Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Where’s Nuance in Mental Illness Rhetoric?

Once again, a mass shooting tragedy has captured the nation’s attention. Once again, the question everyone wants answered is: Why? What drove Aaron Alexis to do something so awful, so incomprehensible, and seemingly so senseless? We all want to know why he did it because we want to know if there’s something we could have done to see it coming — something we can do to prevent it from happening again.

Simi Lichtman Image by Claudio Papapietro

And once again, the first answer is: Mental illness. It’s a reassuring answer, perhaps because it means that evil doesn’t exist, simply illness. It means there are warning signs to look out for in others.

But what does “mental illness” really mean? For the first time, hearing this answer scared me instead of reassuring me. For the first time, watching the news on TV, it occurred to me that I was one of those people who fall into the nebulous category of having a “mental illness.” Suddenly I wondered if that’s how people view me and other people with mild mental health problems. Were I to be accused of something one day, would the prosecutors, the media, the public, bring forth my “mental illness” and cite it as a reason to suspect me?

Yes, this particular man heard voices and thought his microwave had a message for him that went seriously beyond the readiness of hot food, but most articles about the incident don’t include a step-by-step account of his psychological deterioration; instead, the articles simply posit that this man shot people because he was mentally ill.

Obviously, I think warning signs are important to watch out for. But I also think it’s dangerous territory to label “mental illness” as a catch-all warning sign. Mental illness is too large a category and it encompasses so many subcategories as to be almost meaningless. There’s a vast difference between someone who has insomnia and someone with schizophrenia. A simple phobia of a snake is miles away from oppositional defiance disorder. All of these are categorized as “mental illnesses” as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And all of these should be considered in the context of whether the sufferer is actively seeking treatment or not, and whether the person is even capable of receiving help.

An article I came across in the New Yorker put this much more eloquently: “Very few people with mental illnesses commit crimes, and it is misleading and unhelpful to suggest otherwise.” As the author, Andrew Solomon, points out, it is the stigma created by such insinuations that lead people to avoid treatment, creating a vicious cycle of untreated mental health issues and the rare resulting crime.

Not all mental health issues follow a straight arrow toward hyper-publicized mass tragedies; in fact, very few do. People with eating disorders, like the one I had, tend toward self-affliction, and often go out of their way to avoid harming others.

Instead of demonizing all mental illnesses, we need to educate ourselves about them, and encourage treatment. We need compassion for those who are stricken with mental illness, and perhaps a little more nuance in our “mental illness” rhetoric.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.