America we need to talk about the #SeaTac highjacker and how we discuss mental illness in relation to actions.
Please remember that mental illness is NOT an excuse for actions that harm or threaten the safety of others.
A thread by someone who with mental illness.
Please remember that mental illness is NOT an excuse for actions that harm or threaten the safety of others.
A thread by someone who with mental illness.
Now before you all jump in here and screech about how I am attacking mental illness and demonizing it --- no. Not at all.
Mental illness twists your mind, it twists your reality in many, many ways. We need better mental health access in America. Hands. Down.
Mental illness twists your mind, it twists your reality in many, many ways. We need better mental health access in America. Hands. Down.
We need to have more dialogues about it. Not just in times of chaos -- like now, but on an average Thursday.
But what I do need is for everyone to please stop using mental illness as a blanket reason for actions that harm or endanger other people.
But what I do need is for everyone to please stop using mental illness as a blanket reason for actions that harm or endanger other people.
We see the same thing with guns/mental health. Where we like to just blame someone being mentally ill on why they went into a school and shot it up. That doesn't excuse their actions and to crone, "but they were depressed :(" continues a narrative that
is simplistic. The reality is, many Americans suffer from mental illness but do not harm others. They do not shoot up a school. They do not beat their spouse. They do not abuse their child. They do not highjack airplanes at #SeaTac.
It is easy to blame mental illness.
It is easy to blame mental illness.
Mental illness is not a simple thing, and more importantly, it is very difficult to understand if you have never suffered from it. It is fucking nuanced and individualistic. But, it is never an excuse for harming others and endangering lives.
Slapping the sticker of "mental illness" on someone's actions lets us ignore other factors that could contribute to their actions. Financial strains, abuse, the loss of a job, the death of a loved one... look at people who do actions like this as complex.
Look at all the factors that bring this to that moment. Yes, address mental illness, that is important, but do NOT stop there. Expand that conversation, mention clearly "he made a decision to endanger others".
Honestly, what bothers me a lot about the #seatac highjacker narrative is how people are croaning about how "he cracked". If that plane had gone down with passengers inside it or hit a house the narrative wouldn't be so kind. Mental illness narratives are subjective.
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