This is my cousin, Brent, and on December 18 2009, he died by suicide.
As a child, Brent was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. If you know anything about mental illness at all, you know that it's very rare for a child to have this disease.
I've written about him before and I will write about him time and time again.
Why?
Because mental illness needs to be on the front of our minds. The shooter at Sandy Hook is said to have a personality disorder.
This of course, hits me close to home and I'm just so dismayed by mental illness and the tragedy that can happen as a result. There is such a stigma that is associated with mental illness and it causes so many to not be treated and so many parents to deny that their child is different.
I am not saying that all mentally ill people will do horrible things like killing themselves or others, but I am saying that it's a shame that these things happen and their mental illness is put to blame.
Mental illness is no different from having asthma or heart disease. There are symptoms with a mental illness just as there are with a head cold or anything else we go to the doctor for.
Yet, these tragedies happen and it makes the stigma worse. Because of this tragedy, people will be even more scared of mental illness.
I can honestly say one of the scariest moments of my life was walking into a room and seeing my cousin huddled in the corner, trying to hide from voices in his head. One of the most heartbreaking moments was hearing that because of his illness, he thought my family was conspiring to kill him. It was heartbreaking to hear one of my patients in my psych rotation tell me that his mental illness convinced him that he needed to die, but that he was so thankful the bullet missed his heart so he could see his grandchildren. It breaks my heart when autistic children are made fun of. It hurts me when I see people joke and say "Oh, she's so bipolar this week." And it breaks my heart that possibly due to a mental illness, Adam Lanza did what he did.
But I'm not scared of these men. I'm scared of the untreated illness and the symptoms associated with it.
Please, when you hear that someone has a mental illness, whether its bipolar, major depression, schizophrenia, or anything else, do not think negatively about that person. Just go about your day as if you would if that person had told you they had asthma.
Stop joking about mental illness. Stop joking about suicide. Stop joking about the things that mentally ill people do.
Note: There are, of course, many other factors in this tragedy as well as other factors of mental illness. Another reason that mental illness is so under treated is that many do not recognize they have a mental illness to begin with. That is why it is so important to recognize the signs in your family members and insist they get help. There are also things Adam Lanza could have done, like going to a hospital before he decided to kill all those adults and children. I hope and pray that he was in a state of psychosis because I simply can't believe that anyone not in that state could do what he did.
This post is not meant to excuse his behavior, simply vent about the stigma in general.
Note 2: The diagnosis I am referring to is a media article I read that stated that Adam had a personality disorder. I am not referring to his diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome
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17 comments:
I love you for this. My cousin (who is 19) has Aspergers, and when they describe him as a "loner" and very intelligent, it makes me think of my cousin and that he would never do such a thing. For one, there should be a law that a mentally incapacitated/unstable person should not be able to have guns or live in a home with someone who does have them.
And do you know how many times people have called me "bipolar" because I got pissed at them for treating ME like crap?? Ya. Mental illness is nothing to joke about. I had a brother-like friend that killed himself because he was mentally unstable.
So, thank you for this post. This is the best one I have seen so far. I am trying to stay away from these posts because they are all so sad. But yours stuck out. Loved it!
Mental illness needs to be addresses and accepted... People with these disorders need (and deserve) the help, guidance & respect given to sometime with a broken arm or a bad heart. I agree that we need to get rid if the stigma associated with mental illness, especially as a mom of a special needs child. The shooters disability is not an excuse, of course. Thank you for this post!
Thank you for your post! I totally agree with you. I have worked with Autism, I have seen mental illness like depression happening to my close friends, I have seen people that should have gotten help not getting it because they are scared about the social stigma (and their health insurance). I have also seen people that needs help is not getting it as some of the health sectores in the world does not allow use of force to treat people, so they have to say they want the treatment even though they are psychotic or extremely out of balance.
Great post. I am a therapist and have worked with just about every mental illness out there. I agree with you that the awareness of it needs to be raised and that people need a true understanding of it. Thank you for sharing.
Love this post. I've been praying for the shooter's soul, which I'm sure many people can't understand, but I also believe he had to have been sick.
Mental illness --- of all kinds --- need to be discussed without judgment. People don't understand how serious depression and anxiety can be. They're just just something you "get over."
P.S. I think the shooter was Adam Lanza. They originally thought it was Ryan, but that's his brother.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your cousin. And yes, I agree wholeheartedly with this post. There is something majorly wrong with the way we address mental illness when a large percentage of our prison population is suffering without any help whatsoever. It needs to be a priority!
Have there been reports of mental illness with Adam Lanza? All I have heard about/read about is his Aspergers, which is not a mental illness, and alluding that it is would be quite insensitive to the Autism community. Is there another diagnosis I'm unaware of?
I really got shot down by my family for expressing these views on the incident on Saturday afternoon. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. We all don't know what was going on in that poor man's mind to drive him to do such a terrible thing - all we can do is speculate. My uncle committed suicide when I was 4 years old, and even at that tender, young age it made a lasting impression. Mental illness is nothing to joke about and I completely agree with you that we can't make excuses for him, but Adam Lanza was obviously very sick and it makes me sad to think that this whole tragedy could have been avoided if he had only sought help.
I love you for writing this. I feel the exact same way. It is scary and sad that people are so ignorant to mental illness in this day and age. I am bipolar and thank God I am afforded the opportunity to get help and the knowledge of where to get it. Thank you.
Great post...the stigma needs to be addressed. And people with a mental illness need to be treated with respect and helped.
I don't understand, how in America, people have the right to bare arms, but not to healthcare. This needs to be rethought.
Mmm. good stuff. Thank you.
This is a great post Paige. Not only are people fearful and uninformed about mental illnesses, but they tend to ignore the warning signs as well. I lost someone due to suicide five years ago and I believe that if the people closest to him at that time had been paying closer attention, his death could have been prevented.
Great Post and I'm sorry about your cousin :(
Great post! I definitely agree that there needs to be a change when it comes to the stigma of mental illness. I work in a psychiatric hospital and whenever I tell people that is where I work, I sometimes get weird looks and even weirder questions about it. What I've learned from working with mental illness is that not everyone is willing to get help and sometimes you just don't know what a person is going to do, regardless of warning signs. This is a very sad situation and the media isn't making it any better by putting violence and Aspergers in the same sentence.
Great post!
people need to understand that its a metal illnesses, its no ones fault! We need to see more answers and plans put in place to help those who have mental illnessess and we need to put more work and effort to finding answers to help others coop more better in life. My bro was diagnosed with PTSD a few years back, and the waiting period to speak with doctors, and the plans set in place are nothing there small, they dont help MORE needs to be done and FASTER. They fill patients up with drugs that they think might work, when its not they give them a higher doseage or a new type forcing different meds is not the answer!
I am so sorry to hear about your cousin! I am just finally getting a chance to check out your blog (I managed to coordinate my two little ones naps today... YAY me!)... I was so happy to come across this post as I had the similar reaction to Friday's tragedy and also posted about mental illness as a clear factor and the stigma our world has against it. I was afraid to post it, as I'm only a month into blogging, and was afraid of losing the few followers I had, but went with it. I am glad to see that your post was understood and received the support of so many! (Sorry if I come up as a "no-reply" commenter, I use Wordpress and haven't yet figured out how not to be a "no-reply" commenter on most blogs *sighs*)
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