Let’s tackle mental illness as we once did cancer
Our society’s wait-and-see attitude means violence, suicide, and stigma
There has been a lot of coverage in the news and on social media about the horrific slayings of three Mounties in Moncton earlier this month and the mass killing of six people in Santa Barbara, Calif., in late May before the gunman took his own life.
To me, both incidents are reminiscent of the four men and one woman slain at a Calgary house party in April.
All involved perpetrators who were young men from respected families.
Their families had all attempted to get them help for rapidly developing mental-health issues.
All had acted out violently before help could intervene.
All left behind grieving families and friends of their victims.
All have also devastated their own family and friends; leaving them to wonder what could they have done differently to prevent these tragedies.
The young man in California has been cast as a woman hater because of Internet postings.
To those of us who work in the mental health field, those rants are similar those the Unabomber made against technology.
Just because the focus of the California shooter’s insanity was directed at women doesn’t make him any less mentally ill. Those with serious mental illnesses often have trouble with relationships. We don’t read body language well. We miss important social clues like flirting or hinting or hidden agendas.
The young man who killed the Mounties has been cast as one of those anti-government gun nuts that we like to think as belonging exclusively to the United States.
To those who are descending into a serious mental illness where paranoia is a main symptom, the government is an ordinary focus of that paranoia. Outbursts against authority aren’t the illness or disorder; they are simply a symptom of a deeper problem.
When I had my first psychotic break as a young adult, my father tried to get me admitted to hospital. He was told to just take me home and take care of me by himself. I had lost complete touch with reality and was a potential danger to myself. He had to make the crushing decision to return home, leaving me alone in Edmonton.
I wandered the streets in a fog, unaware of who or where I was. Eventually, I ended up in a psychotic state in a local church. With no one to take care of me, the emergency room was forced to admit me to the psychiatric ward, where I received the help I desperately needed. The medical intervention saved my life, and has allowed me to become a productive member of society.
I was every bit as vulnerable as an 80-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease who has walked away from home or a nursing facility. When it is our grandparents who are in need of care, it makes the news. Every police officer on the beat is told to keep their eyes out. If, however, it is an 18-year-old adult child, their parents will have trouble getting the police to even take a report about them.
Some families are placed in a position of having to file complaints against their children to get them help. These kids literally have to commit a violent act before our health services can be forced on them.
Why is it a civil liberty issue that people who are too sick to know they are sick are allowed to wander around in a daze, unable to protect themselves? We know that the mentally ill are much more likely to be victims of crime than to be perpetrators, but when someone in desperate need of intervention does act out, it is usually is some type of front-page, dramatic fashion.
Ten per cent of people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are dead within 10 years of diagnosis, primarily by suicide. At least 40 per cent attempt suicide. That’s a higher rate of mortality than AIDS, which now has a treatment if not a cure. The same can be said for most mental illnesses: They are treatable, if not yet curable.
Many jurisdictions in the U.S., including California, allow for the authorities to check on the well-being of those in mental-health crises and involuntarily take them for treatment. Even then, people can fall through the cracks. In the recent California case, police were sent to check on him, but he was able to present a sane enough face that they didn’t investigate further, or the officers involved didn’t have adequate training to recognize the danger this young man presented to himself and others.
In Alberta, we have a law on the books to enforce community treatment on the mentally ill. However it is rarely used, and then only with someone with a prior history of violence or severe non-compliance with medical treatment.
In Edmonton, we have trained Police and Crisis Teams (PACT) who can be called to aid those with mental illnesses, yet how many people know how to access them?
Ultimately, I would love to see all constables receive PACT-level training since they’re often the first, or only, mental health interventions that our most vulnerable citizens receive. It shouldn’t be that way, and doesn’t have to be.
Our inactivity as a society until something horrible happens in effect criminalizes mental illness, which is first and foremost an illness and a medical issue. These tragedies will continue to happen until we learn to diagnose and treat mental illnesses as quickly and as aggressively as we do cancer.