Whenever a mass shooting or other act of horrific violence occurs, the mainstream media, political pundits, and members of the public are quick to jump to one of two conclusions—the perpetrator was either autistic or had a psychiatric disability. Aside from the obvious prejudice against disabled people that underpins either assumption, both of these conclusions are not merely wrong, but incredibly irresponsible and unacceptably dangerous. The vast majority of autistic people and those with psychiatric disabilities are not only nonviolent, but much more likely than non-disabled people to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators of it. When autistic people or people with psychiatric disabilities do commit violent crimes, disability is rarely a factor in the commission of the crime. These insinuations place autistic people and those with psychiatric disabilities at extreme risk for further victimization.
For this reason, I am deeply disappointed in President Obama’s plan to reduce gun violence. Do I condemn violence? Of course. Yet, when public discourse is rampant with both overt and implied messages that there is some connection between mental disability and violence, that most violence is committed by the mentally disabled, or that mentally disabled people are more likely to be violent than the non-disabled, it is impossible for me to remain silent in the name of unity or cooperation. I am morally obligated to speak against ableism cloaked by the façade of good intentions.
We could imprison every mentally disabled person in the United States, and violence of all kinds would still continue at the same rates. We could vastly improve access to and availability of services and supports for those with psychiatric disabilities, and rates of violence would also not decrease. There is, therefore, absolutely no reason to include discussion of the (admittedly dismal) state of mental health services as part of a discussion on reducing gun violence, except to pacify public sentiment that conflates violence with mental deviance. Disclaimers that the majority of mentally disabled people are not violent do little to decrease or minimize the impact of emphasizing mental health services as a key component of a plan to address violence.
The fact that the Obama administration is centering the discussion about gun violence around the issue of mental health services suggests that it is pandering to the troubling assumption that only someone who is mentally disabled is capable of committing heinous crimes. This assumption is based on societal prejudices against disabled people, which will only be increased by this type of rhetoric.
Furthermore, while there are genuine concerns both by people with psychiatric disabilities and allies about access to appropriate and desired support services, one devastating consequence of this type of public discourse is increased stigma against mental disability and higher likelihood of mentally disabled people developing internalized ableism and thus not seeking supports or services that they might have otherwise wanted to find. Also underpinning much of this rhetoric is the unspoken assumption (taken for granted) that the appropriate response to mental disability is “treatment” in the medicalized sense, rather than removal of societal, legal, and attitudinal barriers to full inclusion and accessibility.
It is imperative for both policymakers and the public to recognize the dangers inherent in suggestions that only mentally disabled people are capable of committing violent crimes. It is necessary that we develop theories, policies, and practices that challenge the systemic ableism that simultaneously denounces and endangers the disabled. We ought to condemn violence, not behavior that is simply unusual or inconvenient. It should never be acceptable to juxtapose a conversation about reducing violence with a conversation about targeting an entire group of people—particularly a historically marginalized population.
There are many conversations about disability that need to be happening, including discussions both about improving current service provision by public and private entities and about reconstructing societal conceptions of disability and the disabled experience. But it is never appropriate to politicize those conversations while simultaneously perpetrating ableist notions about disabled people for the sake of political expediency.
If we are to actually discuss the connection between disability and violence, why don’t we address the systematic abuse, torture, and killings of disabled people across the U.S.?
Hate crimes against the disabled are rarely tracked and almost never included in discussions about crimes targeting people for actual or presumed membership in particular groups, but it is rampant and pervasive. Unscrupulous service providers and educators enact violence against disabled children placed in their care and under their supervision, often but not always in the name of treatment or therapy, and they are exculpated by the law. Parents and caregivers of disabled children and adults abuse and murder their charges, and they are exonerated in a court of public opinion that perceives them as heroic martyrs suffering because of a “difficult” child. Disabled people are raped, literally and figuratively, when officers of the law refuse to acknowledge violations of their bodies as prosecutable crimes.
If we must investigate the relationship between psychiatric disabilities and violence, we ought to investigate the attitudes that permit these unforgivable crimes. Why isn’t that conversation happening?
source
For this reason, I am deeply disappointed in President Obama’s plan to reduce gun violence. Do I condemn violence? Of course. Yet, when public discourse is rampant with both overt and implied messages that there is some connection between mental disability and violence, that most violence is committed by the mentally disabled, or that mentally disabled people are more likely to be violent than the non-disabled, it is impossible for me to remain silent in the name of unity or cooperation. I am morally obligated to speak against ableism cloaked by the façade of good intentions.
We could imprison every mentally disabled person in the United States, and violence of all kinds would still continue at the same rates. We could vastly improve access to and availability of services and supports for those with psychiatric disabilities, and rates of violence would also not decrease. There is, therefore, absolutely no reason to include discussion of the (admittedly dismal) state of mental health services as part of a discussion on reducing gun violence, except to pacify public sentiment that conflates violence with mental deviance. Disclaimers that the majority of mentally disabled people are not violent do little to decrease or minimize the impact of emphasizing mental health services as a key component of a plan to address violence.
The fact that the Obama administration is centering the discussion about gun violence around the issue of mental health services suggests that it is pandering to the troubling assumption that only someone who is mentally disabled is capable of committing heinous crimes. This assumption is based on societal prejudices against disabled people, which will only be increased by this type of rhetoric.
Furthermore, while there are genuine concerns both by people with psychiatric disabilities and allies about access to appropriate and desired support services, one devastating consequence of this type of public discourse is increased stigma against mental disability and higher likelihood of mentally disabled people developing internalized ableism and thus not seeking supports or services that they might have otherwise wanted to find. Also underpinning much of this rhetoric is the unspoken assumption (taken for granted) that the appropriate response to mental disability is “treatment” in the medicalized sense, rather than removal of societal, legal, and attitudinal barriers to full inclusion and accessibility.
It is imperative for both policymakers and the public to recognize the dangers inherent in suggestions that only mentally disabled people are capable of committing violent crimes. It is necessary that we develop theories, policies, and practices that challenge the systemic ableism that simultaneously denounces and endangers the disabled. We ought to condemn violence, not behavior that is simply unusual or inconvenient. It should never be acceptable to juxtapose a conversation about reducing violence with a conversation about targeting an entire group of people—particularly a historically marginalized population.
There are many conversations about disability that need to be happening, including discussions both about improving current service provision by public and private entities and about reconstructing societal conceptions of disability and the disabled experience. But it is never appropriate to politicize those conversations while simultaneously perpetrating ableist notions about disabled people for the sake of political expediency.
If we are to actually discuss the connection between disability and violence, why don’t we address the systematic abuse, torture, and killings of disabled people across the U.S.?
Hate crimes against the disabled are rarely tracked and almost never included in discussions about crimes targeting people for actual or presumed membership in particular groups, but it is rampant and pervasive. Unscrupulous service providers and educators enact violence against disabled children placed in their care and under their supervision, often but not always in the name of treatment or therapy, and they are exculpated by the law. Parents and caregivers of disabled children and adults abuse and murder their charges, and they are exonerated in a court of public opinion that perceives them as heroic martyrs suffering because of a “difficult” child. Disabled people are raped, literally and figuratively, when officers of the law refuse to acknowledge violations of their bodies as prosecutable crimes.
If we must investigate the relationship between psychiatric disabilities and violence, we ought to investigate the attitudes that permit these unforgivable crimes. Why isn’t that conversation happening?
source
Thor help me, I remember the clusterfuck when Elizabeth Hodgins murdered her 22 year old son. The reaction from the autistic community was perplexed when the Autism Society mentioned the murder but then thus took George's name out of it. Like he didn't matter. There was stories of more murders of autistic people that year I remember sort of watching with the community dealing with the wave of anger that was washing in. I am so sick and fucking tired of hearing these stories of PWDD and PWMI being treated like pariahs and thrown aside. Even in casual discussions I hear frustrated parents of kids with DD or MI making off handed casual remarks about how sometimes they want to throw their kids in a pond or off a bridge or drown them and I am wondering how the fuck can they get away with those comments? Not only that but other parents go on about how "tough" it is and how it's ok to be "frustrated", while I sympathize I just don't feel comfortable with a parent talking about murder so casually or even as appropriate reaction to frustration.
I am honestly just so tired of this discussion over all, I sick and fucking tired when the topic of MI and DD and violence gets brought up I just want to go get a drink and pray to fucking Odin in Asgard that my mom doesn't decide that I need a mercy fucking killing.
God does anyone have some wine or mead, I like mead...
edit: this is me being ignorant, but is autism really tied with violence in the public discourse? I've never noticed that before, I've always been more aware of suggestions that the perpetrator might be paranoid schizophrenic of bipolar...
Edited at 2013-02-05 02:34 am (UTC)
All the time it seems like. I am part of an autism activism group and every time a mass shooting pops up we kinda brace ourselves for the articles theorizing that so and so had Aspergers or autism.
Which, i know, not exactly helpful.
He's not particularly violent (no more so than the average male teenager, I don't think), but he IS capable of violence. I don't he's any more likely than someone not on the autism spectrum to snap and go on some violence spree -- but I don't discount it as a possibility, either. However, I think if he DID suddenly lose it, his violence would more likely be aimed at a single person -- whoever triggered him -- than to take a gun and start randomly shooting children, etc. (He was, in fact, horrified by the shooting at Sandy Hook, and I take things like that and talk to him at length about them, because it helps him process stuff, imo.)
I also know paranoid schizophrenics and don't in any way think that all paranoid schizophrenics are dangerous or capable of murder, and I don't even think that those paranoid schizophrenics who DO commit murder are necessarily "bad" people, they just suffer from truly debilitating symptoms and need as much support from the community as possible.
It's not much higher.
"One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/healt
Access to mental health resources is an important discussion, but it would more helpful and less stigmatizing to do it during the health care discussion instead of the mass murder discussion.
http://voices.yahoo.com/mental-illn
Edited at 2013-02-05 03:21 am (UTC)
It was studying symptoms, not disorders. It wasn't covering how many of these were violent crimes vs. other types of crime. Schizophrenics are most often jailed for misdemeanors that are generally related to homelessness.
I'm not surprised that "scary bipolar symptoms" came up in the sponsored search results.
I also frankly don't really disagree with the idea that we should reconsider whether people with a history of certain serious mental illnesses should be easily able to buy guns without undergoing any further scrutiny, though perhaps that is partially because I'm from Australia and I don't really support gun ownership to begin with.
Another thing I haven't look closely at if the study accounts for, but which may be a factor is if prisoners are more likely to be screened than the general population.
I don't think it's wrong to acknowledge these sorts of problems in order to find a way to solve them, but I understand that there are a lot of people in the world who will only let that discussion increase their prejudices, which is awful.
Edited at 2013-02-05 09:19 am (UTC)
In America the right to have guns is the second most revered basic rights there Is. It bothers me how easily a constitutional right can be taken away from a group of people for the way they were born. There is something called the HIPAA, which protects patient privacy and confidentiality about the patient's health problems. What is being proposed by many is to go around HIPAA to compile a list of people with autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, PTSD, etc, which is not going to encourage ill people to seek treatment for fear of being diagnosed.
The idea of a government database is frightening. The US forced the sterilization of 60,000 mentally disabled people in its past, and the Nazis cited American eugenics as inspiration for how they handled their "undesirables". It may seem like a slippery slope, but there are many people who think the sterilization and euthanization of the disabled is reasonable and would be good for society, and continuing to paint disabled people as dangers to society who aren't deserving of rights could lead to serious oppression. The topic of mental illness needs to be discussed, but the only time that happens is when we need to figure out a way to protect ourselves from them, but never to improve the quality of their health.
I also really can't get behind this right now. I have a friend who purchased a gun one month after having been hospitalized from a suicide attempt. I do not think he should have been able to do that, and no one is ever going to convince me otherwise. I also haven't heard from him in several days, and I'm both worried and pissed.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a disability, mental or physical. What burns my toast is that I'm being inaccurately labeled in all likelihood because what I actually am - mentally ill - is something someone has decided isn't a nice enough term or makes me sound crazy.
I don't see how that could be true. Disabilities can be treatable- I have disabilities which I receive treatment for. Those disabilities are also illnesses, as many illnesses are disabilities. Even when looking specifically at mental illness, a mental illness most certainly can be a disability.
You can be mentally ill AND mentally disabled. You can be mentally disabled without being mentally ill, and vice versa. I hate seeing the term "mental illness" avoided even at the cost of accuracy and specificity.
"Would anybody talk about the concerns of sick people in hospice care and refer to them ALL as "physically disabled""
I would not find that odd if they were discussing how ableism relates to treatment of hospice care. And I don't think they would be wrong if they did- if a person is ill enough to need hospice care, I don't see how that illness would not also be a disability.
I know when I talk about gun control and metal health for myself, those are the types of people I worry about. Not Autism, Depression, Bipolar, and most of the time Schizophrenia. I don't ever hear about those in serial killers so why should I expect the same with mass murders? I expect more of the above paragraph with those type of people.
Long rambling at 4am is never a good moment.
the combination of
personality disorder
+ any mental illness, drug use or developmental disorder that disrupts cognitive ability
+ inadequate medical and social care
seems to be dire when it comes to explosive outbursts of violence.
As an aside and a question to you or anyone else reading, is uncontrollable rage counted under the mental illness umbrella? I know when you have a mental illness diagnosed already, it's a symptom. But what if you don't?
But on the whole I think doctors are happy keeping rage a symptom rather than defining it as a disorder in its own right. It can also be a symptom of diseases that aren't generally seen as psychiatric.
Edited at 2013-02-05 02:29 pm (UTC)