A Personal Perspective: Fear of those living with mental health conditions was used as political fuel in a recent presidential debate. Is fear warranted?
"He opened our border to people from prisons, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorists." In one breath, a former president placed a class I belong to in the same-based category as terrorists. He used a health condition that myself and 57.8 million other Americans . live with as a political pawn.As with many phenomena that are difficult to understand, mental illness has historically been greeted with fear and fear-based abuse.
Shortly after, as mental illnesses became understood as health conditions and those with mental health conditions were seen as having equal humanity to all, the deinstitutionalization movement began.The truth is that mental health conditions are not widely associated with violence. Most violent crimes are committed by individuals without mental illness .
Yet, as demonstrated above, misunderstanding and fear can be quite dangerous. In addition to America's shameful history of oppression toward those living with mental health conditions, even today, the diagnosis of a mental health condition is the single factor most linked with the risk of being shot by a police officer . A person living with a mental health condition is more likely to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator.
My mental health condition does not make me a wild-eyed werewolf looking for her next bite. Neither do others'. Yet these stories of fear perpetuate a culture that does not welcome us. These narratives discourage individuals from seeking support for often treatable health conditions. Just as with most other health conditions, hospitalization is sometimes a part of mental health treatment, but let's leave those disgraceful pictures of fear and words like"mental institutions and mental asylums" in the past where they belong.Saleh, A. Z., Appelbaum, P. S., Liu, X., Stroup, T. S., & Wall, M. . Deaths of people with mental illness during interactions with law enforcement.Varshney, M., Mahapatra, A., Krishnan, V., Gupta, R., & Deb, K. S. .
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