While our nation reels from mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, as well as Gilroy, Calif., I have been heartened that most commentators, pundits and presidential candidates have refrained from leaping to the ignorant view, spouted most notably by Donald Trump, that the perpetrators were “very, very seriously mentally ill.”
Thankfully, more and more members of the media and political class are starting to recognize that the vast majority of these mass shooters do not suffer even remotely from mental illness.
When asked about the contention that these mass shootings are a “mental illness problem,” Cheryl Dorsey, a retired LAPD sergeant, told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield that such a point of view was “intellectually dishonest.”
As Dorsey said, you cannot be mentally ill and drive hundreds of miles, don a bulletproof vest and arm yourself with a semiautomatic weapon and high-capacity magazines, and then carry out a mass murder.
What she was pointing out was that such preparation, such plotting, is extremely unlikely to be done by someone who is in the midst of psychosis.
Dorsey also said quite correctly that it is “insulting” to blame the mentally ill for these crimes.
I could not agree more.
And yet, while many commentators were willing to criticize Trump for spewing and condoning hatred and racism, very few pundits actually spoke up on behalf of the mentally ill.
That changed when Dr. Stephen Seager, a former staff psychiatrist at Napa Hospital in California, appeared on Don Lemon’s CNN show late on Sunday night.
Dr. Seager robustly defended those of us who have been diagnosed with a mental disorder. He said without any hesitation that the recent mass shootings have “nothing to do with mental illness,” and he showed his political savvy when he suggested that the reason politicians, like Donald Trump, blame the mentally ill is because most of us do not vote.
While many of us actually do vote, I agree with Dr. Seager’s larger point, which is that the mentally ill do not have a strong voice in Washington. We are not a constituency with many powerful advocates.
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