Health Care/Joan Retsinas

A Nation of the Mentally Ill

“We are sick, we are sick, we are sociologically sick; we don’t need a judge, but an analyst,” sang Tony’s gang to Officer Krupke. West Side Story’s audience understood the ludicrous jibe. Every delinquent in a gang wasn’t mentally ill. There were other plausible explanations. Were they angry at the incursion of immigrants onto their turf? Eager for the family of a gang? Frustrated that their future held no upward ladder, one that their rivals might climb? Pick an explanation. But “sick?” The lyrics made fun of the medical diagnosis for behavior whose roots reflected back on the people making the diagnosis. Of course, 50 years ago, the Officer Krupkes would not have shot the boys, but detained them for a night in a holding cell, to cool off.

Today, the Officer Krupkes, if they are white, might shoot the black delinquents. Again, a diagnosis explains the delinquents’  behavior: excited delirium. And that diagnosis explains the police response. When the teenagers fled, they were possible perpetrators. When police subdued them, the possible-perpetrators suffered from “excited delirium,” which made them resist the entreaties of the police to cooperate. To subdue the men, the police shot them. In rational hindsight, the flight and resistance made sense: the police have a reputation for brutality. But the medical diagnosis suggests the now-victims simply could not calm down; hence, the officers had to shoot. A bullet is overkill, to use the term aptly. But the diagnosis gave the police a clinical rationale for their violence.

It happens, however, that no such diagnosis exists in the medical literature. The police use the fabricated diagnosis to justify their abhorrent actions — much as Victorian-era men used the term “hysteria” to justify controlling the women around them, especially those picketing for suffrage: they suffered from hysteria. All those hunger strikes, sit-ins, jail stints: the women were unhinged.

As for the gun-wielding terrorists who blow up malls, movie theaters, schools (children are easy targets, since they can’t — yet — carry guns), they must be mentally ill. Today guns are, statistically, the leading “kiiler” of youth ages 1 to 19. Nevertheless, a cabal of firearms-enthusiasts, NRA lobbyists, and government-haters have blocked reasonable attempts to curtail our passion for easy-to-get, easy-to-shoot guns. They have blocked commonsense restrictions: limitations on the age when people can buy guns, required training,  gun-locks, bans on automatic weapons, hefty taxes on those weapons (a strategy recommended by US Rep. Don Beyer (D-V.) (The Hill: “Beyer To Propose 1,000 Percent Tax On Assault-Style Weapons”)

No luck — those restrictions go against our Wild West image of freedom-loving, gun-toting citizens. America’s youth used to die in automobile accidents. But now that we enforce drunk driving laws, require driver training, and have speed limits, automobiles are less lethal. In 2020, guns overtook automobiles as the chief “killer” of youth. (Bay Area News Group: “Guns Overtake Cars As Leading Cause Of Death For U.S. Youth”)

To explain the frequency of massacres, the gun-enthusiasts do not point their trigger finger at guns, but at the shooters: they are mentally ill, deranged, or, to echo Tony’s plea, “sick, sick, sick.” Facts belie this diagnosis: only a small percentage of shooters are certifiably “mentally ill.” (And determining the mental status of the prospective gun-buyer is tricky, Should every American’s mental health diagnosis  be available on-line to gun-dealers?) For the other assassins, no single algorithm explains the rampage. A disgruntled patient, an angry federal worker, a racist, a political extremist: the killers run the gamut. Their only commonality: they got hold of an automatic weapon.

The United States does have a disturbing number of people who suffer from serious mental illnesses; yet those people have not propelled the stream of shootings. Look to other countries, with similar rates of serious mental illness: those countries do not regularly hold funerals for victims of massacres. Yet very few state and national legislators, even as they console the families of victims, call for restricting firearms. Instead, they blame the mentally ill. (Axios: “Tennessee Republicans Tell Axios What They’d Do About Mass Shootings”)

Indeed, maybe we are a nation of the mentally ill. If we expand the diagnosis of insanity to embrace the mind-set of legislators who blame not just the “mentally ill,” but poorly designed school buildings, unarmed teachers, insufficiently trained police, and too-few guns in the hands of parents — any explanations that absolve the guns themselves from blame — we have prima facie evidence that those legislators are not rational.

Perhaps we truly are a country of the deranged.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2022

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