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In one act of madness, Jared Loughner reinforced the illusion that mental illness is incurable, unmanageable and dangerous to the broader community. I cringe every time I hear a story like this: the Fort Hood shootings, the Virginia Tech Massacre, the Columbine Shootings. The headlines repeat and are seared into our brains. The implication of such mental illness run amok is that we are helpless, victims to the mystery of a broken brain. Loughner has done more than kill six people and wound several others including Rep Gabrielle Gifford. He has sent thousands of people into hiding about mental illness. He has resurrected the wall of misunderstanding between those familiar and unfamiliar with the disease.
The facts are that Loughner's version of mental illness is a miniscule minority and our laws conspire to keep Loughner from the treatment that might help him stay well. In the US today approximately 26.2% of adults 18 and over suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, about 57.7 million people.(1)According to Dr. Fuller Torrey, author of The Insanity Offense, approximately 400,000 of these are the difficult cases that refuse to take medication and often end up "homeless, incarcerated, victimized and/or violent." 40,000 of those fall into the category of Loughner: the proven dangerous/noncompliant.(2) Loughner exhibited behavior that convinced everyone around him that he was a human time bomb. The bad news is our legal system allowed him to be kicked out of a college campus without notifying local authorities. The good news is that only .06% of those who suffer from mental illness fall into this highly dangerous category.
Looking at the news stories on mental illness, one would never guess that for every clinically depressed person who takes their own life or someone else's, there are millions who manage their mental illness. Each day plenty of people take their medication and live productive, loving and full lives. One also might not guess that only 1.5% of suicides occur in the context of murder-suicide, and many of these are a situation of a chronically ill person and caretaker.(3) As media becomes more and more about entertainment than information, a story about a person who guns down others then kills himself is far more interesting than detailing a story about how someone who recognized a problem, took action and became a productive member of society. Yawn. As an agent with an affected New York/British blended fake accent who turned down my book once said to me, "where's the DRAMA in that?"
The drama is we can save lives and open minds with positive stories. My guess is people who read Psychology Today already understand mental illness. I'd like to give you a mission. Educate someone who does not understand that mental illness can be managed. Teach him or her that someone who carries a gun with a capacity mag designed to nail more people to prove some skewed view of a sick brain might be mentally ill, but most likely that mental illness is untreated. Tell a positive story and show the drama of a life well lived. These stories give people hope and encourage those suffering to seek help. If we tell them, more people will live. If we don't, we let Loughner and the lunatics win.
1. National Institute of Health, "The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America," n.d., <http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml>
2. Fuller Torrey, The Insanity Offense (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 5-6.
3. Thomas Joiner, Why People Die by Suicide (MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 149.
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