MENTAL HEALTH

Mental Health has become the latest convenient way of explaining social irresponsibility. I realize that such a comment will bring an avalanche of criticism down on my head, so let me explain what I mean by that statement. Certain levels of mental health issues have certainly plagued mankind, and womankind, since the beginning of humanity. In recent history, and directly related to the U.S., the madness of King George III was a major contribution to the loss of the British American colonies and the creation of the United States. Mental Health issues obviously exist and societies have developed a plethora of methods for dealing with it – most of them custodial, or worse.

     However, more recently, it has become the go-to excuse to explain almost any level of anti-social behavior in the United States. Whether it be mass shootings, domestic violence, road-rage, homelessness, certain types of people on welfare, unemployment or almost anything that is out-of-the-norm human social behavior. A recent study of mental illness in the U.S. and Europe showed four-times as many cases, per head of population, in States as exist in European countries. That’s impossible, assuming the same criteria are applied to the diagnosis of the condition. If I was a cynic, which I am, I might speculate that those statistics might apply to politicians in Washington DC, but they can’t possibly apply across the nation. I might further speculate, as the cynic I am, that the reason for this seemingly impossible situation is that the psychological part of the American medical profession, and the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S., have found yet another new diagnosis from which to extract money.

     Again, this is not to deny the condition exists, or that advances need to be made to treat real cases. What I am decrying is the convenience of attributing virtually all anti-social behavior to mental illness. We may all be a little crazy, and that includes you and me, but at the numbers currently being identified, it is certainly nonsense. It is merely a great political/social excuse for pigeon-holing erratic behavior and deflecting responsibility for addressing the actual problems. Worse, it has the implication that little can be done about it.

     The idea that such behavior might result from social conditions, environments, and anti-social laws, all of which we could actually do something about, involves just too much effort. It is much easier to slap a label on it and forget it, unless, of course, you are a medical professional or a drug company who could benefit from the label.

     I read somewhere recently that estimates, and I think this was a quote from the Texas governor about Texas, claim that mental health issues affect at 40% of the population. We may all have our opinions about Texans, and particularly the governor, but there is no way in hell that 40% of the population qualifies for this diagnosis. As I said before, slightly crazy, maybe, but that applies to all of us. Publishing a number like 40% not only falsifies the picture, it detracts help for those people who actually have a real problem by severely diluting resources available.

     I don’t know why or how the title of mental illness has become so prevalent so quickly but it is a disservice to the nation, communities, and allows its use as a distraction from dealing with many other problems like gun control.

     The reason this came home to me this week is that I was talking to my personal injury lawyer about the liability of the company insuring the other driver in a car accident I had about two years ago. The driver of the truck I hit pulled off a stop sign, from a side road, straight across in front of me when I was doing the speed limit of 65mph on a major divided highway. The police report says it was totally his fault and I’m lucky to be alive – I was hospitalized for three days. The other insurance company lawyer is now saying that the driver had a seizure, which he had no control over and, therefore he has no liability, and neither does his company nor the insurer. Talk about deflection and distraction, aside from twisting the law to their advantage. Seizures are not mental illnesses, or maybe they are, but immediately you put a label on it, it is a distraction intended to abrogate responsibility.

     In a nutshell, that is the issue. You put a label of mental health, or mental illness, on a person, or on a situation, and that immediately seems to remove responsibility. It is a sickness in our current society that a growing proportion of the population is denying social, community, even family responsibility for their actions because they are being encouraged by the medical and legal professions to think it is not their fault. I’m sorry, they did it and it is their fault.