I wish there were a better way to talk about some hot button issues without pushing the hot button.
"The bus stops on my route are usually full of people freebasing, so if the weather's bad, people waiting for the bus end up standing in the rain."
Oh, so you think they should just go to jail? That addicts deserve to suffer?
"No, but now we don't have functional shelters for people using transit, which discourages use. It's two problems."
Or someone in a local subreddit was asking what resources were available because someone in their apartment building was having a mental health crisis. This involved screaming racial slurs into the poster's door at all hours, vandalizing their car, and leaving them letters about how they knew the poster had bugs/spies in their apartment and various threats if they didn't "stop".
Most of the responses were "The police would probably just shoot them" and "Actually mentally ill people more likely to be *victims* of violence than to cause it", which is all well and good. But I also don't think that the person asking should have to live with someone screaming racial slurs into their door at 2AM or vandalizing their car? Again, we have 2 problems here.
This:
This.
I got this from a former therapist, no less. I had been working from a coffee shop and a man came in, yelling about *bitches* and swearing at the girls behind the counter. He had a walking stick that he was pounding on the floor and at one point started hitting the counter with it.
He was between me and the door, it was stressful, and when he moved, I got myself out of there.
And I was talking to my therapist about it (I was seeing her for some pretty intense anxiety and PTSD (as in my doctor was like ‘your cortisol levels are at like active-combat-deployment levels, we gotta get those down’)), about how a day later I was still jittery about it.
And she gave me the “don’t be judgmental, most mentally ill people are harmless,” and I was like “lady, this one was ranting about women and BRANDISHING A WEAPON, I’m not going to stick around and wait to find out whether he’s actually harmless.”
And I think there’s a key component there that we don’t know how to talk about:
- most mentally ill people are harmless and more likely to be victims of harm
AND
- some forms of mental illness can cause people to behave in ways that seem threatening because they resemble what a person who doesn’t have that form of mental illness might do if they were in the grip of the sort of overwhelming anger that has a significant chance of becoming violence
Like, in general, if a human being starts screaming at you, you are in danger, and all the At A Population Level statistics in the world don’t make being afraid in that situation irrational, and unless you have training in handling crisis situations, you should probably get yourself away from them if possible or call someone for help if you can’t.
Mentally Ill People are often unfairly demonized and they can threaten harm to others are not contradictions.
