If you are saying that the proper solution to her situation is to lament the “stigmatization” of her child, then I absolutely disagree with you, just as I disagree with her.
Do you think I am untouched by the difficulty she has faced, and that apparently you have too? I was around and following the stories when the great move to “mainstream” the mentally ill was taking place...I’d had some experience (not as a patient, thankfully) in some of the subpar institutions that warehoused the mentally disabled and mentally ill, and while I rather airily hoped that the changes would bring about good results, I didn’t quite see how it was going to work.
I am not minimizing her terrible situation. Maybe her perspective and her reasoning fell apart in the face of the monumental difficulties you are pointing to.
I am just saying that it is NOT the stigmatizing of the mentally ill that is the problem for her or her child, any more than the stigmatization of paper food stamps was the problem 10 and more years ago for those who received them. (Removing the stigma of food stamps didn’t end the problem of indigence, just as removing diagnoses and intervention didn’t cure mental illness.)
I can’t tell you how to ‘fix’ the problem. You have deep and haunting (if I read you correctly) personal experience with the situation. I would ask you to tell us.
Do you understand my frustration with her column? It was not that she was torn by her love and her pain, not that she wanted counseling and practical help with her plight, not that it seemed to her, as to you, that there are no answers...it was that she seemed to want help with this once-beloved but monstrous presence in her life, yet she demanded that none of us notice or label the monster.
It seems to me that the pre-emptive option you mention (and which seems the only hope to me) would involve the very labelling and stimatization that this poor mother dreads.
Sir, truly, I offer you and her my best wishes, and my prayers.
I don’t know why you are focused on the word “stigma,” because she only used it once, and correctly, in the column. And I don’t think it was a “whine,” but rather an apt descriptive term.
I believe her valid point is that there needs to be a very hard and frank discussion about how to treat the mentally ill, both for their benefit and for our protection.
I have seen severe mental illness up close, in two family members, through numerous commitments, both voluntary and involuntary. One was assuredly dangerous, the other probably not.
Society, both current and throughout history, treats mental sickness differently than other illness, although drug treatment in many cases is highly effective.
Mental illness IS stigmatized. No one wants to admit they have it, the afflicted refuse to acknowledge they need help, and we’d all just like to hide it away.
Over and over we see psychopaths commit mass murders, and then an outcry blaming the family or firearms or both.
The simple truth that we won’t admit is that these deranged people are beyond the control of their families, that our mental health systems and laws offer scant support or help, that there is no good way to prevent them from perpetrating mayhem, and that if every gun in the country was destroyed they’d just find another way.
McVeigh, who was apparently sane but evil, used a truck and fertilizer. How long till some nutcase walks into a school with a can of gasoline and a lighter?
We must, for our own protection, reform our mental health system to get these people off the streets, but it’s a hard conversation.
Kudos to this mom for starting it.