Mental Health Support

As an emotion, anger often arises following the perception of being offended, wronged, or denied. It provides an internal cognitive and physiological platform that motivates and facilitates defensive thinking warranting self-defensive behaviors. It's easy to understand how being subjected to stigma leads to anger.

But, as stated in a recent article in the Rochester City News, a quite troubling thing about prejudice and stigma about mental illness is the notion that "mentally ill individuals are violent, dangerous, and poised to erupt without notice or cause". Members of the stigmatizing public are positioned by that fear of expected danger. It's important to realize that what appears a righteously angry response to unfairness and discrimination may be translated into behaviors that can look exactly like something dangerous. Voice raises, skin flushes, facial expressions and posture communicate that a point of intolerance to further perceived injustice well be vigorously rejected. Anger translates into interpersonal communication that's known to immediately precede hostile interactions.

Much of what we know about anger and aggression in the mentally ill comes from institutions that detain the "dangerous" mentally ill...primarily prisons but also secured mental health wards. The statistics the public hears about dangerousness of the mentally ill refer to occurrences of violence against caregivers and security within those facilities. Much less well know are the handful of studies that looked at such violence and which found that it mostly occurs when the mentally ill perceive threats and/or mistreatment. The inmates/inpatients, believe their behavior was a justifiable defensive response the folks running those places see it only as violence of the mentally ill.

What the general public and people like Wayne LaPierre take away from these biased sources of information on violence of the mentally ill is a warped general understanding that suggests all mentally ill persons represent monsters among us; who, regardless of their diagnosis, are unpredictable time-bombs of dangerous behavior.

Consequently, attempts to end stigma by "fighting" or direct action for justice are unlikely to be effective. They could be potentially dangerous. Average members of the public, just like psychiatric and corrections staff, are very likely to see an angry "fight" as symptomatic of illness rather than a justified and reasonable reaction to injustice. The "crazies" end up in detention and that has great significance on their personal lives.

That posibility makes the struggle to end stigma and the discrimination that flows from it rather unlike other struggles for equal rights. It is a struggle that really must minimize signals of angry resistance even though anger against injustice is completely understandable.