A Conversation for Robin

When I came across a post from NBC News announcing Robin William’s death, I gasped. “No!” I said, and immediately went to check to see if it was a hoax. I found similar articles from the LA Times, CNN, New York Times. It wasn’t. Robin Williams was gone, and had apparently taken his own life. Facebook and Twitter lit up with posts expressing shock, sadness, and sympathy for his family. I knew it was only a matter of time though and braced myself for the inevitable-and wasn’t disappointed.

this guy was a drug addict and now his pain is over but now his friends and family have 2 deal with the pain, he made a very selfish choice 2 take his own life, nice role model!

I’m not here to judge a man that I only met a few x in San Francisco; however, using suicide as the last arrogant and self-centered act is profoundly SELFISH! He had ZERO regard for his children, family, friends, and the ‘so-call’ charities he professed to love; clearly he didn’t love anyone; not even himself! COWARDICE in the extreme.

And on it went…whenever news of a suicide breaks, the scorn, the judgment, the hate starts flying.  It’s the recipe for STIGMA, especially the incredibly destructive stigma surrounding mental illness.

Robin Williams struggled with deep depression for years. Why you might ask. Why would a man who had gained acclaim, adoration and wealth have any reason to be depressed? There is no simple answer. Depression can be genetic. I know, I come from a family where there is both a history of depression and substance abuse. It can also be due to chemical imbalances in the brain. Depression is as much a disease as diabetes or asthma, and like those other diseases, sometimes they can be controlled with proper treatment-and sometimes not. For Robin Williams, the disease won. He was not selfish. He was not a coward. He was a man. A husband, a father, a flawed and simple human like the rest of us-and one in agonizing emotional pain.

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Where is the Outrage?

Enough with all the grandstanding and finger-pointing. Everyone is looking for something or someone to blame for the latest school shooting.

What happened in CT will NOT be prevented in other places by gun control or allowing God in schools, because it wasn’t about guns or religion. It was about the fact that the mentally ill are largely ignored in this country. The stigma is still there and the treatment options are not. A large portion of our homeless and prison populations are mentally ill. They need to be in psychiatric hospitals or treatment programs, but because in this country, mental health services, like healthcare, are a luxury item too few can afford, and many more are afraid to ask for. People with mental illnesses are often ridiculed and shunned thanks to the horrible stigma we’ve attached to mental illness. In this country if you don’t understand something, it’s acceptable to ridicule and attack it. Movies and TV shows help perpetuate this. Comedies use mental illness for laughs, horror films to frighten, and millions of dollars are raked in.

Guess what? You know someone with a mental illness. Since the age of 8, I’ve struggled with depression, anxiety disorder, and mild OCD. In my 20’s I developed PTSD as well after becoming the victim of a violent crime. I am lucky though. I got treatment and got better. I still have bad days but I am a happy, healthy, contributing member of society. I have friends who’ve had their own struggles with depression and anxiety, and a friend who struggles with a child’s mental illness. Most of us who have struggled with a mental illness have never been a danger to anyone but ourselves. Tragically though, there are exceptions.

28 people were murdered not because of a gun or because God wasn’t there-they were murdered because a severely mentally ill person did not get the help he needed. Granted, not all mental illnesses can be treated. Pedophiles will always be pedophiles, sociopaths will always be sociopaths. But there are many mental illnesses that CAN be treated-depression, OCD, schizophrenia, PTSD, anxiety disorders, etc. Yet many people with this illnesses suffer due to the stigma, or because they can’t afford the treatment they need to get well and insurance companies refuse to cover it. That is a national disgrace. If the outrage over that was as strong and vocal as the outrage over gun control is, there would be a lot less suffering and grief today. We should all be outraged, not at gun control or the lack thereof, and not at the lack of religion in schools. We should be outraged that the mentally ill are forgotten and ignored, left to suffer and in some tragic cases, become a ticking time bomb that eventually, horrifically explodes.

Where is the outrage? Where are the solutions? Where??

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