Virginia vs. Iraq

[Prudence]

Mental illness is still seen as a personal failing - a choice someone has made to not think "appropriately". And because it's not considered a "real" illness, there is great resistance to expanding treatment options. People who are depressed should get over it. People who are psychotic should be locked up where we don't have to interact with them. In fact, I think many people associate psychosis with criminal behavior - not that psychosis leads to criminal behavior, but that being psychotic is in itself a criminal act, justifying incarceration.

It's a choice society has made. We - not individually, but as a society - have decided that mental illness is an willful individual flaw that we're not going to support treatment for something that's all in someone's head. Of course, that means things like this happen, but that's seen as just evidence of how awful the shooter was, not how difficult it is to access appropriate mental health treatment. And we all know the shooter was awful or he wouldn't have had any psychosis in the first place, right?