Buried in yesterday\u2019s huge volume of news stories on the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, I came across an article that interviewed several experts who specialize in mental illness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Details about Mr. Loughner are still emerging, and only an examining doctor will be able to make a definitive diagnosis. But the writings and comments attributed to him point strongly to the kind of delusional thinking that is common in schizophrenia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“‘I\u2019d say the chances are 99 percent that he has schizophrenia,’ said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center in ARlington, Va., which advocates stronger laws to require treatment for people with mental illnesses. ‘He was together enough to take courses, and people with untreated schizophrenia can function very well for periods. But when you see these rambling, incoherent writings and comments, there is almost no other disorder where this is a prominent symptom.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Many of Mr. Loughner\u2019s reported comments \u2014 about currency and government \u2014 also suggest a growing paranoia\u2026.” [\u201cRed Flags at a College, but Tied Hands,\u201d By Benedict Carey, New York Times<\/em>, 11 January 2011, pr. A18.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did the current political climate and heated partisan rhetoric have any effect on Loughner? The experts interviewed by the New York Times<\/em> disagreed. One expert said it was possible that a psychosis could pick up on \u201cthe grand themes of the day,\u201d while Dr. Torrey argued that \u201cIt\u2019s not political thinking, it\u2019s psychotic thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either way, I think that\u2019s not what\u2019s important. Quite a few people have been arguing that various politicians who use inflamatory rhetoric can create a climate that could incite people like Loughner to violence, but I\u2019m not convinced that\u2019s a productive argument to be having right now. From my perch on the far left of the American political spectrum, I\u2019d have to say that the political rhetoric among both liberals and conservatives has been, and continues to be, uncivil, nasty, threatening, and\/or mean-spirited. It\u2019s gotten to the point where I feel like I\u2019m in a preschool classroom filled with children who are misbehaving, and who all need a good, long time out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have no interest in blaming conservative politicians for Loughner\u2019s behavior, becuase I believe we should be having two other far more productive conversations right now. The first productive conversation we should be having is how we as a society deal with people who have serious mental illness. Speaking as someone who has had relatives with serious mental illness, our society needs to talk more openly about what mental illnesses look like, who has them, and how to deal with them. The second productive conversation we should be having is how we can be a more civil society. Whether or not the inflammatory rhetoric used by today\u2019s politicians did or didn\u2019t incite Loughner to violence, we all need to stop acting like misbehaving preschool children, and start treating all persons the way we ourselves would like to be treated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You could sum it all up quite simply \u2014 it\u2019s all about the Golden Rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8 comments lost<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Buried in yesterday\u2019s huge volume of news stories on the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, I came across an article that interviewed several experts who specialize in mental illness: “Details about Mr. Loughner are still emerging, and only an examining doctor will be able to make a definitive diagnosis. But the writings and comments attributed to … Continue reading “Mental illness, civility, and violence”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology","tag-mental-illness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12817,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/12817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}