There is a tradition, especially in film, of a person with mental illness representing the boogeyman — or the reverse case of a boogeyman frightening a person into a traumatic mental state. A boogeyman (also spelled bogeyman) is a folk creature in most cultures used by adults to frighten children into good behavior.
Have you noticed how the media consistently represents someone who goes on a killing spree as having some mental illness? It’s often the first question asked in the case of a mass murderer, i.e. “was he/she ever in a mental hospital?”
In point of fact, there is a relationship between crime and insanity, but that’s not exactly what we are going to discuss right now. We’re more interested in the rush to mental judgment by the media, and by the rush to involuntary commitment instead of a rush to justice and rehabilitation.
The Fresno shooter of Tuesday, April 18 gunned down 3 white men. During his arrest, Kori Ali Muhammad shouted “Allahu Akbar,” but the Fresno Police Chief said the shootings had nothing to do with terrorism.
The media quickly pointed out that in 2005, on the heels of another incident, the court determined that Muhammad suffered from a mental disease, and he was committed to a psychiatric facility for some months.
So there were at least two previous failures — the psychiatric treatment failed, and justice failed.
And they also got it wrong about the terrorism; but that’s not even the point, and just muddies up the real issue, which is that the person committed a crime, but instead he is labeled mentally ill. He’s become the boogeyman.
Criminal acts, terrorism or otherwise, are being reported as mental illness instead of what they really are — criminal acts or terrorism. Oh, don’t call it terrorism, it will upset the sensitive ears of those who prefer to call it mental illness.
No one even asked if he was taking, or withdrawing from, psychotropic drugs — which as we know carry a side effect of violence and suicide.
There will be a rush to involuntarily commit him and give him painful and addictive psychotropic drugs — instead of dealing with the actual criminal act and attempting to rehabilitate him.
By the way, insanity is not an illness, it is an injury. When drug treatments are piled on top of it, drugs known to cause violence and suicide, it becomes even harder to treat because the person is even more desperately injured and pain crazed.
Add on the various prescription drug monitoring programs in society, and we now have a rush to “pre-crime” — where a person is restrained, with involuntary commitment and more drugs, before any crime is committed. We’re moving toward that as a society, where so-called “treatment” occurs to prevent the possibility of a crime, instead of imposing justice after the fact of a crime. And guess who will be deciding when and whom to treat? The psychiatrists.
What are you going to do about it? Find Out! Fight Back!