Ignore Mental Health And We Pay The Consequences
There used to be this little guy in the town where I grew up whose wife had him committed to a mental hospital for a while. Every night after he got out, he’d come down to the beer garden to play 500 rummy, and inevitably some drunk would bring up his hospitalization, just to pick a fight.
“Hey! Crazy!” some whiskey voice would shout, and every time, the guy would offer the same retort. “I’m sane as you are, bud,” he’d say amiably, pulling out his discharge forms, “and I got the papers to prove it. Which is more ‘n most people can say.”
At that point, everybody would laugh, and not just because his comeback was pretty good. Mental illness is a deeply uncomfortable subject for people. Witness the recent discomfort in the federal courthouse in Sacramento, Calif.
For those of you who may have been holed up in a Montana cabin (or rural beer garden), a hermit who is perhaps tragically uncomfortable with the subject of mental illness is being tried in the Unabomber attacks. Questions about Theodore Kaczynski’s innocence waned in the pileup of bomb parts and manifestoes found in his shack; the question became whether the jury will get the full, wrenching picture, will realize that, as the little guy back home would put it, he’s not as sane as you are, bud.
Only in a nation whose laws on the insanity defense are crazy would there be any legal - or nonlegal - tap dancing about mental health in this case. This is a man who reportedly tried to hang himself last Thursday morning, who has told his lawyers that he is a helpless puppet and that satellites put electrodes in people’s brains.
Healthy people don’t hide in the backwoods with wild hair and matted beards, as Kaczynski was doing when the authorities, acting on a tip from his anguished brother, brought him in. Healthy people don’t squirrel away journals that, according to prosecutors, say things like, “It is possible that, when I am caught (not alive, I fervently hope!) there will be some speculation in the news media as to my motives for killing.”
Healthy people, when they go to college, aren’t remembered later for the severity and squalor of their loneliness. One of Kaczynski’s Harvard dorm mates recalled after the arrest that he didn’t remember Kaczynski having spoken more than 10 words in three years.
It would seem, given this sort of information, that the real mystery about Ted Kaczynski would be: Why didn’t someone, somewhere, get him some help? Why was it that - even at an institution as vaunted as Harvard University - no one cared to see that he was sick and getting sicker every day?
But mental illness is a deeply uncomfortable subject for people. As Kaczynski went to trial last week in some of the bombings that claimed three lives, pundits and prosecutors fretted that his disruptions might be signs that he was “crazy like a fox,” whatever that means. And Kaczynski, railing against any suggestion he is insane, basically made it clear that he’d rather be executed than face the possibility that he has a problem with his mental health.
In this respect, the goings-on in Sacramento may be extreme, but they are only a reflection of a mind-set shared by a lot of Americans. Our attitude toward mental ailments, big and small, is one of this nation’s last - and most damaging - bastions of ignorance and bigotry.
In this confessional society, we will talk freely about everything from our breast implants to our near-death experiences, but God forbid that anyone find out we once visited a shrink. A 1993 study done by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill found that 52 million adults suffer from symptoms of mental illnesses each year, yet only 28 percent seek help.
That people as beloved as Abe Lincoln or as talented as author William Styron have suffered from mental illness, that the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent, doesn’t seem to make the stigma go away. Joel Sunkin, a veteran psychologist in the Los Angeles area, says the fear of prejudice is one of his patients’ most common concerns. “If you broke your leg and went to a doctor,” he asks them, “would you feel this kind of disgrace?”
Personal prejudice translates into public prejudice. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division likened the mental facilities at the Los Angeles County Jail to something out of medieval times. In California’s board and care homes, schizophrenics and elderly people undergoing therapy have, in the past year, had to fight just to keep the meager counseling benefits they receive via Medicare.
Two months ago, when researchers from the Rand Corp. and UCLA found that employers could bring mental health coverage into parity with other medical coverage for just a dollar more per worker in premiums a month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blew them off with the lame rationale that even a tiny cost is too much.
The tragedy of all this, of course, is that study after study shows that mental health care works. Even schizophrenics have a 50 percent or better rate of recovery - if they get good treatment and their benefits don’t run out. Consumer Reports, believe it or not, did a survey in 1994, and, scoff if you like, but about 90 percent of those who had gotten therapy said it substantially improved their lives. Maybe you have anecdotal evidence from your own life and observations; I certainly do from mine.
Imagine the burdens that would be lifted if we put the health of our hearts and souls and minds on a par with the health of the rest of ourselves. Imagine how it would feel to stop howling for vengeance for the inexplicable, unredressable acts of the sick, and do something to understand and stop them from happening again.
We have it within our power to be wiser than the people who, it is alleged, allowed the Unabomber to languish until it was too late. We have the means to make this society, well, as sane as you are, bud.
Which is more ‘n most people can say.
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