I often find myself unable to articulate what I'm thinking -- if my eyes could follow my thought process, they would dart around a space, a room, the world at lightning speed, making connections between a sound and a song and a phrase and a book and a talk and a person and a place...there'd be invisible threads connecting virtually everything. It's perhaps for this reason that I find data, statistics, analyses so interesting; they create connections and ties between things in a way that's understandable.
Well, here's another link, another connection:
Our country seems to like to use mental health as a scape goat. An easy way out to a more deeply-seeded policy, societal, legal, or structural issue that we don't want to face.
Take, for example, the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. We were so quick to talk about keeping those deemed mentally ill away from weapons, of the mental health of the shooter. Certainly, this is an issue. I personally don't see why people need guns at all, but that is just my personal opinion. But this nagging, blind focus on mental health...just a distraction, an easy way out compared to examining gun policies, putting up the good fight against the National Rifle Association, to re-evaluating what we mean in our interpretation and protection of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. We seem quick to demonize those suffering from schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and all sorts of other mental health challenges, quick to rule out the possibility that bad policies and crazed protection of gun rights might be somewhat at fault.
Take, for example, the tragedy and the unflagging pursuit of Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, technology genius, my friend's partner in life and love. The media and some others are so fixated on Aaron's supposed battle with depression as the cause of his death (I say "supposed" only because I did not know him well enough to presume that I would know anything about his health). Out of fear of the work and constant pressure and persistence that real change requires, we run to blame the deceased, we run to blame those who are not here to defend or explain themselves. Instead of asking ourselves the deeper questions: should education be free, do we need reform to our mechanisms of legal prosecution, do we need more checks on the judicial system...instead of asking ourselves these important things, we flit our eyes away and point at whatever moves first.
Let us not presume to know what once plagued those who walked the Earth yesterday -- let us embrace and support those among us who grapple with mental illness and mental health, and let us be brave and step forward, seeking to make laws, systems, rules, the world, better in earnest.
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