Mental scare

The U.S. has been plagued by a series of terrifying incidents that put mental health front and center.

Just this weekend, a man opened fire in the third-busiest airport in the nation, killing one person and injuring at least three others before being critically injured himself. The perpetrator is thought to have been mentally ill, suffering from paranoia or
depression.  

After shaming video game companies and wondering what other societal sins infected the minds of the perpetrators, newspapers and television pundits inevitably turn to U.S. mental health services.

Mental illness only gets attention when masses of people get hurt and the perpetrator’s history of treatment is used as evidence against them. It’s about the only time anyone cares to take a look at a system that fails every day, not just when a shooting occurs.

Too often we ask why these people weren’t stopped rather than why they weren’t helped.

In any given year, more than 26 percent of Americans will suffer from some sort of diagnosable mental illness. That translates to almost 60 million Americans who would benefit from mental health care.

That’s more than four times the 13.7 million Americans who have ever had cancer.

When we limit our national dialogue on mental illness to when people experiencing mental illness carry out violent acts, we’re equating mental illness with violence.

For fear of being stigmatized, some of the people who need treatment will refuse to seek it. And that will just make their problems worse.

Imagine having a broken leg, but refusing to see a doctor because then someone might know your leg is broken. Last week on the news, you heard that everyone with a broken leg is dangerous and unstable.

So you don’t get any X-rays, you don’t get a cast. You hope your leg will heal properly on its own.

This is the message we’re sending people with mental disorders.

Instead of making mental health the issue of the week when something terrifying happens, we need to actively de-stigmatize these illnesses.

We should be talking about mental health all the time.

By actively challenging culturally-held assumptions about mental illness, 26 percent of the U.S. population can stop suffering in silence.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Casey Farrington on Twitter @casefarr.