I've been depressed while watching the news on Jared Loughner. As an advocate for the mentally ill, and as a mentally ill person myself, the demonization of the mentally ill occurring in the media is truly astounding. Every news station, from Fox to MSNBC, is using this issue as a political football, a chance to gain ratings. The pictures of Loughner are accompanied by scary music and orchestral accompaniment, the media completely oblivious to the fact that this may prevent a fair trial of this young man. People keep calling Jared's actions "heinous". I definitely think they are "tragic", but the term heinous implies that Jared knew what he was doing was wrong and no one has proven that as of yet.
No one is putting the blame on state health care programs that are cutting millions from mental health treatment in favor of more expensive prisons. Even supposedly responsible newspeople are using antiquated terms for Jared, like "madman", "psycho", etc. And of course, our beloved psychiatric community, as is typical, is, if anything, contributing to the media feeding frenzy. And people wonder why the mentally ill don't seek help.
If that wasn't bad enough, there are now calls to clamp down on free speech and hate speech, particularly the Tea Party movement. Readers of this blog will know I am no friend of the Tea Party, but I think these calls are asinine. And that brings me to Patrick Mcgoohan's The Prisoner. Mcgoohan, living in a pre-Cable age, was a fierce individualist, and also a fierce opponent of "individualism" as a political philosophy, rather than a personal outlook on life (in other words, he saw that individualism itself could be corrupted). The last episode of The Prisoner, "Fallout", truly exposed the moral bankruptcy of our media-created Villages, with their manufactured heroes and manufactured villains. Number 6 knew better, or at least I hope he would have. So, I for one, will not join the lynching party aimed at a (probably) schizophrenic young man. I'll leave that for our media intelligentsia. I'm sure they'll do a great job.
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This guy is clearly mentally ill. I haven't read extensively, but from the bits I've heard of his behavior and the nature of his rants, he seemed psychotic and delusional. I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic.
ReplyDeleteMy short list of preventative remedies for this kind of thing are: increased mental health care and better background checks for guns.
The thing that strikes me is that he had a pattern of behavior and as far as I can tell was not being treated. While I don't believe in forced mental treatment, I do think that someone in this kid's life should have strongly encouraged him into treatment, I know that is hard for schizophrenics.
ReplyDeleteOddly, Nick is the one that turned me on to the Prisoner series, going so far as to let me barrow his DVD set for an extended amount of time.
Dear Nick and Budd,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughful comments guys. I wish people on my other blog were so thoughftul. I frequently get called a pschyo and a loon because I admit that I have OCD and bipolar there. People on sci-fi sites seem to be a lot nicer.
John