Mental illness is all the blame for school shootings these days, that and easy access to guns. Two easy fixes according to the talking heads of cable news, but the fact of the matter is that mental illness is not the evil of society that our television celebrities would lead us to believe. Banning people with mental illness from college campuses will not make the world a safer place to live. A belief that it will is no more than a façade meant to placate a society that is uneducated about persons with mental illness.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the more likely scenario is for the person with mental illness to be the victim of violence as opposed to being the perpetrator. According to the Surgeon General, “the overall contribution of mental disorders to the total level of violence in society is exceptionally low.”
There is nothing easy about understanding why a person decides to gun down those standing in a schoolyard. There is not one thing that we can point to in order to make sense of it all. It is a senseless tragedy. The biggest myth is that we can prevent it from happening again. We can no more prevent such a tragedy as we can the number of homicides that occur daily in our country. Look at the statistics of sexual abuse of children in Greene County or the atrocities in Africa.
For whatever reason, humans commit unspeakable acts of violence against one another.
Barring persons with mental illness from attending colleges will not make us safer. It might make a lot of people feel better, but it will only serve to discriminate against an entire group of people and further alienate them from society. I suppose there are those who would consider such an act of discrimination a tick mark in the win column. Ostricizing groups of people, be they women, people of color, people of faith, people without faith, or people with disabilities, is never a good thing for a society.
For more information regarding NAMI or the Surgeon General’s report on mental health you can click the links below:
NAMI website
NAMI Virginia Tech Tragedy Press Release
Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Illness (1999)
National Institute on Mental Health
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the more likely scenario is for the person with mental illness to be the victim of violence as opposed to being the perpetrator. According to the Surgeon General, “the overall contribution of mental disorders to the total level of violence in society is exceptionally low.”
There is nothing easy about understanding why a person decides to gun down those standing in a schoolyard. There is not one thing that we can point to in order to make sense of it all. It is a senseless tragedy. The biggest myth is that we can prevent it from happening again. We can no more prevent such a tragedy as we can the number of homicides that occur daily in our country. Look at the statistics of sexual abuse of children in Greene County or the atrocities in Africa.
For whatever reason, humans commit unspeakable acts of violence against one another.
Barring persons with mental illness from attending colleges will not make us safer. It might make a lot of people feel better, but it will only serve to discriminate against an entire group of people and further alienate them from society. I suppose there are those who would consider such an act of discrimination a tick mark in the win column. Ostricizing groups of people, be they women, people of color, people of faith, people without faith, or people with disabilities, is never a good thing for a society.
For more information regarding NAMI or the Surgeon General’s report on mental health you can click the links below:
NAMI website
NAMI Virginia Tech Tragedy Press Release
Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Illness (1999)
National Institute on Mental Health
Posts
3 comments:
Jack: That was a great post and you reflected my thoughts so well. Thank you for being a support/advocate for students with disabilities.
Ms. Fat Jack
Great post!
You're right....we can't prevent it from happening again. We stand a better chance at preventing WHERE it happens. I think we need stronger security at schools and big businesses. Of course a few of these incidents happen from within but those that don't could be prevented with tighter security measures. It's too easy to get into our schools if you don't belong there.
I don't believe banning people with mental disabilities is the answer. Taking the necessary precautions to keep the violators out is key. And for those that work from within, gun compromises, not gun control, are the only way to stop easy access to guns whether you have a mental disability or not.
The fallout from the shootings will no doubt bring some dark days for folks with serious and persistent mental illnesses. You made the point well. Thanks for saying what needed to be said.
Post a Comment