May 04, 2007
Psychiatry as our Savior in Viginia
When I hear Rev. Jesse Jackson remind us, in the wake of America’s most deadly shooting rampage, that we need to “take more seriously the need to address mental disorders and mental depression,” I have mixed feelings.
We all like to believe that we can pursue our lives independently of the business of strangers. The truth made so obvious this past week is that we cannot. We are all affected by the mental health of those around us, and even those who live thousands of miles away. Sometimes this is as simple as a courteous driver, who shares his good spirits with others as he drives to work. Other times this is as serious as violent assaults, perhaps by those close to us, or by total strangers.
So, yes, we need to take more seriously issues of mental health. But what does this mean, exactly? Does it mean more testing for psychiatric disorders and more psychiatric drugs? I hope not.
I have mixed feelings here because I know that viewing mental health as primarily a medical and psychiatric issue is not working. In 1999, the U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher released a report on growing problems of mental health in America. This report encouraged us to view mental problems in terms of illness and disease. To this I responded in an opinion-editorial that this is the wrong approach, noting for instance that several of the individuals involved in school shootings had been prescribed the latest psychiatric drugs.
There is some suggestion that this appears to be the case this week as well. Whether or not this proves to be true, it should be clear that leaving mental-health issues to the professionals will not protect us from the “aberrant” and “violent behavior” of a troubled 23-year-old student. We now know that Cho Seung-Hui experienced some psychiatric treatment in December 2005. That he was soon thereafter sent off to drift alone in a sea of people and peers is a fact that now haunts the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.
A growing body of research reminds us that mental health is very much a product of our social environment, from family to society. We know, for instance, that strong ties to family and a social community buffer individuals from mental disorders, whereas a breakdown of these ties is linked closely with problems ranging from domestic violence to drug abuse to depression to schizophrenia. Some of this research has examined the plight of immigrants, who often go adrift in their adopted country. None of these immigrant studies show, incidentally, that achieving greater economic wealth improves, by itself, people’s mental health. The relationship, more often than not, goes in the other direction.
As the nation and much of the world attempts to comprehend America’s most deadly shooting rampage, we seek to learn some lessons and find some small good that might come of such horror and tragedy. I only hope that more tragedy will not come from drawing the wrong conclusion, that in listening to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s plea, we will forget his other message, that we are, whether we like it or not, all brothers and sisters in this global village.