60 MINUTES II, TAKES A PAGE STRAIGHT OUT OF THE MOVIE HALLOWEEN!
"The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information. A dictatorship, on the other hand, maintains itself by censoring or distorting the facts, and by appealing, not to reason, not to enlightened self-interest, but to passion and prejudice... after all, it may be argued capitolism is dead, "consumerism" is king, and "consumerism" requires the services of expert salsemen versed in all the arts, including the more insidious arts of persuasion." (Aldous Huxley: Brave New World Revisited, Chapter VI - The Arts of Selling)
The misleading e-mail message read: "When the police are after you, you may be safer if you are a murderer than if you are mentally ill," declares a promotional announcement from CBS News. It is a story that will be told on the news magazine 60 Minutes, Page II, with Dan Rather on Tuesday, June 26th, at 9:00 PM (EST). "Wow", I thought, "it sounds like the unnecessary deaths of "EDP's" (police jargon for emotionally disturbed persons, which usually means "the mentally-ill") at the hands of law enforcement officers nation-wide is finally going to receive national attention." Little did I know what I was in store for! From the opening scene it was perfectly clear that this was just another attempt to equate violence as synonomous with the label "mentally-ill." I sat in a state of stunned disbelief as I watched Dan Rather sitting beside the slide of a still that looked like it came straight off the psycho-movie poster Halloween (which was the definitive archetype for all psycho-movies to come, literally starting it's own movie genre). You will notice that the slide has a clenched fist clutching a knife, just like the Halloween poster. In fact, if you similarly clutch a knife in your fist and just twist your wrist, you will see that they are the same exact picture. You may also notice how the fingers behind the clenched fist are eerily spread out in the background, which has an uncanny resemblance to the clenched fist in the Halloween poster which eerily spreads out into a pumpkin. As I silently watched in horror I could barely hear Mr. Rather's opening statement:
"Every day across the country many police face a crisis that all-too-often ends in tragedy. It's called an EDP. A call involving an "emotionally disturbed person." These calls are surprisingly common. Nearly one out of ten calls to 911 is an EDP. But what is also surprisingly common is their outcome, either the death of the emotionally disturbed person seeking help, or the police officer trying to help. Sometimes both are killed! The fact is most police are better trained to deal with criminals, than with the emotionally disturbed. So when police misunderstanding meets mental illness, both sides are in danger!" (Cut to: Funeral of Ithaca Police Officer Michael A. Padula)
According to this opening statement, "what is surprisingly common is the outcome: either the death of the emotionally disturbed person seeking help, or the police officer trying to help." With all due respect to Mr. Rather and Officer Padula, from the Ithaca Police Department who was sadly slain in the line of duty... the death of an officer in these types of cases is rare indeed, what IS surprisingly common is the death of the so-called "emotionally disturbed person." (The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports reveals that police fatalities by "deranged persons" is extremely low. In both 1998 and 1999 the number was zero. Over the past ten years the total number is nine - out of a total of 658 officers killed in the line of duty during that period - which boils down to less than one officer per year throughout the entire United States.) While the tragic death of just one police officer is certainly "one death too many" and is definitely cause for concern, the unnecessary death of hundreds of "emotionally disturbed persons" is tantamount to legal genocide! And while mention WAS made of the infamous Gary Busch incident in which six of "New York's Finest" shot and killed Gary Busch for wielding what they referred to as a "clawed hammer" - what Page II "conveniently" failed to mention was that sixteen bullets were shot at Gary Busch and that he was struck by twelve of the sixteen bullets. The 9MM bullets pierced his heart, lungs, liver and intestines. New York City's mayor was quick to point out that the officers had acted "precisely according to procedure." (To read what Gary's mom, Doris Busch Boskey, had to say, click-on to our Message Board)
After my initial shock had subsided and I was able to review the tape I had recorded, I couldn't help but notice that not one of the numerous 911 cases examined where a "Call for Help" was made (and where an "EDP" was killed) was about an EDP who had attacked - or was attacking - another human being. They were all about "emotionally disturbed people" who were "behaving irrationally." No one was ever in any immediate danger! This is a classic case of creating the news vs. reporting the news. The opening scene set the tone and created the atmosphere for the rest of the report which then became a cacaphony of subtle innuendos and provocative allegations such as to "keep a watchful eye on mentally-ill people before they make trouble for themselves or others," or "when many of these people stop receiving medical care or stop taking medication their rates of violence escalate and police confrontations ensue." There is no factual basis for this statement. A recent study done at Duke University found that individuals with mental illness who were not taking medication were no more violent than other individuals - so long as they were not abusing drugs or alcohol. (American Journal of Psychiatry, February 1998). And, ironically, a Canadian study done in 1975 on prisoners found that the exact opposite, may, in fact, be true. This study which researched the effects of psychotropic drugs on prisoners discovered that "violent aggressive incidents occurred more frequently in inmates on psychotropic medications then when the inmates were not on psychotropic drugs." (Canadian Family Physician, 11/75, "Effects of Psychotropic Drugs on Agression in a Prison Setting"). If one researches the available volumes of behavioral literature, a tragic fact emerges, that psychiatry and psychology in many instances create criminal states in order to perpetuate the need for forced "treatment" and the billions of dollars spent on mental healthcare. There exists countless well-documented cases, of patients who turned into mass murderers while under the influence of psychiatric medications such as: Laurie Dann, who walked into a Winnetka, Illinois classroom in May of 1988 and began shooting innocent little children, killing one and wounding five others before killing herself. Subsequent blood tests revealed that both Lithium and the antidepressant Anafranil were in her bloodstream at the time the of the attack; Patrick Purdy, who opened fire with an AK47 on a California schoolyard full of children in 1989 while under the influence of two powerful psycho-tropic drugs known to cause violence; and 16-year old Sam Manzie, who in September of 1997 strangled another boy to death while on psycho-tropic medication.
Probably the most revealing case presented was the one involving 29 year-old Michael Hildebrandt from Ohio, who was locked in his own room by himself with a machete and a sword. According to Mr. Rather: "a TYPICAL scenario unfolded last summer in Lima, Ohio, ...when the swat team arrived primed for action. Sharpshooters were prepared to fire! Specialists equipped to leap through windows! Police surrounded 29 year-old Michael Hildebrandt who was locked in his room with a machete and a sword." The results were NOT surprising, neither was the justification given. Michael Hildebrandt was killed in his room by "a deadly shotgun blast" even though he did not have a history of violence according to an uncle who spoke to law enforcement officers just prior to his death. (No one will ever know whether or not the machete and the sword owned by Mr. Hildebrandt were ever used in a menacing way or were merely a convenient justification for his death.) As I watched the live news clip of the swat team slowly inching their way up to Michael Hildebrandt's window, eventually killing him, I couldn't help but wonder: "Why was such a well-armed swat team, equipped to combat a small army of terrorists, called in to subdue a lone "EDP" locked up in his own room with only a machete and a sword?" At the risk of sounding offensive... isn't that like using a steam roller to squash a cockroach??? The most sensible response offered regarding the final outcome came from another tenant who lived in the same building and who commented: "If they had just walked two doors down and just said they got the wrong room and just sat there and been quiet and waited, he would've eventually... it might've taken a few hours... but he would've come out." This, is TYPICALLY common-sense procedure for "diffusing a situation." Whatever happened to plain old common-sense? Has the hysteria gained such momentum that plain old common-sense is no longer a valid option? The cruel irony is that according to the BBC News and ABC News.com "the mentally-ill" are more often than not, the victims of violent crimes, rather than the perpetrators of violent crimes. David@seecinemania.com
A recent report found that if television news coverage accurately reflected real environmental risks to health, then there would be roughly twenty-six minutes of coverage about deaths related to cigarette smoking, for every one second of coverage about deaths related to airplane crashes. Ironically, the exact opposite is true! For every one second of coverage devoted to deaths caused by cigarette smoking, twenty-six minutes of coverage is devoted to deaths caused by airplane crashes. In spite of the fact that way more people die every year due to cigarette smoking than due to airplane crashes. The number of mental health reports in the media which have explicit or implied content about perceived risk to the public posed by people with mental illness is totally disproportionate to the actual risk involved. (The Discrimination Times, August 2000).
VALUE OF SELP-HELP PEER-SUPPORT DENIGRATED BY FORCED "TREATMENT" ADVOCATES
In a no-holds-barred attempt to seize funds from the only form of treatment that has consistently proven itself - that of the integration between the medical model and the self-help peer-support model - advocates of forced treatment have begun to challenge the very boundaries of reason and logic. A March 22nd Newsday article boldly implies that the recent case of "a former mental patient (Peter Troy) who walked into a Lynbrook church and killed a priest and a parishioner" is directly related to the increasing number of "current and former patients who are managing the on-going care of severely ill residents (in Nassau)." This article goes on to point out that "one caseworker, who manages 23 mentally-ill patients, is being treated for paranoid schizophrenia" (I guess they still haven't heard about the gentleman who was was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994), and that "some agencies that contract with Nassau have complained about the assistants (peer counselors) saying that they sometimes behave bizarrely." Do I detect a taint of paranoia in that statement? Ironically, these advocates for forced treatment are the very same "experts" who regularly testify in courtroom proceedings that violent people are not responsible for their behavior because they are "severely mentally-ill", and yet now they would have us believe that certain "severely mentally-ill" people are behaving violently because their managing caseworkers are also "mentally-ill"! Are these "experts" for real? This almost sounds like a conspiracy theory. What will they report next? That these caseworkers are advising their clients not to take their medications?
One such "expert", Sally Satel from the Treatment Advocacy Center, illustrates the level to which these advocates of forced treatment will stoop in her new book, "PC, M.D. How Political Correctness is Corrupting America", which argues that patients organizations are ruining American healthcare. Ms. Satel sees no contradiction between her clearly-defined message that the control of medical treatment must be taken back from the patients and her insistence that patients are being discouraged from taking greater responsibility for their own healthcare. Yet in the very same breath she expresses grave concern over the thousands of dollars that are being spent on self-help peer-support initiatives which have consistently proven their effectiveness - but expresses no concern whatsoever over the millions of dollars that are being squandered on incarceration and forced "treatment", which only re-traumatizes "the mentally-ill". The motives behind Ms. Satel's book are clearly betrayed in her chapter entitled "Inmates Take Over the Asylum." I can't help but wonder if it is merely a coincidence that one of the videos in my research collection called, "Don't Look in the Basement", has an intro on the sleeve which reads: "Take a look at what happens one day when the insane take over the asylum." Is this just another profit-driven ideology under the guise of "treatment", or has Ms. Satel been a victim of CineMania? Besides, why would Ms. Satel refer to the patients as inmates? Isn't that a word which is normally used to describe criminals and prisoners? David@seecinemania.com
STEREOTYPING MENTAL ILLNESS, by RON SCHRAIBER (LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/3/95)
As an "ex-mental patient" I'm really quite disturbed. I'm disturbed by the dehumanizing way the media portrays people identified as "mentally-ill" as quintessentially violent beings. The mass media are far and away the American public's primary sources of information concerning people identified as mentally-ill - and it isn't nice. From the ubiquitous "psycho" and "mad bomber" story lines to the sensationalistic headlines of "Ex-Mental Patient Kills Two," violence incarnate goes by the name of "psychotic" and it's variant terms. Playing into the cultural myth of the crazed murderer (I have never heard of a crazed peacemaker), the latest of many movies to fall into this stereotypical trap is "Just Cause," which offers the serial killer role of Blair Sullivan as played by Ed Harris. Although The Times' Peter Rainer pans the movie, including the characters played by Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne and Blair Underwood, as unbelievable, he finds the one convincing role to be the out-for-blood Harris.
Favourably comparing Harris' character to Anthony Hopkins' Academy Award-winning role as Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs," Rainer writes that Harris has "never before been this scary" and with head shaven "looks like a skinned rabbit, and when he goes into one of his crazy-man trances, his eyes seem to slide upward into his skull." Such pernicious stereotyping with all the grotesqueness that Rainer so lauds bears little resemblance to real human beings. Such distorted and formulistic images of the "homicidal maniac" impoverish the lives of people diagnosed with mental illness, who, research shows, are overwhelmingly not violent. The effect of such media stereotypes is to create for people identified as mentally-ill a pariah status in a world made increasingly hostile to them. These portrayals are as dehumanizing and unacceptable as any racist or sexist stereotype and should be scrutinized accordingly.
Persons identified as mentally-ill have been embraced by the media as the secular version the devil, transmogrified into the out-of-control madman bent on a rampage of seemingly inexplicable death and destruction. While recent research has shown a modest correlation between major mental disorders and violence, people diagnosed with such mental illnesses are, by far, not the most violent group in American society, and, in fact, according to the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, are rseponsible for no more than 3% of the violence in the United States. Such factors as age, gender, substance abuse and educational level are, among others, significantly greater contributors to violence than mental disorders. Now, as a person who has been diagnosed with such major mental disorders as manic-depression and schizophrenia, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I really have nothing against "normal" people. Just because normal people started World War I, World War II, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, committed genocide against the Native Americans and instituted slavery, I have nothing against "normal" people, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one.
Unforunately, malevolent and fear-invoking stereotypes of people identified as mentally-ill are not limited to theatrically released movies. In the realm of television, a study of network dramas covering more than 25 years by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication found that "mentally-ill" characters were portrayed as the single most violent group on TV. Furthermore, only two out of ten characters identified as mentally-ill were considered good, while about six out of ten "normals" were depicted as good. But, perhaps, the award for the most stereotypical statement goes to The Times when it proclaimed in a Feb. 27th, 1985 editorial, "A mentally disturbed person with only the thinnest streak of violence can produce disaster any time, any place!" The Times, continuing to be no stranger to throwing out psychiatric epithets to define global conflicts and social dislocation, called terrorism The True Face of Insanity (3/10/94), and homeless people labeled as mentally-ill as The Specter Haunting America and this around Halloween, no less (Oct. 24, 1991). Actually, according to the publication "Science News" studies have found members of identified terrorist groups from Ireland, the Mideast and South Africa to all have personality scores that fall within the "normal" range. And I thought that the purpose of responsible journalism was not to validate popular prejudice, but to elucidate the truth. So much for my delusional thinking! I'm not mad... I'm angry!
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For a concise editorial on the insidious effects of stigma and the "Criminalization of Mental Illness" you can also read "See CineMania: Erasing the Stigma" at www.enabledonline.com
