Week of September 14, 1998Violence.
No ones for it. So when it's linked to mental illness it indelibly stains those affected by schizophrenia, manic depression, clinical depression.
I was looking through the New York tabloids this morning - despite the fact that Monica Lewinsky still consumes the news hole, there were the usual - couple held in murder of elderly socialite, mother arrested for killing her four children, teen took a shot at a cop, a man who helped track a rapist now being held on rape himself. There is plenty of violence in the world. Why is it that when someone with mental illness commits a crime it ends up on the front page?
Take the case of Michael Laudor, the Yale lawyer with schizophrenia accused of murdering his fiancee in Westchester, NY. The New York Daily News reported the story responsibly. Tragedy in Westchester they called it, noting that most people with schizophrenia are not violent and that with new drugs unprecedented numbers of people are recovering. Then there was the New York Post. The headlines: Psycho-Killer. Sicko. They didn't even use the word "alleged." If he is a man with an illness, why the ridicule?
There are those who say the easy answer is lock 'em up. It's easy to say once the crime has been committed. They should have been locked up. Well that's sort of obvious.
But could you really walk into a room filled with people and make the decision about who should be locked up and who shouldn't? Walk into a bar - any bar. On a Saturday night. At 11 p.m. Chances are there is one guy who you can just look at and tell is heading for a fight. Might take a swing. Or worse. Should we lock him up? To protect him and others? How about that homeless guy talking to himself at the ATM? Seems pretty edgy? Lock him up too? What about that mother slapping her kid in the grocery line? Chances are she does worse at home. Off to the hooskow? It's a pretty slippery slope.
The problem with the mental illness/violence connection is that it affects everyone with a mental illness. Dr. Fuller Torrey - who is known as the patient's doctor when it comes to schizophrenia, has joined forces with DJ Jaffe and Mary Sardonowiz - who you heard on this broadcast - to spread the word that there is a strong link between untreated mental illness and violence, and to protect society we need more funding for the care and treatment of people with mental illness. A worthy goal. However, Dr. Torrey and his associates are taking a calculated gamble. Stipulate to the violence issue and hopefully more funds will flow for the care and treatment of people with mental illness. However - let me tell you a story.
I had the occasion to speak with Michael Lauder before his girlfriend's murder, and he told me that when he was looking for work - a Yale Law school graduate, law review - all that - he went on a job interview at a law firm. The partner asked him if he was violent? Violent? It seems so spooky now.
But wait a minute - fade to black, and then cut to myself, a few weeks after I was hospitalized for manic depression. At the time I was an Emmy-Award winning investigative network TV producer. I was interviewing for a job as a producer for a well-known consumer reporter. I went through the interviews, and was called in to talk salary and start date. Then the question. Somehow he learned that I had manic depression. He asked me why I had been in the hospital. At that point I was far less forthcoming than now - and told him that I had been exhausted and had spent a few weeks resting up. The job went away - just like that. The moral is that when you paint all people with mental illness as unpredictable or violent, it spills over onto everyone. You, me, your mother, your fiancee, everyone.
The company that produces this program - The Infinite Mind -- recently did research into what makes people prejudice against people with mental illness, and what could change their attitudes. It was for a mental health anti-stigma campaign. The findings were fascinating.
When asked if they personally knew someone with a serious mental illness, more than half of the 500 people randomly polled said "yes" - they did know someone - a brother, a father, a cousin - with depression, manic depression or schizophrenia. And about them they felt compassionate, and supportive and empathetic and yes - even, if you believe this - that more tax money should be spent to help them. However, when you asked the same people about "the mentally ill" - the needle swings dramatically the other way. The mentally ill in their eyes were the guy at the ATM machine, or the woman in subway station, or that man who stabbed the baby with the pencil in a train. No, they said, the mentally ill were unpredictable, and they were afraid. They didn't make the connection - that the people they were afraid of - the mentally ill - were just the very few who were the most visible - just the tip of the iceberg -- because they were on the streets, or in the ATM booth - or on the front page of the New York Post. They represent a very small percentage of people with mental illness. They don't make the connection that the mentally are really the rest of the iceberg - the 99% below the surface - who put on a suit and tie every day, and take their medication, and go to work. These are not people who are violent. These are not people who need to be locked up. They are our sisters, and mothers, and sons and daughters and our friends.
And so it is the very few who can exhibit violence - a percentage no larger than that of any population if you believe the research - that drives our national attitude and policy affecting all the rest of us with a mental illness. I have been psychotic. I was not violent. I am not a violent person. Anyone can get a mental illness, including a person with a tendency towards violence - a wife beater, a child abuser, a bully - and when they do chances are they may become violent. How will you know. It will be there - in 96 point typeface on the front page of the New York Post.
For The Infinite Mind, I'm Bill Lichtenstein.
