Just some thoughts on how our modern society falls so short in helping those who struggle with a wide-range of diseases that impact the mind.
Mental illness. The very words make people uncomfortable. Whether we are talking about people who have fallen through society's meager safety nets, and are wandering the streets. Or perhaps, seemingly ordinary people who one day snapped.
In the news recently was a young mother named Lindsay Clancy, accused of strangling to death two of her three children, ages 3 and 5. And critically injuring a third child, an infant. Horrifying, right? They say it was related to a really bad case of post-partum depression.
In speaking of compassion for perpetrators of heinous crimes when they themselves were clearly suffering from mental illness, such as PPD, and not in their right mind, there are always those who are ready to pick up stones. They do not want to speak of compassion. It is is a messy reality that threatens a black-and-white clearly delineated world view.
Unsettling. Discomforting.
I remember the mid-1990s getting the pushback and rather harsh judgment from the editor of a magazine I had written some articles for, including a short poem. The poetry was titled, "Say a prayer for Jeffry Dahmer, because no one else will."
The Dahmer case, recently popularized—sensationalized really—by a streaming series, now 30 years after the horrifying events.
He was an extreme case, right? A human being so badly broken, something so fundamentally wrong in his psyche, that he had become a murderous cannibal. But the supposedly civilized criminal justice system of ours did something quite unjust in placing this clearly severely mentally ill human being in with a general prison population. And of course, where he would be inevitably abused and murdered. Many people cheered when it had happened. Justice was served, they said. But I had felt nauseous.
The things Dahmer had done were monstrous. Absolutely ghastly! But this was a severely psychotic individual, who needed permanent institutionalization. Not incarceration in an ordinary prison environment where, among the ordinary convict population anyone could foresee a violent outcome.
Few people cared.
My editor at the time printed my tiny poem, Say a Prayer for Jeffrey Dahmer, against her own better judgment. Her rationale was explained to me. She had an adult brother who was schizophrenic, but able to live a normal life as long as he remained on his medication. And she was concerned that the Dahmer case would skew people’s ideas about mental illness to only include the most extreme cases. Most mental illness harms the individual suffering from the affliction, and does not threaten the safety of others. I respect these concerns.
Most people with post-partum depression, for example, or PPD as it is commonly known as, pose only a threat to themselves. The Clancy case was an extreme example, a rarity, where a mother suffering from PPD murdered her own children.
But we are called to muster up compassion. Indeed, as recipients of daily grace from a power greater than ourselves, we can honestly recite that old saw, there but for the grace of God goes I.
In speaking of compassion for perpetrators of heinous crimes when they themselves were clearly suffering from mental illness, such as PPD, and not in their right mind, there are always those who are ready to pick up stones. They do not want to speak of compassion. They want justice.
It is is a messy reality that threatens a black-and-white clearly delineated world view.
To talk about the perpetrator of some terrible crime as an ordinary human being who somehow broke, well, that is too close to home for many people. It leaves each one of ourselves vulnerable. It could lead to the admission that we too are capable of breaking.
Sadly, it much easier to look for a good rock to throw.
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