Help Erase the Stigma of Mental Illness

This article, like all I ask to be published by Patch, is not intended to be a scientific, medical, legal or scholarly work. It's only the feelings of just me in a conversational style. Consider it a chat over your back fence or a cup of coffee, kinda like chatting over sports.

Why do I do it ? The answer is that I spent more than a half of a Century as an Public Advocate and 44 years as a County Legislator sharply focused on the world of folks suffering mind & brain maladies and do not want to waste my experience and observations as a retired Senior Citizen of silence.

An estimated 26% of Americans ages 18 and older -- about 1 in 4 adults -- suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Mental illness is not a person's blame, it is a disease like diabetes or cancer. Mental illness can be biological, behavioural, cognitive, and psychodynamic models. Not just something every victim can cure by themselves, no matter how strong willed and determined they might be.

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of and victims of mental illness should not be stigmatized or blamed for every wrong doing in our society. In a study of crimes committed by people with serious mental disorders, only 7.5 percent were directly related to symptoms of mental illness, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Ergo, every heinous crime like murder or inflicting harm against innocent victims, like throwing a person off a subway platform is not committed by a mentally ill person. Many of the perpetrators are just bad people, people filled with hate, ignorance, cruelty - not mental illness. Lawmakers and Boards of Parole should know this.

However mental illness plays a major role in our nation's homeless problem, According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness. Our mentally ill are not a 100% of the problem. And by the way, it is why, as a veteran, I am spending my retirement years heading up the construction of 14 more supportive homes for homeless veterans. [www.rocklandhomesforheroes.org]

I close with the hope every reader will think about the facts and will join the effort to eradicate the stigma of mental illness and eradicate some of the very unkind words when discussing/describing a mentally ill person, just as America has eradicated some of the cruel demeaning words of people of other religions, races and national origins.

Much of statistics were from Google, which is public information and here are some of my more formal roles vis a vis the subject of this Article

Camp Venture serving our intellectually & developmentally disabled for 44 years as President
Loeb House serving our mentally ill - CoFounder & President - over 30 years
NYS Rockland Children’s Psychiatric Center Board of Visitors
NYS Rockland Adult Psychiatric Board of Visitors - President
Founding Member of the Orangetown Narcotic Guidance Council
Rockland County Board of Mental Health, Mental Retardation & Alcoholism - 40+ years