Mentally Ill People are NOT Evil People.

I had a post all ready today about the gun control arguments happening all over the interwebs sparked by the random shootings that have taken place over the past few days. I have even participated in several heated discussions regarding the Second Amendment and everything guns.  The gun control issue will not be resolved now, or anytime in the near future. And it won’t be resolved on the internets.

But gun control is not the only issue brought up by the recent shootings.  It is brought up with every random shooting.  And yet is it blown off, dismissed, and not taken seriously.  It is the matter of mental illness.  People are all too quick to jump on the he’s evil bandwagon, because claiming the shooter is evil is easier than saying they are mentally ill and could have gotten help.  It absolves everyone of any kind of responsibility.

It insults and offends and hurts those of us who are mentally ill, are getting treatment, and yet can understand and empathize with how their actions are possible.  I can not speak for anyone else, or any disorder, but I can speak for me.  I am convinced that I have been bipolar on some level since I was 15.  We just never considered it, there were always less frightening, less embarrassing than mental illness to explain my behavior.  I have only been diagnosed and treated since 2007.  Without getting in the whole explanation of bipolar I will say this.. bipolar disorder has two distinct spectrums, one includes hallucinations.  Bipolar does not party alone, it almost always has other disorders with is, such as borderline personality disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, anxiety disorder.  Once being medicated for bipolar disorder, you must stay on your medications.  If you stop taking them, and then start again, it takes the medications much longer to effect the mood swings, and stopping medications is a fairly common occurrence because suddenly a person feels better.

Mental illnesses are difficult to understand, even for doctors.  The term mental illness has the stigma of ‘Crazy’ or ‘Unstable’ and that’s because the only ones that bring mental illness to the public’s attention, are the ones who do extreme acts of violence.  The ones who function in society without killing someone are never noticed. Because of the attention in the media, because of the horrible acts mental illness is scary and nobody wants to take the time to try to understand.

Let me tell my story.  I have had mental breaks. More than one. When I have a break, I step into another world in my head, a parallel universe if you will.  I react to things the way I see them, my logic, my compulsions can be, and usually are dangerous and harmful to myself.  I am angry, I am out of control, during one break I destroyed my bedroom.  And just as quick as it starts, as violent as it gets, it stops just as quickly.  The emotions, the compulsions are sometimes overwhelming.

And to those who aren’t in my head, those who don’t understand my illness can not comprehend why I have done some of the things I have done. I have people in my life who don’t understand, who don’t want to understand my disorder.  There are people in my life who are embarrassed because they still see mental illness as crazy.  There are people in my life who blame me for all of my actions and are pissed off because of some of the choices I have made.  They haven’t taken the time to learn anything about my disorder, they have made no effort to understand my disorder, they want to pretend it doesn’t exist.

And that is the problem.  Mental illness still has a stigma, it is still an illness nobody wants to talk about.  Maybe because it’s just easier to say they’re crazy.  Truth is, we are, to some extent. Because of the stigma, a lot of people refuse to get help.  Unless you are crazy, you can’t understand crazy.  When you’re in Nutjobville, you don’t always know you’re in Nutjobville. Until you’ve burned half the town down.

The shooters this weekend were not evil people.  They are people who did evil things.  They were mentally ill, and therefore not in their right mind.  We, as a nation, need to learn to separate the people from their disease.  not and evil person, I am not my disorder.  My disorder does not define me. Sometimes my disorder is evil, and its at those I am

*The quote above in the image is by Glenn Close on the website Bipolar Planet.