Mental illness and public safety

Advocates for the mentally ill disagree on how to reconcile the tension between patients rights and public safety. I agree with Stuart Schneiderman when he points out

Given a free choice, most paranoid schizophrenics will refuse treatment because they do not want it. They are afraid that medication will silence their voices and make it more difficult to sustain their delusions. The last thing they are worried about is the stigma attached to mental illness.

When the voice of God tells you to open fire or to jump off the building, you are not thinking about a stigma. You are not thinking about anything: you are obeying the command.

Do you really believe that James Holmes and Adam Lanza were worrying about social stigmas when they opened fire? Did they care about being ostracized by polite society?

Surely, it is true that science has made significant advances in discovering medication to treat schizophrenia. And yet, when you allow the patient the choice of whether or not he is going to take his medication, it does not much matter how effective the medication is.

It took public relations genius to make a handful of white schizophrenics the face of American gun violence. And to blame it on the NRA.

Give credit to those who used the massacres at Tucson, Aurora and Newtown to obscure the issue of who is really committing gun violence in America.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a crusade for stricter gun laws, so that all of America can have restrictive gun laws, like his city does.

How’s that working out?

Glad you asked. In New York City last weekend 25 people were shot in 48 hours. 6 people were killed.

Those of us who believe that the gun violence committed by paranoid schizophrenics can best be controlled by committing and treating such patients involuntarily have had their voices drowned out by the drumbeat against the NRA.

The people who wrote the laws allowing paranoid schizophrenics to control their own treatment bear the greatest responsibility for what these poor souls do with their “freedom.”