Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I am writing this letter in an effort to end the stigma that people suffering from mental health illnesses are dangerously violent and unpredictable. According to Mentalhealth.gov, “The vast majority of people with mental health problems are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Most people with mental illness are not violent and only 3 to 5 percent of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness.

“In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. You probably know someone with a mental health problem and don’t even realize it, because many people with mental health problems are highly active and productive members of our communities.”

This is a good thing because one in five of us suffers from a mental illness, so if there are 350 million people in America, there are 70 million who suffer from a mental illness.

The false perception that mental illness increases violence stems from the national media’s sensationalizing of mass shootings and school shootings and from politicians who claim our country’s mental health problems are to blame. This of course ignores the fact that most of the violence, and about half of the mass shootings committed in our society, is perpetuated by people without mental illness.

The media seeks to scare and enrage us by distorting the actual danger. In a country with 350 million people, last year 2018, we had three school shooters, and 24 adult mass shooters.

That is a minuscule fraction of our population. In 2018, we suffered 29 deaths and 40 injuries in our schools due to school shooters. Though tragic, this is a minuscule fraction of our 75 million students.

The national media calls it an epidemic. Twenty-nine deaths is also a very small fraction of 7000, which represents the number of students who completed suicide last year, many of which could have been saved had they received treatment.

People with mental illness suffer from severe social stigma and often avoid treatment because of it. In addition to the actual disease, societal discrimination leads to further conditions such as stress, anxiety and self-loathing.

Each year, the Secret Service completes a National Threat Assessment concerning mass shootings; and each year, they conclude that you cannot profile mass shooters because they vary so widely in demographics, ideologies, goals and grievances. Yet our media, politicians and school administrators continue to target and discriminate against our most vulnerable segment of society.

It is my belief that, if we ended this discrimination, we would lessen the number of mass shootings because more people would seek treatment, and less people would be unfairly targeted. Yes, about half of the school shooters suffered from mental illness, but 100 percent of them felt aggrieved and disenfranchised by their school. Food for thought.

Doug Donnell