I want to start off by saying that this should be a time for healing, love, hugs, and prayers. I wrote this at the time of the Las Vegas shooting and my soul aches with the sorrow of what happened there, just like with every act of violence that takes someone too soon. And I'm sad and a little frustrated that I find myself writing this. This was written a few days after Las Vegas, but it goes for any shooting, sadly, and the inability of the media to act in a responsible manner when it comes to mental illness
The media has endlessly speculated about the killer's mental health, made even more appealing than usual because his father was diagnosed psychopathic in the 1960s and placed on the FBI's Most Wanted List. As I explained in my first blog, Mental Health, Our Society, and Stigma, It is completely irresponsible for the media to mention anything regarding mental illness and a horrific act of violence together as being related unless there is a direct diagnosis.
This is a time to mourn, to heal, to hug, and to tell someone you love them. Not mindless speculation about the mental health status of the shooter.
Though I'm an advocate of more comprehensive gun control, it will not affect the way violent people get guns. Not even laws that place people who can't handle their benefits on a list to prevent them from getting weapons.
The Obama-Era law on restricting gun sales to the "seriously mentally ill" is nothing but taking away the Constitutional rights guaranteed to everyone, even the mentally ill. The only criteria to be called "mentally defective" is that they can't handle their money and therefore, it goes to a fiduciary. That is not an indicator of a serious mental illness where violent behavior is predictive. I can think of a lot of things where a person loses the right to manage their own money - like someone who is bipolar and while manic spends their entire check and can't make rent, the bills, or food. Rolling this back is one of the very few things I agree with Trump on. Denying rights to a certain segment of the population because there is a presupposition on what mental illness is wrong.
And no, psychiatrists and psychologists can no more accurately assess whether someone will be more likely to commit an act of violence than you or I. Nor can a diagnosis be made on just being violent. Violence doesn't automatically make a person mentally ill. It makes them violent, evil, vile, disgusting.
So I write this to the media and politicians: I am not saying that there aren't people who commit mass shootings that aren't mentally ill because clearly there are. And I'm not saying that there are no violent behaviors in mentally ill people. Again, there are.
I'm saying that mental illness is just that. A physical illness caused by chemical imbalances that one in four Americans suffers from. When laws are passed that puts someone in a category called "Mentally Defective" because they can't manage their money, people aren't going to get help. When a negative stigma is constantly promulgated by the media over and over and over again, people aren't going to seek treatment. When a majority of people think those mass shooters are mentally ill and the population actively backs away from people who have a mental illness because of what they heard on TV or read in the newspaper, people aren't going to seek treatment. When people aren't willing to get help because of the fear of the label society gives them, a society that is watching your programs and reading your stories, and they don't want to be labeled, rejected, and judged, the likelihood that they will commit or attempt suicide raises exponentially because they didn't get the treatment they so desperately needed..
Let me put it clearer. There are people who have died because of lies, misunderstandings, the lack of empathy, and the unwillingness to tell the truth in regards to what the media reports about mental illness.
Nothing can be done that will prevent mass shootings from happening. Denying a specific group (and that includes Veterans that can't handle money too) access to their rights to own firearms and forces them to appeal that decision to get their rights back is wrong. I don't like guns. What I don't like even more is a person denied their rights of due process because they are in a very general category. And that precedent will be used to deny more rights to any group that doesn't fit into the norm. If there is evidence that someone can't handle firearms, then that needs to be adjudicated before a judge. The person should not have to put out money to appeal a decision that denied them due process.
And it isn't just about mass shootings. Mass shootings are shocking and therefore are covered expansively in the media where information reported is not even confirmed and without much thought. It doesn't cover the amount of gun violence that occurs day in and day out. I just don't see what the difference is between a man that shoots one person and one who shoots 58. Both made a conscious decision to take another human being's life. Why aren't we hearing about that? Why aren't we talking about the past of the man who shot his wife to death, and whether there is a history of mental health?
What's more, why are white mass shooters the only ones considered to have a mental illness? Others are called terrorists, or products of the neighborhoods they grew up in. What is the difference between Las Vegas and the Pulse Nightclub shooting that makes one a terrorist attack and not the other? To me, there is no difference. Both men fired into a crowd in order to kill and to ensure terror.
The only thing accomplished by equating Paddock with mental illness is to scare people who need to receive treatment from getting it. Why would someone want to be possibly diagnosed with an illness when the media speculated that a man who shot into 22,000 people causing a mass casualty situation has one or could have one when there is not even the slightest hint that he did?
Mental illness has enough of a negative connotation without adding violence. Paddock is a mass murderer. But to report what he was, a mass murderer wasn't enough. There had to be speculation about his mental health too. Something that shouldn't have even been mentioned. Unless there is a record of being diagnosed with anything, there shouldn't be ANY reason to mention ANY illness as a hypothetical. And never in the context that it is what caused someone to spray bullets on a concert audience.
Stigma is fatal. It is very difficult to try and get treatment when at the same time society says that they are bad, selfish, and violent people. On one hand, they are working on making themselves stable, and on the other hand, they are judged, rejected, and feel like they don't really matter at all. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in this country. Maybe there should be more attention to that, and how to prevent them.
In that regard, strides can be made, that might also intervene on people who have a mental illness and violent tendencies. Health insurance needs to cover more and listen to the doctor's recommendations on whether someone should be discharged from specific treatments. And the way society views the mentally ill needs to change. Mentally ill are not the face of mass shooters, Donald Trump, violence, unreliability, lack of intelligence, etc. Mentally ill people are human beings, with real feelings that get hurt and wants what every single person on this earth wants - to be loved and accepted.
So, please, I beg you, please consider what words you say and how to portray mental illness. Do research. Mental health and the way it is dealt with needs to be changed in regards to health insurance, law enforcement interactions and more. But before that can happen, this country needs to change the way it is looked at and stop stigmatizing it.
It would be so much easier if media and the entertainment industry led that change. It is like any other chronic illness that requires medicine to control but not cure, like diabetes, for example. It shouldn't be presented in conjunction with negativity. There needs to be an open dialog for understanding what people go through.
Everything I have written, I personally know. I have bipolar. And it really bothers me that along with what I have to go through to be stable, I have to deal with the stigma I receive that is placed on me by society, but now I will also have to carry the alleged mental illness of Stephen Paddock because of an act of hate, reprehensible, evil violence. That should not be a burden I or anyone else should have to bear.
Thank you
Carrie Gardner
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