Health Care Talk (HCTalk.com)

[ilivitup]

By Pippa Abston MD, PhD, FAAP
This post is not from either a left or right political perspective– it is political only in one of Webster’s definitions of politics as the total complex of relations between all people in a society. But as a NAMI member (National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group comprised largely of family members of people with serious mental illness) and also as a general pediatrician who cares for some children and teens with serious mental illness, I feel obligated to speak up.

The shootings in Arizona were tragic from every angle. I do not know if the shooter will turn out to be diagnosed with a mental illness that caused him to act this way or not– I am not his doctor. But in any case, there are some very important things we need to know.

First, studies have been done on the percentage of mentally ill people who commit violent acts compared to the percent of non-ill people, and it is actually about the same. The difference is only that mentally ill people, if they commit violent acts while ill, are likely to have done so as a direct result of their illnesses. So we do not need to be afraid of people who are mentally ill, in general, more than we are afraid of any other group. Humans have the unfortunate capacity for violence (thankfully, we also have a great capacity for compassion).

Second, if people with mental illnesses get the appropriate and timely treatment they need, they are very, very unlikely to be violent.

So what we need to do as a society, to lessen the risk of such violence, is to work for easily accessible and effective treatment for mental illness. We need to know the warning signs of possible mental illness, so that we can recognize them in others, and we need to know what to do if we suspect a problem. But this will not be possible, I believe, unless we also work to reduce the terrible stigma of mental illness. Because of this stigma, persons and family members not only lack knowledge about what to do, but they are often too embarrassed to seek help. The possibility of being judged and socially penalized if others find out is real.

Young adulthood is a high risk time for people to develop illnesses like schizophrenia. Families may not understand what is happening– some try to get help but can’t afford or find it, and instead live in fear that their loved ones will do something terrible that would never happen without the illness. When bad things do happen, others who don’t know them often blame these suffering families.

Please go to http://www.nami.org and educate yourself. Donate if you can, and join a local chapter. There are so many things we could do to improve mental illness treatment in our country.
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