over the edge by political rhetoric or religious hatred rather than a twisted brain? No.
For far too long people have made excuses for evil: blame “Drugs” or “Poverty” or “Mental Illness” or “Society”, anything anything anything but hold someone accountable for their actions. Well, screw that. We human beings are not mindless, will-less automatons. We each make choices, and our actions have consequences, and our intentions and motivations and personal demons and excuses don’t matter one damn bit compared to those consequences.
No matter the motivation for this gunman, he should be held to account for his actions.
Very tough, indeed. Try getting someone hospitalized against their will; chances are, you’re kissing them goodbye for a long, long time.
***************************************************
We’ve seen that democrats often excuse malfeasance in their midst by characterizing it as “sloppiness.”
Aside from Loughner’s alleged horrific act, wasn’t there enough carelessness to go around leading up to the shooting? For one thing, it seems odd to hold a meet-and-greet in such an open venue where any drive-by shooter could have accomplished pretty much the same thing. It’s not like Rep. Gibbins was a moving target, hopping out of a vehicle here and there to visit with constituents.
In TV coverage, I saw large signs advertising the event posted at the edge of the parking lot, and it must have been advertised on local media to have attracted people like the neighbor woman who brought the 9 year-old child with her, and the judge who stopped by to say hello. Wasn’t law enforcement aware of Loughner’s prior interactions with the congresswoman, and, if they do any patrolling at all, how could they have been ignorant of the fact that her outdoor meeting would be/was taking place? Did it occur to no one that precautionary security might be required, given the fact that she had, according to the sheriff, received a great many messages angrily protesting her votes on this or that?
I only hope we’ll learn all the lessons we need to from Saturday’s heartbreaking spectacle so that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.
Ed M., you are absolutely right about accountability. The other issues are all ancillary to that.
We are all each individually accountable for our actions regardless. Even a victim is accountable if they put themselves in a bad situation which never-the-less in no way reduces the accountability of the bad guy. That’s why the pope has a pope-mobile.
Other issues are still important in themselves.
It’s a regularly thing here for police to hold annoying people for “psychological evaluation”.
I drove off a mountain one dark rainy night (my mind was on a verbal fight I’d just had with a girlfriend and left her to take a twisty road that had wet mud on it.) Someone spotted my van leaning against a tree and soon the cops and a wrecker were there. The wrecker put a cable on my van and pulled me up back on the road, telling the cops “once I put a line on a car, it’s mine.”
I’m bleeding like a fountain from a head wound, but I feel ok to drive myself to the hospital. The problem is I didn’t have enough money to pay the wrecker to unhook me and he wouldn’t without the money right there on the spot. He wouldn’t take a check. The cop told me to get out of the car, but I wasn’t going to. Then the cop grabs my wooden cane and we have a tug of war with him trying to twist and jerk it out of my hand and I wouldn’t let him even when his partner came over to help.
Yeah, I wasn’t quite in my right mind at the time. The cops finally figured out they weren’t going to be able to force me and eventually talked me into taking an ambulance ride.
This of course is when the psychological evaluation part of the story kicks in. At the hospital I was able to talk the cop out of it. I made friends and we shook hands and that was it. A few days later I paid the thief to get my van back. It could have turned out a lot differently.
I had a friend in college that was institutionalized by campus police because he mouthed off to an administrator, then suspended (apparently his mental illness was predicted to only last one semester). When he got back, I couldn’t convince him to go to FIRE; he just wanted to keep his head down and finish his last semester. So, while I’m with you generally, it’s the same as “if you don’t have anything to hide, why object to a search?” Because you don’t want crooked police to blackmail you with what they find; it’s not to protect the guilty.
Anyway, what really worries me is that I doubt anyone could tell the difference between this guy’s behavior on approach to the Congresswoman and that activist’s behavior last September when she incited Tea Party violence against herself by acting strangely and that guy stepped on her neck; do you remember that? It’s still the only instance of Tea Party violence I know about. If you can’t tell the real crazy from the fake until you throw them to the ground, but you’re not allowed to throw people to the ground if they’re fake, I don’t know how to stop the crazies.
But if he slapped the pill out of your hand and lunged for your throat, or refused to take it the grounds that it was poison devised by Elizabeth II’s little Mengeles as part of her plot for world domination, you still couldn’t lock him up.
If treatment is effective (and it’s not always, but then nothing is 100% in this universe of discourse), but someone wishes to be insane but unmedicated, at what point does it become permissable to say, “You’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know; therefore you’re not going to be allowed to be known”.
@kurt9, my (possibly imperfect) memory of the Volokh graph was that it showed similar incarceration rates overall going back 80-90 years in the US, but a drastic change from about half and half prisons and mental institutions to 95% prisons and 5% institutions, mostly in the 1970s and 80s — the implication being that one’s likelihood of getting locked up is about the same, but the precipitating events (violence instead of merely very odd behavior) are different.
Following a terrible crime like this, some are quick to try and score political points. Those people are contemptable.
Instead, we should be holding a conversation more like this:
Loughner, it seems, never had that chance; or perhaps he did and refused it, or ignored it. I denied my illness for years. Perhaps he did the same. Nonetheless, there were clearly many people around him who knew that something was terribly wrong. At the moment, it appears that they did nothing, or worse. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I cannot help thinking that, had someone, somewhere intervened, all of this might have been avoided. Obviously, there are hugely complicated issues involved in identifying and treating the mentally ill. Not least of them is that of civil rights. I do not know at precisely what point it is acceptable to forcibly treat someone for a mental disorder, or to confine them to an institution should it prove necessary. I do know, however, that inaction only invites far worse outcomes. America has just witnessed the consequences of this writ large.
The truth is that mentally ill people are often regarded as, for want of a better word, disposable. One would not ignore someone who was suffering from cancer, or blindness, or pneumonia; but people do ignore, and worse, people who are suffering from mental diseases just as severe. If a man collapses in the street from a heart attack, people call 911. But if he laughs inappropriately or posts nonsense on the internet, he is considered a scary weirdo and ostracized. The result is that worst of all things: unnecessary suffering. All the more so because, properly treated, this suffering can be enormously reduced. I will not repeat the well-meaning lie that people with mental illness can lead a completely normal life. But they can lead a good life, and even a happy one.
Jared Loughner will never have this opportunity. He is now a murderer many times over. One of his victims was a nine-year-old child. There can be no forgiveness or redemption for such an act. Whatever the reasons, he has closed the book on a wasted life. His victims are now the rightful objects of our compassion. But we should not forget that this atrocity was preventable. If the proper action is taken, it is eminently possible to not only prevent future atrocities of this kind, but to help ameliorate the suffering of many who would never contemplate such a crime. This would, I think, be the most fitting response to the suffering Mr. Loughner has caused.
Jay Manifold Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 8:28 am
“…it showed similar incarceration rates overall going back 80-90 years in the US, but a drastic change from about half and half prisons and mental institutions to 95% prisons and 5% institutions, mostly in the 1970s and 80s — the implication being that one’s likelihood of getting locked up is about the same, but the precipitating events (violence instead of merely very odd behavior) are different.”
I remember encountering a similar graph, however, I’m not sure the conclusions you’re drawing are correct. I may be misinterpreting what you’re saying, but the implication of your statement is that it is essentially the same type of person getting encarcerated, just in different places, with different behaviors being used to justify the arrest.
However, there has been a massive cultural event and law enforcement response to that event, which has intervened between the 1950’s and the 1970’s–the cultural acceptance of drug use and the War on Drugs. Perhaps the types of persons that get incarcerated today are really NOT the same as those in the 50’s. Maybe those in prison are there because of involvement in drug smuggling, dealing, drug related violence, etc., while those who used to be held in psychatric centers are either wandering the streets homeless, or protected and supported by families with the means to support them. There may be some overlap, but I’m skeptical that we are locking up the same type of persons today as we did 50-60 years ago.
It may be that society simply has a threshold for how much money will be spent on involuntary housing and the penal system, and it naturally finds that point.
@kayawanee – Your interpretation of what I was trying to say is correct, and your hypothesis is plausible. As an inflection point, I would suggest the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which came into force in late 1964 (source).
Ed Minchau Says:
January 10th, 2011 at 9:50 pm
“It doesn’t matter to the people he killed, they’re just as dead.”
The idea is to get them proper treatment and head them off before someone gets killed.
ken anthony Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 12:29 am
“Ed M., you are absolutely right about accountability. The other issues are all ancillary to that.”
You guys clearly have no experience with genuinely mentally ill people. Why is it so hard to believe that the brain, which is a physical organ like any other, cannot malfunction? Mental illness is real, fella’s. You should stop imagining you have the answers until you have some direct and extended contact with the afflicted.
Despite mostly loving Reagan as much as so many of the rest of us, my ex invariably rails against his decision to turn institutionalized mentally ill people into homeless people. I am not even sure how much truth there is to that, or how deep his role was, but it sounds close enough. Thus we have her, lucky to get so much as any counseling due to how it is treated by most insurance plans, and we have her boyfriend’s mother, who would have been in one of those institutions by now in the old days, rather than disrupting the lives of everyone around her while sliding inevitably toward denial no longer being an optional. Seems like mental health was taken more seriously 50 years ago than now. At least, if you don’t go with an alternate interpretation of it having been taken less seriously… just lock ’em up and hide ’em away.
Jay Manifold Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 11:47 am
“As an inflection point, I would suggest the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which came into force in late 1964 “
I agree. From the international point of view, that certainly seems to be the tipping point. Less than a decade later, Nixon famously declared “an all-out global war on the drug menace,” and established the DEA. $2-3 trillion dollars later, drugs are still pretty rampant, the drug related incarceration has ballooned, as legions of homeless wander the nation’s city streets.
I’m not sure which is worse, putting the mentally ill on the street or putting them in an old school sanitarium.
The nearest thing I can relate to is caring for someone with Alzheimers or Dementia. Caring for a person with either is near impossible to do on your own and exceedingly expensive to provide mediocre care in assisted living.
I don’t know how the state would be able to fund providing proper care. Any program would overnight become as large if not larger than Social Security, Medicare, and possibly national defense. Likely, when faced with the large costs, the institutions would slip toward the sanitariums of the past, which was hardly a humane way of treating the mentally ill.
Jay Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 11:56 am
Despite mostly loving Reagan as much as so many of the rest of us, my ex invariably rails against his decision to turn institutionalized mentally ill people into homeless people. I am not even sure how much truth there is to that, or how deep his role was, but it sounds close enough.
As Chris pointed out earlier in this thread, the invention of anti-psychotic drugs changed everything. From what I remember of an article I read many years ago, researchers conducted clinical trials of psychoanalysis verses lithium for the treatment of schizophrenia sometime in the late 1950s or so. The results were so profound that you probably couldn’t repeat the test. Lithium proved very effective at treating schizophrenia while psychoanalysis was essentially useless. This changed the view of mental illness from a lifelong affliction to a chronic but manageable disease roughly analagous to diabetis.
Once the shift in view of mental illness occurred, patient rights advocates like the ACLU sued to get patients released. After all, if a person can live a high-functioning life as long as he takes his medication, there is no justification for keeping him institutionalized. In time, the patient rights advocates won many important lawsuits and the government had to release people from the institutions. IIRC, Reagan was one of the governors who had to comply with the court orders. Unfortunately, many of the released patients were unwilling or unable to keep taking the medication and they relapsed.
Mental illness is a real affliction that affects a lot of people. Throughtout the ages, the mentally ill have been poorly treated even though their illness is seldom in any way related to anything they’ve done.* You seldom hear people demonizing those with diabetis, heart disease or cancer but too many people have an irrational fear of the mentally ill.
There are two different but related problems that we as a society need to address. First, how do we identify with mental illness, perferably early on? Second, how do we help those people over the long haul, perferably without institutionalization except in the more extreme cases?
* I speculate that it’s possible long term drug addiction might have contributed to some cases of mental illness but have no evidence to support the conclusion. Those drugs affect brain chemistry and it seems that many forms of mental illness are the result of imbalances in brain chemistry. On the other hand, for some people, perhaps mental illness drives their consumption of mind altering drugs. I honestly don’t know.
You guys clearly have no experience with genuinely mentally ill people.
Good thing I wasn’t drinking anything when I read that. I hate when stuff comes gushing out of my nose.
Mentally ill is what it is. Acts of violence, ditto. The first should never result in a get out of jail card for the second.
On day technology may be able to read our thoughts. Beware that day, because solutions may become worse than the problems.
Keep it simple and penalize bad actions regardless of intent or mental capacity… something which none of us can perfectly judge.
Reagan gets blamed because the number of street people exploded during his term. Some say he reduced the funding that had been intended to help the process of deinstitutionalization. But, the policy itself preceded him:
ken anthony Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 2:34 pm
Ken – you really do not get it. Please stop digging.
Now that I’ve read Dr. Helen my anger has gone up a notch. This was entirely preventable. The gunman had committed acts in a classroom that if a responsible adult was present could have been dealt with. No student should have to sit in a class afraid for their life because of another student.
This is Ft. Hood all over again. Big PC fail.
Bart said: “You guys clearly have no experience with genuinely mentally ill people. Why is it so hard to believe that the brain, which is a physical organ like any other, cannot malfunction? Mental illness is real, fella’s. You should stop imagining you have the answers until you have some direct and extended contact with the afflicted.”
Bart, you don’t know me, so you don’t know about my late father’s raging alcoholism, or my ex-fiancee’s manic depression, or another ex-girlfriend’s paranoid schizophrenia, or my own struggle with alcoholism. Suffice to say my position is not based on a lack of experience with mental illness, nor even based on a lack of compassion for those facing personal demons. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The idea that a mental illness or drug habit or poverty or religion or society itself is to blame for an individual’s actions, rather than the individual himself, is grotesque. It denies consciousness and volition and even individuality. It treats people according to membership in an arbitrarily-defined group and forces judgment upon them for membership in the arbitrary group rather than for what they themselves do.
It forces us to preemptively lock up all of those identified as sharing the same mental characteristics of the gunman as if they are potential mass murderers, no matter whether they are coping or not, and to classify such people in whatever arbitrary way we choose. It applies the assumption of guilt to a whole class of people, however we decide to classify them, their innocence notwithstanding. If you look hard enough, you could probably find some mental illness in everybody, which is convenient if you’re the one who gets to decide who is in which group.
Right there is the root of the impulse by some to blame – of all people – Sarah Palin; such people don’t like what she has to say or that it resonates, and so they want her (and Limbaugh and Beck and O’Reilly and Hannity and Coulter and so on) held responsible for any ill they can find and locked away, simple as that.
This whole “Palin is responsible because of her words (or other first amendment protected stuff like campaign imagery)! No she’s not, and you guys are even worse, see?” is based on the notion that people are merely group representatives and not volitional individuals. In fact it is the groups that are more or less arbitrarily defined and only individuals that do anything.
The denial of individuality also lies at the root of the ever-growing vines of State power. It is insidious and has a certain allure (giving the illusion of freeing people from responsibility for their actions or inactions) and it cannot last.
Enlighten me Bart. Be specific. I’ll start a thread on my own blog if needed.
Let me be clear. I don’t care if that F#$@#r had no brain at all (completely not responsible mentally.) His acts alone require he be eliminated. Too bad for him. Too bad for me if I did the same thing. Ditto, anyone else.
So Bart. What specifically do I not get?
Well said Ed. Insidious is exactly the right word.
Ed Minchau Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
“Bart, you don’t know me, so you don’t know about …”
Mental illness is not alcoholism. It is completely involuntary. I understand alcoholism is not completely voluntary at some stage, but it requires active measures to acquire the substance. Mental illness hits out of the blue, and it cannot be treated simply by removing something, but only by replacing it.
People with severe mental illness who are not stabilized under medication are not individuals capable of rational choice. In a technical analogy, such as with which readers of this site should be familiar, they are getting bad sensory information, and their hard drive has developed bad sectors. They can’t make sense of the incoming signals, and their instruction set has been compromised.
It is not an “attitude” problem. It is not a case of “bad character” or innate rottenness. It is a hardware malfunction. But, they can be stabilized under appropriate conditions at a lower level of functionality.
How you want to punish afflicted malefactors is one issue. But, wouldn’t it be better to preempt their bad actions in the first place?
Ken – you act as though these people were normal folk who made purposefully bad decisions. That is so far removed from the reality of the situation.
Bart, way to miss the point altogether.
“I understand alcoholism is not completely voluntary at some stage, but it requires active measures to acquire the substance”
It isn’t the alcohol that makes the alcoholic. I haven’t had a drop in 4946 days, but I’m still an alcoholic. And get this – I was an alcoholic before I had my first sip, too. Drunkenness is merely a symptom.
If it helps to reestablish my “experience with mental illness” bona fides with you, I lived with and cared for my ex-fiancee through several manic-depressive cycles, and lived with the outward manifestations of both the illness and the side effects of her meds. Is that enough to get you to read and address the remainder of what I wrote?
Also, you would not believe the amounts of coffee consumed at AA meetings. I can virtually guarantee that any non-practicing alcoholics you know are guzzling coffee like it’s going out of style. The illness is still there, but the symptom of drunkenness has been replaced with a less obvious symptom.
Ed – I believe I have made the only point that counts: the severely mentally ill are NOT rational individuals capable of making value-laden choices based on objective criteria. They live in a dreamlike state, where thoughts and ideals and concrete concepts such as right and wrong drift about in a haze. And, there is no action they can take, no daily affirmation or determination, to make it right. The only thing that helps is medication, which must come from an external agent.
The topic of this thread is supposed to be about deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and whether we have enough evidence now to declare that it was a bad idea. I believe it was a bad idea, that the whole concept was flawed, and that it has created unimaginable levels of misery.
You want to hijack the thread and talk about how you want to scourge those afflicted who have done bad things so that… well, so that what? So that other insane people will be deterred from being insane? Do you realize that, that sentiment would be… insane? Or, just because you derive pleasure from balancing the books of suffering, no matter what illogical purpose it serves? Do you have any idea of what a fucking nightmare world these people and their families live in already? And, you just want to pile that on? Where does this bloodlust in you come from? What is its purpose?
Are you advocating that we leave the mentally ill to fend for themselves, and just kill them when they run amok? Is this your recommendation on the subject of deinstitutionalization?
@Bart:
Lead and gold exist. I do not infer from this fact that alchemy can transmute one into the other. Same goes for the brain and the mental health “profession.”
You know, the Book of Job was written because it had to be made clear that those who were physically ill were not pariahs, cursed by God, to be avoided or looked down upon as less than human. For there was a time when those were commonplace attitudes.
If you institutionalize regularly, I’m fairly sure it will expand to cover many people who might not need it, as the authorities make sure they cannot be blamed for future Loughners–just look at the “zero tolerance” nonsense that happens in the schools. The pendulum may swing from locking up by exception to freedom by exception.
As far as the places themselves, I have my doubts they help many without destroying some vital element of the soul via the loss of dignity, especially for men, and especially for the marginal cases. The “help” offered may end up being nothing more than an invitation to accept being society’s pariah–to be one that is not wanted, nor one that can be got rid of. This, of course, is in part a limitation of current medical knowledge. Nevertheless–it’s in many ways the classic “no-win scenario”. For all involved.
Of course, not all may cryt ears. It is my profound belief that there are far too many who functionally want the ill person taken out and shot. They can’t do that–so they’ll go for the next best thing. Ostracism. Removal.
Not that this is not understandable. It is. Countless millennia of societal experience tells us that historically, once the great divide of sane from insane is crossed, that person usually does not come back–and is often a danger to the group. It is an inherent feeling, perhaps encoded in our genes. That person, once right, now wrong, can no longer be trusted. Fear them.
The trouble is that mankind’s progress marches on, and we are one day going to be able to restore some of those afflicted with diseases of the brain–not just control, but restore. Perhaps sooner than we think. But the old ways of viewing those people will still be with us–perhaps as part of our evolutionary makeup.
So with what spirit are we going to greet those people newly restored back to humanity (both their personal own humanity and the common whole humanity)? Will they be welcomed back like Job was? Or will their recoveries have been in vain, as their lives continue as nothing but pariahs? I think I’m fairly sure what the answer will be for at least a generation–but I ask the question anyway.
But we will one day be able to tackle some of these evils, and end them. One day. It is up to us how we handle this good that will be done, and do not do ourselves evil to those who have seen far too much of it.
“I believe I have made the only point that counts: the severely mentally ill are NOT rational individuals capable of making value-laden choices based on objective criteria”
And I’m saying that it doesn’t matter. Millions of mentally ill people live their lives day after day without going on killing sprees. By excusing this one rare individual because of some particular trait that he has rather than holding an individual responsible for his actions regardless of motivation you are instead condemning all of the people who share that trait, based not on what they have done but because of their membership in a group.
In a nutshell, excusing the gunman’s actions because he is mentally ill might seem at first blush to be an exercise in compassion – however, it is really the vicious condemnation of an entire group of uninvolved, innocent people. Treating an actual murderer as “not responsible for their actions due to mental illness” means that you must treat all of the mentally ill as if they too are murderers. And of course, if you look hard enough at anyone, you could find some quirk and label it “mental illness”, justified or not. This can come in handy if you have political opponents you wish to silence – in fact, the Soviet gulags were filled with such people.
“You want to hijack the thread and talk about how you want to scourge those afflicted who have done bad things so that… well, so that what? So that other insane people will be deterred from being insane? ”
I don’t recall mentioning deterrence. I just want people to stop making excuses for evil, and hold individuals accountable for their actions, rather than stigmatizing an entire uninvolved, innocent group of people.
“Do you realize that, that sentiment would be… insane? Or, just because you derive pleasure from balancing the books of suffering, no matter what illogical purpose it serves? Do you have any idea of what a fucking nightmare world these people and their families live in already? And, you just want to pile that on? Where does this bloodlust in you come from? What is its purpose?”
Where in any of what I wrote do you see bloodlust? You’re accusing me of deriving pleasure from the suffering of others, and of holding insane sentiments which I neither hold nor have written. The fucking nightmare you imagine I desire is solely in your own head. Read for comprehension.
Ed Minchau Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
“Millions of mentally ill people live their lives day after day…”
You will note I always qualified my descriptions as “severely mentally ill”. This is a whole class of victims of the mindless “dignity” advocates with whom I think you have no experience whatsoever.
“By excusing this one rare individual because…”
I’m not EXCUSING anybody. Excusing would require that there had been an act of volition on the part of a rational being.
“…means that you must treat all…”
What an absurd statement. What imperative compels me to treat every person in a one-size-fits-all manner?
“I just want people to stop making excuses for evil…”
Again, evil requires some minimum level of contact with reality, and an awareness of the consequences of one’s actions unfolding in that reality. If we were birds, you would be condemning those with broken wings for not flying.
“The fucking nightmare you imagine I desire is solely in your own head.”
I never said the nightmare existed anywhere so nebulous as your imagination. It is an intensely real part of these people’s and their families’ existence every day. You have no empathy whatsoever, because you have no inkling of their ordeals.
S. Wallace Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 6:07 pm
“As far as the places themselves, I have my doubts they help many without destroying some vital element of the soul via the loss of dignity…”
Yrrch! Read my post at January 11th, 2011 at 2:37 pm. Some dignity!
Presley Cannady Says:
January 11th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
‘Same goes for the brain and the mental health “profession.”’
What a contemptible statement of ignorant prejudice.
The lot of you don’t have a fucking clue.
“You have no empathy whatsoever, because you have no inkling of their ordeals.”
Fuck you. I told you about my ex-fiancee, an ex-girlfriend, and you dismissed alcoholism altogether (DSM disagrees with you). I have intensely personal experience with this, and for you to dismiss what I have to say and accuse me of “no empathy whatsoever”, of wanting to “scourge the afflicted”, of “deriving pleasure out of balancing the books of suffering”, or that I want to “pile on” to the already-suffering is projecting what you imagine my motives are rather than addressing what I wrote. It’s lazy.
For Christ’s sake, take a course in logic.
I’m certainly no expert in psychology. I have, however, been a juror in case in which someone was claimed to be psychotic. While we eventually found the charge to not hold merit, I did learn a few things. First, the DSM, as Ed links to, is a place to start to under the myriad of psychosis that exist. Second (and I think this is the most important), a variety of mental disorders exists with each having a different cause. Some causes are physiological and some are environmental. The case I served on involved a potential psychosis caused by environment. Finally, it seemed obvious from psychiatrist, both for and against the defense, that the particular psychosis that was being considered has no known cure. In fact, all the experts that spoke on the matter said that the psychosis would lead to a detached and violent persona resulting in activities that always lead to a person unable to participate in society.
I said all that because I think the discussion above is arguing different psychosis. From what I’ve learned, I think there are people who cannot be treated. The only thing to do is segregate them from society, and try to allow them to live out their life peacefully (and much of that is because it’s considered taboo to kill a person like a rabid dog, until the person at least kills someone else). I also know from personal experience that there are people will physiological mental defects. A neighbor’s sister is over 50 years old and has the mental and emotional capacity of a teenager. Like a teenager, you wouldn’t trust her to be at home alone, drive a car, or be responsible for herself or someone else. Yet, she is perfectly harmless in a setting with others.
I have refrained from posting in this thread earlier, because I have no idea what psychosis Jared Loughner may have. I can speculate, but without a proper diagnosis, I don’t know if he could have ever been safe in society or not. I am fairly certain that he needed to be institutionalized. IMO, it’s really a matter of how long.
Ed Minchau Says:
January 12th, 2011 at 1:21 am
How about YOU read what I said? You have no more than a glancing familiarity with the problems of the severely mentally ill, as is evidenced by your continued truculence.
I have read what you wrote, Bart, and I disagree with you. Rather than address anything I have written you continue to insult me and ignore that I am calling for ONE individual to be held to account for his actions rather than hiding behind the excuse du jour, instead attributing motives and a malice to me that simply does not exist.
You fail to see how allowing mental illness as an excuse for one murderer is in fact a condemnation of all the mentally ill. This is a simple exercise in deductive logic. However, since you clearly will not even make an attempt to think it through logically, I shall not waste any more time arguing with a brick wall.
And, I have told you again and again and again that these are NOT rational INDIVIDUALS. If you think they ARE, then YOU ARE NOT sufficiently acquainted with the malady. You think that all mental patients are mildly afflicted like those with whom you have had contact. They ARE NOT. There are many, many severely mentally ill who are almost completely detached from reality, but for whom medication can bring them back to a functional state.
“You fail to see how allowing mental illness as an excuse for one murderer is in fact a condemnation of all the mentally ill.”
That’d be because it isn’t.
“However, since you clearly will not even make an attempt to think it through logically…”
I.e., the way you think about it in your carefully constructed cocoon. You’re not being “logical”. You are being presumptive. You’ve got some burr in your saddle about individuality, which is a fine thing where it applies. But, in trying to shove every peg into your round hole, you are advocating continued neglect of people who NEED HELP.
Ok, from now on, I’ll read this thread with Dueling Banjo’s playing in the background.
My wife was a case manager for a county mental health agency. She continually had to scramble to try to find places for severely out-of-touch-with-reality clients whose families had exhausted their means, had no control over their children or wives or husbands, and were completely at their wits ends over what to do. I met some of these people. It was beyond heart-wrenching. I have met many clients. I know what the families are up against.
Sometimes, there was nothing she could do, and the people ended up on the street. Those nights, I would have to do my best to console her. Families were destroyed, lifetime savings evaporated, and children were endangered or often left parentless. It is a crime and a shame that we allow this kind of thing to go on because of some namby, pamby maundering about “individuality” and “dignity” et al. in situations in which such concepts are not even well defined.
There are degrees of mental illness. There are those who can make it through with counseling. There are those who can make it on their own with medication. There are those who have to be taken in and stabilized, and then they can resume their lives on the outside. But, there are a substantial number who, even with the medications, cannot concentrate or manage to perform even low-skilled work, who will never be able to take care of themselves, and who will always go off their meds and spiral down if left un-supervised. These people need to be in a structured environment where their critical needs are met.
And, that is my final word.
I have told you again and again and again that these are NOT rational INDIVIDUALS.
WE GET IT. You are not the only person with experience in this area. So quit being an asshole about it.
What is your solution?
Larry J – “You seldom hear people demonizing those with diabetes, heart disease or cancer but too many people have an irrational fear of the mentally ill.”
People with diabetes, etc. are not likely to try to hurt me without cause. It is not irrational to fear a very real danger. I am not saying that most mentally ill people are a danger to others just that it is rational to be unsure about a person whose actions do not seem to make sense as you cannot be sure what they will do.
We used to be able to lock mentally ill people up. Now, since they can be treated with drugs, we have to let them wonder about even if they do not take the drugs.
On the other hand I do not want a government with the ability to declare someone unstable and put them away. Especially if there are not a lot of checks in place to avoid abuse by those with political or financial reasons to do so.
S. Wallace – “Or will their recoveries have been in vain, as their lives continue as nothing but pariahs?”
Most probably pariahs unless they move to where nobody knows them from before the cure. Hopefully this will improve over time.
Ken – sorry if that is how it appears. If you had seen the things I have seen, it would get your back up, too.
My solution is to reinstitutionalize the worst cases, those who are unable to take care of themselves – they are not difficult to identify. People think marginal cases could be swept up and confined against their wills, because they think there is a small step between eccentricity and fullblown psychosis. It isn’t a small step. It is a sheer cliff.
Provide them with a place where they can be given a roof over their heads, food in their mouths, and a clean room where they can sleep, which they would be required to keep that way. Have them supervised in taking their medications. Segregate them according to sex and temperament. Provide for daily programs including custodial or other work, education if they are able, and social interaction. We already do this in intermittent manner for a large portion of the non-violent population, in a hodgepodge of halfway houses across the country which rely most inefficiently on the clients’ SSI and other government funding.
It might be costly, but no more so than the money spent on the halfway houses plus that large mentally ill population in prisons, which have become the default dumping ground after they have done something which costs society even more.
Mental illness can strike anyone, anywhere. There is a slightly elevated risk for the children of the mentally ill, and it tends to strike at different times for men and for women. If you are a man near 20, or a woman near 30, that is the time it is most likely to do so. It can happen to your children. Too many people are unaware of the risk until the nightmare hits, because it only afflicts something like 3% of the population. Everyone should be willing to fund this, because it can happen to you or someone you love, and destroy your life like a bolt from the blue.
I call them “halfway houses”, but I think the preferred term is “personal care home.”