An Oldie but a Goodie
Mindless and Deadly
Media hype on mental illness and violence
Extra! May/June 2001
By
Buried deep in a New York Times story (1/30/01) about the brutal murder of Dartmouth professors Susanne and Half Zantop, resides a common prejudice linking violence with mental illness. Speculating on the reason for the attack, the paper noted that Half Zantop "had once tried to help a mentally ill young man."
When two local youth were arrested--neither suffering from overt psychosis--the knee-jerk response seemed groundless. Yet the initial impression associating the crime with mental illness had already been molded.
When a Manhattan woman was assaulted with a brick by an unknown assailant, the New York Daily News (11/19/99) ran two-inch block letters across the front-page, demanding: "GET THE VIOLENT CRAZIES OFF OUR STREETS."
The New York Times (11/20/99) flayed the Daily News for its "throat-grabbing covers," but not for its erroneous assumptions. Daily News editor Brian Kates summarized the situation when he told a Times reporter that people assumed "the guy who did it was probably deranged. Obviously that remains to be seen."
When the eventual suspect turned out to be neither schizophrenic nor bi-polar, the pundits were hardly apologetic: "Drake turns out not to have been the insane box-dweller many thought an eventual brick-attack suspect would be," New York Post columnist Rod Dreher said (12/2/99). And some just kept hammering on the mentally ill; "Whatever Drake's mental condition might be, those loons on the loose who pose threats to the citizenry are still out there because of mental-illness policies that need to be revised," opined Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch (12/2/99).
Questionable causality
Despite the seemingly inextricable media link between mental illness and violence, scientific research has cast doubt on the causal connection. A three-year study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (5/98), compared discharged mental patients with others in their communities. For those without an alcohol or other drug problem, no difference in violence was found, the authors wrote: "There was no significant difference between the prevalence of violence by patients without symptoms of substance abuse and the prevalence of violence by others living in the same neighborhoods who were also without symptoms of substance abuse." When there was violence, it "most often took place at home," not in the larger community.
Despite some coverage of this study (it appeared in the New York Times under the misleading headline, "Studies of Mental Illness Show Links to Violence"--5/15/98), an opposing image persists in the press. Helping to keep the myths alive is the mantra of "1,000 homicides a year" chanted by the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC).
TAC is a Beltway offshoot of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an advocacy group consisting largely consumers of mental health services and their families. Its funding comes almost entirely from the Theodore and Veda Stanley Family Foundation. Since the late 1980s, the Stanley Family has spent more than $20 million for research into the causes of schizophrenia and bi-polar illnesses, as well as the benefits of unconventional drug therapies. But the Stanley Foundation is not known for its scientific achievements as much as it is for its most prominent spokesperson, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey.
link to full story
Media hype on mental illness and violence
Extra! May/June 2001
By
Buried deep in a New York Times story (1/30/01) about the brutal murder of Dartmouth professors Susanne and Half Zantop, resides a common prejudice linking violence with mental illness. Speculating on the reason for the attack, the paper noted that Half Zantop "had once tried to help a mentally ill young man."
When two local youth were arrested--neither suffering from overt psychosis--the knee-jerk response seemed groundless. Yet the initial impression associating the crime with mental illness had already been molded.
When a Manhattan woman was assaulted with a brick by an unknown assailant, the New York Daily News (11/19/99) ran two-inch block letters across the front-page, demanding: "GET THE VIOLENT CRAZIES OFF OUR STREETS."
The New York Times (11/20/99) flayed the Daily News for its "throat-grabbing covers," but not for its erroneous assumptions. Daily News editor Brian Kates summarized the situation when he told a Times reporter that people assumed "the guy who did it was probably deranged. Obviously that remains to be seen."
When the eventual suspect turned out to be neither schizophrenic nor bi-polar, the pundits were hardly apologetic: "Drake turns out not to have been the insane box-dweller many thought an eventual brick-attack suspect would be," New York Post columnist Rod Dreher said (12/2/99). And some just kept hammering on the mentally ill; "Whatever Drake's mental condition might be, those loons on the loose who pose threats to the citizenry are still out there because of mental-illness policies that need to be revised," opined Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch (12/2/99).
Questionable causality
Despite the seemingly inextricable media link between mental illness and violence, scientific research has cast doubt on the causal connection. A three-year study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (5/98), compared discharged mental patients with others in their communities. For those without an alcohol or other drug problem, no difference in violence was found, the authors wrote: "There was no significant difference between the prevalence of violence by patients without symptoms of substance abuse and the prevalence of violence by others living in the same neighborhoods who were also without symptoms of substance abuse." When there was violence, it "most often took place at home," not in the larger community.
Despite some coverage of this study (it appeared in the New York Times under the misleading headline, "Studies of Mental Illness Show Links to Violence"--5/15/98), an opposing image persists in the press. Helping to keep the myths alive is the mantra of "1,000 homicides a year" chanted by the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC).
TAC is a Beltway offshoot of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an advocacy group consisting largely consumers of mental health services and their families. Its funding comes almost entirely from the Theodore and Veda Stanley Family Foundation. Since the late 1980s, the Stanley Family has spent more than $20 million for research into the causes of schizophrenia and bi-polar illnesses, as well as the benefits of unconventional drug therapies. But the Stanley Foundation is not known for its scientific achievements as much as it is for its most prominent spokesperson, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey.
link to full story
posted by Christine at Tuesday, June 21, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home