Role of mental illness in our crisis

Five years ago this week, two days after my mother died, Robin Williams killed himself. Deep in grief for mom, I barely noticed. It was only a month or so later that I focused on his suicide. Williams was the consummate comic, the happy man who, apparently, was suffering from depression but hid it behind the clown’s smiling face. Laugh, Pagliacci.

We talked about mental illness, then, and I was glad. It was a necessary conversation, one that had traditionally been discussed – if at all – around kitchen tables in hushed tones. Now, we moved it into the open to save lives.

It was too late for my great grandfather, who’d hung himself many years before I was born out of desperation. It was too late for my brother, who’d wrestled with heavier burdens than we suspected, and went to sleep forever in 1998.

But it wasn’t too late for others who might glimpse a lifeline shimmering on the other side, one made of words of understanding and acts of emotional triage.

It wasn’t as clean and easy as I’d hoped, five years ago. Among the thousands of faceless suicides that followed in the intervening years there were also some crushing familiar ones: Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade. But we continued to speak about mental illness.

That’s why I was shocked to see so many people enraged when the president, among others, talked about a mental health crisis in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings this weekend. El Paso and Dayton became ground zero in the usual political posturing between pro- and anti-gun activists, pro- and anti-immigration activists, those lamenting the impact of opioids and most especially, those who point to a rising tide of bigotry and white supremacy.

All those things played a part. All those things are at the heart of this near-apocalyptic tragedy. But so is mental illness. Think back to Newtown. Adam Lanza murdered 26 kindergartners and first graders. He was white. He had stockpiles of guns. And he was mentally ill.

After the massacre at Sandy Hook, I went to Harrisburg and spoke to a group of state representatives about the need for increased funds for mental health treatment. Former Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams also spoke, about the need for better gun laws. Racism wasn’t on the table then, but if the children had been immigrants instead of white suburbanites, you can be sure it would have been.

Fingers were pointed at all the causes of the bloodshed, including the mental health crisis that led to Newtown, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Aurora, Orlando, Mother Emmanuel, Las Vegas, and on, and on.

But when Donald Trump mentioned mental illness as one of the causes of these mass shootings this weekend, some people were disgusted. They seemed to be saying he was deflecting from the only thing they wanted to focus on: racism. His racism. His followers’ racism. GOP racism. Just racism.

I get that people are apoplectic about Trump. I’m not interested in changing their minds or being his advocate. I don’t care about defending Trump. He doesn’t need or want me doing that.

But I am interested in ripping the partisan facade of concern and a desire to stop the killing, to shreds. Unless we are as willing to discuss mental illness in connection with mass shootings as we are when people kill themselves, we don’t give a damn about saving lives. We care about scoring political points, nothing more.

There are racists, white supremacists, bigots who have found comfort in this presidency. There are Second Amendment advocates who feel a heightened sense of urgency, believing themselves to be under attack. They own a piece of this tragedy.

But we cannot and should not deny the role that desperate, diseased and agonized minds play in the horrific cycle of shootings. We were able to acknowledge it when suicide took beloved comics, cooks, designers and our families.

We need to acknowledge it now, and not let partisan antipathy push us back into the dark hole of shame and silence. It’s a matter of lives, and many more deaths.