The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: mental illness
How Mental Illness Spikes Street Crime And Political Extremism

How Mental Illness Spikes Street Crime And Political Extremism

Antisocial behavior has reached pandemic levels. Disruptive airline passengers are punching flight attendants. Thugs are attacking Asians, gays and other minority groups. Criminals have grown more brazen in bringing violence to the streets and into American politics as seen in the savage invasion of the Capitol on January 6.

Mental illness clearly underlies a lot of these disturbing trends, with the cracks widening during the COVID-19 scourge. The pandemic deprived many of community, personal interaction and, for those on the edge of psychic breakdown, the in-person mental health services they relied on or need.

America's system for supporting good mental health has never been strong to begin with. The 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act did help expand coverage, but getting insurance to pay for treatment of serious psychiatric problems remains problematic.

And the need has risen. From March through October of last year, hospital emergency rooms saw a surge of patients seeking urgent mental care, according to JAMA Psychiatry. The numbers were far lower in the same months of 2019, right before the pandemic hit. The crises ranged from suicide attempts to drug and opioid overdoses to abuse of partners and children.

Last year, a third of American adults displayed symptoms of clinical anxiety or depression, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That was up from 11 percent in previous years.

Many of the Capitol insurrectionists had a history of mental illness and related social dysfunction. We made fun of several.

Eric Munchel of Nashville, Tennessee, who brought restraints police use on hands, legs and arms to the Capitol, was dubbed the "zip-tie guy."

Actually, Munchel had been charged with assaulting a man and woman in 2013. Recently fired from his job at a bar, he entered the Capitol costumed in paramilitary gear, his mother at his side.

Sean McHugh of Auburn, California, who attacked Capitol police with chemical spray, had accused the officers of "protecting pedophiles." McHugh, it turns out, had done jail time for statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl.

It was thought at first that Rosanne Boyland had been crushed to death in the rush of stampeding vandals, but the medical examiner concluded that the Georgia resident died from an overdose of amphetamines. Boyland had a history of drug use, including a charge of felony drug possession. The pandemic cut off her in-person group meetings of addicts.

When you look at some of the creeps who had been attacking Asians, you find something more than the usual racial animus. The homeless man seen viciously stomping on a 65-year-old woman of Filipino origin in New York was on parole for having killed his mother in front of his five year-old sister.

Another homeless man with 90 prior arrests was charged with slashing a gay man. Both the criminal and the victim were Latino.

You see madness in the faces of airline passengers throwing tantrums over demands that they wear masks. Videos show the protesters, usually women, making noisy and self-righteous stands for their right to break the rules. No matter how normally these disrupters dress, they radiate the look of the unhinged.

The mission here isn't to solve the dearth of psychiatric services for those barely hanging on. Others can better do that. Rather, it's to note that fragile psyches often lie beneath the growth of appalling behavior. And a society in the grips of fraying social ties is going to suffer more of it.

We now have an evil mix of social isolation and extremist rhetoric that some use to confer an air of respectability to their delusions. The social services that keep the mentally unbalanced in check need to be strengthened — and soon.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com

Danziger: True Believers

Danziger: True Believers

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

Are The Racists On Viral Videos Mentally Ill?

Are The Racists On Viral Videos Mentally Ill?

Most everyone who spends time on social media has come across videos in which a white person is screaming racial insults, usually at a Latino or African-American. A recent example shows a woman at a ShopRite in East Haven, Connecticut, barraging a black man with racist invective.

But look more closely at these videos and eyewitness accounts for a fuller idea of what forces are at work. Comments on these videos tend to condemn the perpetrators as evil racists and nothing else. But what should be blazingly obvious to those who watch them carefully is that the assailants are almost always mentally unwell.

In the ShopRite incident, the black man was on a motorized shopping cart and had unintentionally cut the woman off, a white male observer told WPLR-FM. “She wasn’t looking where she was going.”

The white woman said, “Jesus Christ,” and the black man responded, “You talking to me, b——?” The woman then unleashed a tirade full of the N-word.

At that point, however, the dynamics changed. The black man started exhibiting great restraint, according to the witness. Other than the original B-word remark, he didn’t get verbally confrontational. It had become clear to all that the woman was unhinged.

Other shoppers tried to reason with her and worried what the two children at her side were experiencing. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, man, Mom’s psycho,'” the eyewitness said.

In October, a video went viral showing a white woman blocking a black man from entering his apartment building in St. Louis. She demanded proof that he lived there. If she had been afraid of him, she wouldn’t have gotten in his face.

The African-American gentleman no doubt saw the bizarre behavior for what it was. “Please move, ma’am,” he said patiently while recording the scene.

The same month, a white woman called the police on an African-American child she claimed had “sexually assaulted” her in a Brooklyn bodega. A security camera in the store showed what actually happened: The 9-year-old had turned around, causing his backpack to brush the woman’s rear end.

The boy’s mother made strenuous objections to her ranting, and that’s when the white woman called the police. When they arrived, the boy was outside crying.

The neighbors did not buy into the woman’s denial of racist motives. She did eventually apologize. But the locals, convinced that she wasn’t playing with a full deck, nicknamed her “Cornerstore Caroline.”

Another video, taken at an IHOP in Los Angeles, shows a white woman yelling at another woman for speaking Spanish to her son. In a calm voice, the son tried to reason with the verbal attacker. “She’s not perfect, but she speaks English,” he told her in flawless English. And the mother did demonstrate that she could speak some English, not that she had an obligation to.

But really, what do you say to someone hollering “Go back to Spain” to a Spanish speaker in LA and asking, “Do you want the Russians over here telling you what to do?” I would have offered less explanation than the son, but he wisely spoke to her more like a child than a miscreant.

Psychologists have written a great deal on whether racists are actually mentally ill. They tread gingerly on the subject so as not to give excuses for vile conduct.

And it’s well-known that exposure to racism can do great psychological damage to people of color. This subject deserves its own discussion.

 

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Screenshot from The Daily Show of “Cornerstore Caroline,” calling police to report an imaginary assault by a nine year-old African-American boy, October 15 , 2018.

A Conspiracy Flourishes On The Web: Is Clinton ‘Fit’ And ‘Stable’ Enough For Office?

A Conspiracy Flourishes On The Web: Is Clinton ‘Fit’ And ‘Stable’ Enough For Office?

It started with a photo taken… six months ago. It shows Hillary Clinton summiting a set of stairs with the help of two aides, one on either arm, after reportedly slipping on her way up.

But to read commentary by internet users — and eventually by right-wing websites — on Saturday, you’d be forgiven for thinking Clinton was facing some imminent health crisis in August, 2016.

The American Mirror ran the photo with a brief story about “unstable” Hillary Clinton, though it did not mention the photo’s origin. The Drudge Report ran the photo above a series of articles similarly questioning Clinton’s health over the years.

Photo: Drudge Report via Talking Points Memo

Claims that the photo is evidence of Clinton’s failing health have been debunked: It’s a set of stairs. She slipped. Attempts by the right to post-date the photo to August are purposefully misleading.

The former secretary of state’s doctor attested to her mostly clean bill of health last July, though Dr. Lisa Bardack did include, per the New York Times, “Mrs. Clinton’s history of treatment for a brain concussion, blood clots affecting her legs and brain on separate occasions, an underactive thyroid gland and a family history of heart disease.” Those conditions have not been kept secret.

The right has been similarly obsessed with Clinton’s “coughing fits.” The Washington Post has a helpful rundown the non-story:

Let’s get a few things straight here: Clinton does have a condition called hypothyroidism, which hinders the thyroid’s production of a hormone that regulates metabolism and can cause fatigue. And she is prone to coughing spells when speaking for extended periods of time; according to NBC News, she drinks tea and uses a humidifier to combat the problem. These non-secrets have been noted by Politico, Mother Jones, Salon, the Hill and many other outlets that Clinton haters would like to believe are engaged in a cover-up.

It all reads, frankly, like an attempt to match the left’s freak-out over Donald Trump’s mental stability. Much has been made of Trump’s theoretical mental issues. He says he’s never seen a therapist, so assuming anything about Trump’s inner life, if there is one, is irresponsible. But a growing chorus of psychoanalysts have been raising concerns from the electoral sidelines. In The Atlantic, Dr. Dan P. Adams pinned Trump on perhaps his most obvious character trait:

For psychologists, it is almost impossible to talk about Donald Trump without using the word narcissism. Asked to sum up Trump’s personality for an article in Vanity Fair, Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard, responded, “Remarkably narcissistic.” George Simon, a clinical psychologist who conducts seminars on manipulative behavior, says Trump is “so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example” of narcissism. “Otherwise I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He’s like a dream come true.”

But if Trump’s supporters aren’t convinced by his behavior alone that the businessman is unfit to be president, it’s hard to believe a diagnosis would add much.