"Well that explains it..." Scapegoating Mental Health in the Wake of National Tragedies

Please, stop treating mental illness as an explanation for mass violence.

I get that you mean well, trying to generate awareness for a national problem, but it's not coming off that way.

According to GunviolenceArchive.org, about 15,000 Americans are killed by guns. Those deaths are the result of premeditated murders, botched robberies, 'crimes of passion', incompetent law enforcement, and the negligence of 'responsible' gun orders. A relatively small number of those deaths are the result of mass shootings. Oh, but wait... what does the fine print  on that site say?

"22,000 Annual Suicides not included"

And that's just suicides-by-gun. Expand the list to include cutting, poisoning, etc., and the death toll is over 44,000 Americans a year. For a sense of scale, last year's mass shootings claimed 346 lives. Each time such a shooting happens, parents cry out in terror because they fear their child could be the next victim of some unstable lunatic. But every 12 minutes, when a mentally ill person ends their life... most Americans don't really care. Parents don't flood Facebook or Twitter every 12 minutes with posts about how their child could be the next victim of suicide. They don't argue about the impact of politics or government budgets on suicide. Every twelve minutes, mental illness kills someone, but thoughts and prayers are reserved for the survivors of the monthly rampages, and advocacy for better mental healthcare in the United States only pierces the din when a mentally ill person kills a 'normal' person. The message from most Americans seems to be that the mentally ill can go hang themselves. Literally.

While we argue about dreamers and coal miners, mental illness kills five Americans an hour. Five an hour, and most Americans are silent on the matter, only bringing out the words 'mental illness' when they need to explain a national tragedy in human form. "Mentally unstable" is like 'witch' or 'heretic' - it's a label that explains everything heinous, from a rampaging gunman to a greedy president. And no one even really wonders or cares what 'mental instability' consists of, because as far as most Americans are concerned, there's only two dimensions to mental health - completely sane, and bat-crap homicidal.

What history of mental instability did the Florida shooter have before gunning down teenagers at school?

Do you know?

Did you actually read any articles, or did you just see, "shooter had history of mental instability" in a headline, nod your head knowingly, and say "Well, that explains it"? What part of his mental health history explains killing 17 high school students?

Apparently, Nikolas Cruz had a history of ADHD, depression, and possibly autism.

So, which of those mental health issues do you believe motivated him to kill 17 people? Was it his difficulty focusing on tasks? His feelings of hopelessness and thoughts of suicide (he had in the past cut himself and implied he intended to shoot himself)? Or was it being autistic, that should have warned everyone that he was a mass-murderer? Which of those things 'explains' his actions?

Or maybe, just maybe, there were other red-flags that we could be talking about. Expulsion from school? Death of his mother? Perhaps his history of violence at home? Or maybe the swastika and "I hate ******s" statement written on his backpack? Or maybe - and I know this might seem like a stretch - we should have become concerned when he announced his intentions online and used his limited adolescent financial resources to go out and purchase ten rifles.

No, of course not. Getting kicked out of school, losing a parent, and perpetrating domestic violence are too common to be red-flags, and glorifying a genocidal fascist regime while collecting an arsenal of deadly weapons only singles him out as one of the "forgotten men" that would have voted for the current president (if he'd been 18 in 2016). None of those things 'explain' what happened, because for the most part, juvenile delinquents, orphans, fascists, and gun fetishists don't go on shooting sprees. Despite the fact that mass-shooters are almost exclusively white men, we don't generally shake our heads and say, "well, that explains it" when a shooting happens, because we still expect that most white men won't go out and murder a group of people.

But apparently we feel differently about people coping with autism, ADHD, or depression. Apparently, unlike being a literal Nazi, having a mental health diagnosis is enough to label someone as "mentally unstable." That vague categorization in turn is enough for people to look at a tragedy like this and say, "well, that explains it." It's enough to send parents to the internet, clamoring for someone to do something about mentally ill people, before some 'maniac' harms their children - never mind the fact that about 7% of the people flocking to the internet have depression, and over 10% of their children probably qualify for a diagnosis of ADHD.

Oh, it's 12:30pm - 15 Americans - many of them teenagers like the victims of the Florida shooting - have killed themselves in the time I've been writing this.

Don't get me wrong, America gravely needs to address its problems with mental healthcare, and it needs to address its problems with gun violence. I appreciate people standing up and talking about those issues, calling for changes; but could we please stop treating these as the same issue?

Limiting the constitutional rights of Americans based on mental health diagnoses isn't a fair compromise in the debate over gun control. You're saying that Americans diagnosed with mental illnesses aren't entitled to the same constitutional protections as other Americans, saying that they can be placed under the same restrictions as felony criminals. You're saying that all Americans have the need and right to defend themselves - except the mentally ill. You're passing out guns to misogynists, white supremacists, anarchist militiamen, freaky evangelicals, and children (at least in 30 states) but then telling the person with ADHD, "we don't serve your kind here." When you talk about doing that, you're telling millions of Americans with mental illnesses that you trust almost anyone more than a person who has been treated for mental health issues.

That's not a strong motivation to seek treatment, is it?

And by all means, please advocate for better mental health care, better insurance coverage for mental health care, better wellness in life. Advocate for programs and ideas that can prevent, treat, and manage mental illness, as well as protect the mentally ill from discrimination and violence. But please, also realize that we need to destigmatize mental illness, so that we aren't punished when we seek help. People with mental illnesses cope with it all year round; for many of us that means that every 12 minutes we have to make the decision not to become part of that 44,000 that won't make it to the end of the year. Dealing with that continuous grind is all the harder when most other Americans only voice concern about mental health care when a Nazi shoots up a school.

Also, please stop saying Trump is crazy.

It's an insult to crazy people. Not joking; it really is.

In closing, I'm reminded of some words from cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard. Even now, transvestism is something of a contentious point in society, with it some times being the basis for a mental health diagnosis. Some of what Izzard has said about that definitely feels familiar.

"Also, if you're a transvestite, you get lumped into that weirdo grouping, you know? When I was in New York, there was a guy in the Bronx who was living in a cave…like you do, and he was coming out and shooting at geese and… a lot of weird things going on with this guy; and the police picked him up and they found a collection of women's shoes, and they thought, 'Maybe he's a transvestite.' And if he is, he's a ****ing weirdo transvestite! I'm much more in the executive transvestite area. Travel the world, yes, it's much more executive... J. Edgar Hoover, what a ****head he was! They found out when he died that he was a transvestite, and they go, 'Well, that explains his weird behavior!' Yeah, fucking weirdo transvestite!"