You know, I agree that we need to treat people - all people - with compassion, and that includes people with mental illness. But...

1. If I were in a classroom with someone who insisted on calling the number 6 number 18 and said other very out-of-context things that raised the warning, "Possible threat here," in my brain, avoiding that person at all costs seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do. Let's not forget that another student in Loughner's math class emailed her friend and said she always sat by the door, because he scared her. Should she have approached him and said, "Gosh, seems like you're having problems. Anything I can do for you?" We avoid threatening people for a damn good reason.

2. The college didn't do enough? Really? They spent a huge amount of resources and time dealing with this one student, and made his readmission conditional on a mental health evaluation. In other words, they told him his behavior was so far outside the bounds of reasonable that he likely had a mental illness and needed to address it if he expected to return and share a space with other people. Like it or not, ours is a deeply individualistic society, and our values simply do not allow for making the community responsible for one person's illness. Demanding otherwise is spitting in the wind.

3. What is the press supposed to do if it can't use words like "erratic" and "bizarre" to describe behavior that clearly was erratic and bizarre? Are they simply not supposed to describe what happened, because doing so creates a stigma?

4. Again, since we live in a deeply individualistic society, at what point does my coworker's mental illness become my business? There are lots of deeply dysfunctional people who demand accommodations because they're depressed/bipolar or whatever, and frankly they get so attached to their diagnosis that they use it as an excuse for sucking the lifeblood out of everyone around them. We already accommodate so much; asking the herd to accommodate yet more seems pretty unreasonable.

5. Schizophrenics improve? Can recover completely? Really? Can we have some more data to support that?

I do firmly believe that we need to provide much, much more for people with serious mental illness. It's certainly in our best interest, if for no other reason than the bipolar and schizophrenic can be like shrapnel bombs in the lives of their loved ones. But expecting schools to pick up the slack or the press to not describe what is actually happening seems misguided. These people need access to treatment, and that's what we need to spend our money and our time on.

@1: "There are lots of deeply dysfunctional people who demand accommodations because they're depressed/bipolar or whatever, and frankly they get so attached to their diagnosis that they use it as an excuse for sucking the lifeblood out of everyone around them. We already accommodate so much; asking the herd to accommodate yet more seems pretty unreasonable."

Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous twat.

I'm bipolar and would love to know what anyone has ever done to accommodate me for my disorder, so I can tell them to stop. I don't ask for, nor do I receive any special treatment from anyone. Because no one I work with knows I'm bipolar. Because when people like you find out, you ascribe all of my behavior to being bipolar and I have enough problems (none of them related to my disorder) without dealing with your bullshit.

Then again, I should know better than to argue with someone who thinks depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are synonyms for each other.

So should we start taking up a collection for Fnarf before something tragic happens?

@2: Look, I worked with a bipolar person, and it was a nightmare. A nightmare. She used the protection FMLA provided to call in sick whenever she was too depressed to work (so 30% of the time we'd come in to work and suddenly have her duties as well as our own to do), refused to take her meds because she liked the manic high and was a shrieking, dreadful mess of a human being. When she finally quit - after a few years of this - the rest of us felt like we could breathe at last.

This is just one example. I have more, and I'm sure most people who've been in the workforce a few years do too. Good on you for taking your meds and not imposing your mental illness on other people, but not everyone is you.

@5: Point taken re your experience. You are not a self-righteous twat. But I would ask that you not hold all of us accountable for the actions of one stupid bitch. (Seriously, I don't understand the people who enjoy mania. After hour two, the constant giggling is just annoying.)

Also, I had no idea I could use FMLA to catch up on my "me time." Awesome.

I agree that social workers and our society's "mental health professionals" share in the responsibility for Laughner's actions. You should have mechanisms in place to recognize and remove those who would inflict violence on society before they commit these acts. That you don't is a failure of imagination, passion, and persuasive qualities that would fund such actions. Shame on you.

*persuasive qualities that would get society to fund such actions.

TVDinner, I think you're missing the extent to which your troubles with your coworker directly flowed from the glaring systemic flaws Jennifer describes in her post, not, as you seem to suggest, from the solutions she proposes.

@6: See, Rodolfo, the thing is folks like you who properly manage their illness aren't the ones who come to mind when we have this conversation. You have taken it upon yourself to seek and follow treatment, and props to you for taking responsibility to treat your illness.

Dr. Stuber seems to be advocating that the community get involved and accommodate mental illness more than we do, and I really question if that's the direction we should be going in. No, it's not not NOT fair to stigmatize the mentally ill, but shunning and avoiding people whose behavior scares us - like Loughner's did - is a pretty natural reaction. Dr. Stuber's suggestion that we change our reactions - or that the press not call bizarre and erratic behavior "bizarre" and "erratic" - just seems like barking up the wrong tree.

So mania isn't all it's cracked up to be, huh?

@9: You gotta file for FMLA as soon as you know you're sick, and then when you call in you have to say, "Today's absence is because of my FMLA covered illness," or something like that. It's not retroactive.

I'm so sorry about your relative. I hope he gets back on his feet again.

This is so true.

Another heatbreaking manifestation of the tendancy to ignore mental health issues is the way suicide among homosexual teens is treated.
Rather than addressing the underlying mental health issues compassionately Activists want to use the situation as a club to beat the Religious Right- offering shallow bromides - it gets better! :) - which are no substitute for mental health care and merely Nancy Regean's facile "just say no!" updated.

Think it's tough being mentally ill? Try being mentally ill and gay. That's when the real fun begins.

I would put it simply: we should treat the mentally ill with more compassion and care than we think we can muster...but often they do not make it easy for us.

This last might be largely a function of the systemic problem, but it is one which is experienced and demands reaction on an individual and immediate level---so there needs to be rachmones for those of us coping as well as we can, badly as that might be.

(I speak on the basis of my not cutting myself off from a couple of paranoid relatives.)

@13: Suicides resulting from mental illness and suicides resulting from years of bullying are two very different things. Even if most of the gay teens who commit suicide are also mentally ill (which I doubt), an episode of depression severe enough to make you suicidal doesn't happen on its own. There's almost always an outside trigger. The aggregate toll of being called a fag**t every day for four years of high school, while hearing that you're going to hell every Sunday from the pulpit could easily be such a trigger.

Mentally ill people are sometimes hard to be around, but it is harder for them than it is for us. Not all people who take their meds religiously can avoid episodes of mania/psychosis.

It is very hard to care for a mentally ill person. It is extremely hard to be the family of someone with a poorly managed mental illness- as you want to help them but there is almost nothing you can do to ease their suffering sometimes.

It is doubly hard when you see that loved one go into the world, after getting their shit together despite amazing adversity, and then see them being discriminated against by assholes.

And, tvdinner, if a bipolar is horribly depressed most of the time, can you blame them for wanting to go a bit manic to escape that? What would you do? Just live with the crippling depression? Suicide? A lot of bipolar people can't take antidepressants because it pushes them into mania. It is not an easy condition to live with.

Maybe this awful incident will help raise the awareness of mental illness among the general public. Just as the public-awareness campaign to recognize "suspicious packages" is probably responsible for the backpack bomb in Spokane being found this week before it could be detonated, there needs to be a public-awareness campaign to teach people the signs of dangerous mental illness (or when normally-not-dangerous conditions are going over the edge).

Just my opinion.

*bipolar person*

Oh, and @16: you can just ignore Period Troll. He likes to bring in that "homosexuality causes teen suicide" argument, and others like it, whenever possible. No other issue seems to interest him as much as teen homosexuality. I leave you to draw your own conclusions from that.

@11: Honestly, I don't know what I would want the conmmunity at large to do to accommodate me. I still have days when I'm too depressed to go to work (not often, but they happen), and I call in sick on those days. The strain it puts on my co-workers never occurred to me until I read your earlier post. My thinking has always been that there's no point in going in when I know I'm not going to get anything done anyway. Might as well be miserable at home, y'know?

Allo I really want is for treatment to not be so prohibitively expensive. The last of my COBRA extensions ran out at the end of December. Without insurance, the only way I can afford my meds is to use the money I was paying for COBRA. Going off of my meds is not really an option, since I would lose my fucking mind - missing a single dose of one of the three meds I'm on last week fucked up my brain chemistry for days.

And no, mania is no picnic. I've heard a lot of people say they enjoy it, but I find it scary - I always know that the crash is coming.

@17: Jones used poisoned Flavor Aid, not Kool-Aid. What kind of history are you kids learning these days?

@14 oh shut up.

Fear of something you don't understand (i.e., "erratic" or "bizarre" behavior) is a totally natural reaction. But that doesn't mean it is the reaction we should act on. From a pragmatic standpoint, letting people with mental illnesses suffer is getting us the results we see today-- rare, but unspeakably violent, acts such as Loughner's and the hatchet murder's (whose name escapes me) and scores of mentally ill homeless people, etc. If we don't like these results, we should probably change what we're doing, no?

@ 24 - FU

It seems a lot of people are ignoring the elephant in the room: GUNS. There are mentally ill people in every country in the world, but they do not have ready access to assault weapons. I agree that we should be taking better care of our citizens' mental health, but the fact is, it's easier and cheaper to buy a gun in this country than it is to get health care and counseling.

@5 and 22,

It seems like at least one solution for this is to have federally mandated sick and vacation days, so: 1. People with any kind of illness can get time off to recover. 2. People stop abusing FMLA.

@25,

But how do you tell the difference between behavior that's merely erratic and behavior that's unstable/borderline violent? One thing that many mentally ill people seem to have a problem with is boundaries. When someone violates my boundaries, I don't know if it's because they have a condition they can't control or if it's because they're looking to fuck me up. I'm certainly not going to wait around to find out.

lack of acceptance of mental illness is the leading cause of REPUBLICANS.

So what you're saying is, "hugs not drugs"?

Dr. Stuber brings up some very good points that underscores the need to destigmafy mental illness.

To that end it is important for folks with depression, anxiety disorders, as well as those who are bipolar, schizophrenic, or have been diagnosed with any type of disorder that falls within the realm of "mental illness" - especially those who have their symptoms under control - to let others know that having a 'mental illness' doesn't make you any less of a person, and that in most cases doesn't mean that you can't contribute to society as much or more so than someone without such a diagnosis.

Take away the stigma and more people will talk about it.

When others see how common it is, and how those affected are their friends, family members, and respected members of the community; the easier it becomes to establish treatment options and support, and the more likely those who need it will seek care.

@27'S absolutely right. However gently and accommodatingly and appropriately mentally ill people (or simply angry people) are treated, if they are legally able to and choose to obtain a gun--specifically a semi-automatic like a Glock--they have become dangerous. (I think everyone who has a gun is dangerous but never mind that now.) If Loughner hadn't had a gun, this wouldn't have happened, no matter how crazy he was. Some depressed people get to the point of suicide and may use a gun, but they don't buy Glocks to do it. The purchase of a semi-automatic is the point at which this could have been prevented.

Everyday I am ill, hopeless, forgetful, and anxious. Everyday at work, I am treated the same way as everyone else, held to the same standard as everyone else. I do my job and my work is fine but when I come home to my family there is no me left, I used it all up at work. Give me a break, I earn it just like anyone else does. Employers require a person to be on FMLA if it is an illness that a person is being seen for more than 3 times. I go to my doctor regarding my depression, my therapist regarding my depression and I take a day off now and again to sleep and make me feel better because of my depression. So my employer keeps me on FMLA all year around. FMLA is unpaid leave so if I have to use it I don't get paid.