The views expressed in this blog are the personal opinions of the author. Blogs are written based on the authors personal experience and may differ for other individuals.
I wrote an article on this before but it’s so important to me I need to speak up about it again. The same article managed to make its way back on my Facebook feed and I am seriously worried people are buying into this stigma. It comes from such an ignorant place that I am honestly scared for society and can only hope most of you use the power of critical thinking.
Here is the article that has been floating around the internet and in my opinion is contributing to the stigma surrounding mental illness: http://universalfreepress.com/nearly-every-mass-shooting-has-this-one-thing-in-common-and-it-isnt-weapons/#
This article talks about mass shootings that have taken place in the last 20 years. The author here is saying guns are not the problem. No no, the guns are fine. The real problem (apparently) is the fact that all of these killers were on or have taken “powerful psychotropic drugs”. Therefore, case closed. The meds made them do it…duh.
The author goes on to list a ton of stats of people who either killed someone or killed themselves and lists the medications they were taking at the time to make their point.
This is so wrong. I try to stay open-minded to what people have to say but this is just pouring salt in a huge wound that those of us with mental illness have been trying to heal for a lifetime. This article is exactly the reason we have so much stigma and pure ignorance attached to mental illness.
To take a bunch of stats like this to defend the use of guns. Wow. What kind of freaking world are we living in? And the thing is, people are actually buying into this!
Did this author ever think for one second that maybe the one thing all of these killers have in common is that they are in fact mentally ill and need serious help? Does he know if these killers were consistent in taking their medication? Does he know if they were seeing a doctor?
Oh and here’s one. Does he know if they consumed alcohol and illegal drugs with their “deadly cocktail”? Does he know anything about them really other than the meds the supposedly took? Were any of these men getting proper treatment at all? Probably not.
This whole article just takes a bunch of vague stats, lumps them all together and jumps to the conclusion that medications to treat mental illness makes you a killer. There is even a whole site dedicated to nothing but these kinds of stats and no surprise the author references this site…of course.
Let me put it this way. What if I told you the people who committed these mass shootings all ate oranges on a regular basis. Did the orange make them do it? What if they all had blue eyes? Does having blue eyes make you a killer? I can say from personal experience I was a lot more messed up before medication. I’m a human being, fighting mental illness and so far I’m winning. The people who committed these murders needed help. The system failed them miserably and that folks is the real problem but all people seem to want to do is jump to conclusions. It’s like a freaking lynch mob.
I for one am not standing for it. This lights a fire in me that I can’t be quiet about. This is wrong. The stigma and ignorance are just wrong and I will never back down because we need to start analyzing this dribble that is managing to float around, poisoning the internet, one post at a time.
Take Care, 🙂
Cavelle