Craven: Thinking About Mental Health

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(HOST) From a Tucson parking lot to schools in Vermont, recent tragic events have caused filmmaker, teacher and commentator Jay Craven to reflect on how we think about mental health.

(CRAVEN)
Clearly,
the alleged Arizona killer was troubled.  But terms used by some to describe him, like
wacko, lunatic, and psycho don’t help us understand either him, or the deeper
issues of what can happen when mental health issues go undiagnosed and
untreated.  In Tucson, teachers and students felt
the shooting suspect was weird and potentially dangerous.  Their response was to suggest he get help and
then drop him out of school.  He appears
not to have sought treatment – and to have become increasingly isolated in ways
that only made things worse.

National
Institute of Mental Health estimates that 26% of Americans experience mental
health disorders each year.  Within 20
years, depression is expected to be the leading U.S. cause of disability.  46% of 13-to-18 year-olds suffer mental
disorders during their childhoods – a higher number than face serious physical
conditions.  20% of kids face
difficulties functioning.  But only 6% of
medical expenditures treat mental illness. 

At
least half of us experience bouts with mental health during our lives – after the
break-up of a relationship, the loss of a loved one, an experience in military
combat, as a victim or perpetrator of bullying, trauma, or sexual abuse – or
during a period of addiction or anxiety. 

These
things happen – which is why we shouldn’t only associate mental illness with
extreme conditions. But things can deteriorate when early signs are ignored and
the fear of stigma keeps people from seeking help.   Our challenge is to facilitate recovery by
providing access to quality mental health services that are as easy to obtain
as a mammogram or flu shot.

Very
few people suffering from mental disorders turn to violence.  They’re actually at higher risk of being
victims of homicide or suicide.  Still,
some believe that the Tucson shooter was influenced by
the toxic political environment where we see increasing vandalism, gunshots
into offices, death threats against public figures, and pundits and politicians
hurling terms like target, crush, re-load, bury, and "wipe them out."

Whether
or not this was the case in Tucson, it’s clear that extreme
politics can indeed fuel blind obsession and aberrant forms of behavior.  Millions of Germans, caught up in collective
hysteria, helped Nazi’s seize and exterminate Jews.  Stalinism spawned persecution and paranoia in
the Soviet
Union
and Eastern
Europe.  I’d argue that the virulent
racism that led to lynchings and hateful segregation in America also fostered a collective
state of mental illness.  China’s cultural revolution, the
killings in Rawanda, 1950’s McCarthyism and other extreme movements have all
stimulated hate, violence, and acts of madness that can feed on themselves-and
multiply.

If
we feel moved to take action for our beliefs, the recent celebration of Martin
Luther King’s birthday reminds us that King suffered sometimes deep depression
but never abandoned his belief in the creative power of non-violence – which he
said, "cuts without wounding and enobles the man who wields it.  It is a sword that heals."

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