Being Bipolar is An Instant Capital Offense

Posted on December 8, 2005 in Bipolar Disorder

Many of us who suffer from bipolar illness know this story too well. The disease thrusts us into a mania. We panic. We run. Then the police — who have been trained to apply only a single template over a possible sequence of events — grab us, beat us, or open fire. Now the War on Terrorism has claimed its first bipolar victim and no one seems to be sorry:

Rigoberto Alpizar was shot on the runway of Miami International Airport after he “uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb,” said James Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service field office in Miami.

However, witnesses said Mr Alpizar’s wife had desperately tried to explain he was ill and not a terrorist as the undercover air marshals pursued him. The chase ended moments later when, authorities say, he appeared to reach for his bag and was shot.

But no bomb was found and officials concluded there was no link to terrorism.

Witnesses said his wife Anne frantically tried to explain he had manic depression and was off his medication.

One said: “A lady followed him, calling: ‘He’s ill, he’s ill!”‘

Elsewhere:

The two air marshals who shot a 44-year-old American Airlines passenger to death followed “textbook training,” said Dave Adams, a spokesman for the air marshals.

He confirmed that both the two air marshals on aboard the flight fired at Rigoberto Alpizar, after he ran off the plane and ignored demands to stop and put down his bag.

“We only react when there is a threat to the aircraft, passengers or crew,” Adams said.

The two federal air marshals had been put on administrative leave pending investigation of the incident, officials said.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the incident “demonstrates the critical role that air marshals play in aviation security today.”

Alpizar, it should be noted, was a missionary.

Alpizar died, apparently, because he exhibited symptoms of bipolar disorder on an airplane. Current airline security standards should have ruled out all possibility of anyone carrying a bomb on board and U.S. Marshals should have proceeded accordingly. Presumably, Alpizar was run through a metal detector and his bag searched. The plane itself should have been secured. So why did U.S. Marshals jump to the conclusion that he was an armed terrorist?

Because they’d been trained to regard anyone, under any circumstances, who runs and yells that he has a bomb as one.

And the reason why they aren’t better informed is because of all of the stigma flowing down the sewage pipe. Over the past few weeks, I have seen more than a few stories that outlined how law enforcement procedures resulted in the death or injury of a person suffering from mental illness. The brown waters have cascaded by continually. An unarmed bipolar or a schizophrenic gets shot because he says he has a weapon — even when it is patently impossible that he does.

Cops stick to the book. When this happens, they pull it out, show us the lines, and say that they are blameless. It’s the rule, Sir. You can’t fault us for following the rule. So innocent people lie dead and the cop gets off.

Part of the problem is the rules. Written by politicians and police officials, they incorporate a negativity and misinformation into a plan of action. “Everyone who acts flamboyantly must be violent.” If you aren’t killed outright, you will be seized and beaten. If you’re African American or Latino, they’ll throw you in jail. If you’re white, you may get off with a few weeks in a mental hospital. But the stigma remains.

Stigma incarcerates without bars. You’ve seen many forms of it: epithets carelessly thrown about, double-talk, assumptions about our intelligence, the insidious suggestion in news stories that sufferers of mental illness are all violent even though statistics show that we are twelve times (on average) more likely to be the victim than the unafflicted. Studies show that fear of being diagnosed as mentally ill keeps many people from seeking help. They don’t want to know, so they shrink to blackened ashes of plastic wrap inside and suffer needlessly.

A few people who I know have gone off their meds. A surprising number of them, when you get deep down, say that the reason why they stop is because they are tired of people calling them “crazy”. Keeping their secret exhausts them. Revealing that the pink pills are lithium and blue ones Lamictal, for example, discredits oneself unduly. Better to live in ugly moods, these sufferers reason, than to leave all that evidence of sickness lying about.

Prosecutors like to seize on the decision to stop taking medications as proof that a bipolar or a schizophrenic has willfully embarked on a course that will end in violence. They don’t seek manslaughter charges: they aver that the sufferer deserves nothing less than the death penalty.

The fallacy is, of course, that plenty of people go off their meds without hurting anyone else. You can’t know where a mania will take you. No one drops his meds to become a killer.

Why does this persist? Partly because so many of us are in hiding. And for good reason. People lose jobs, marriages, and more when the diagnosis comes through. They end up on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. (And when you are stuck in that zombie realm, it can be very hard to maintain your regimen of medications since the new regulations went into effect. Many of us are being denied the drugs that our psychiatrists prescribe in our best interests thanks to the Bush Administration.) You become a second class citizen. People who otherwise show exemplary concern for the dignity of others put you down, write you off. I can’t blame those who hide.

And for them, I can come out because I have nothing to lose.

A fellow participant in the Saturday support group I attend is training police in recognizing the signs of bipolar illness and how to handle such cases. The other night, another friend was handcuffed and taken to a local hospital. Unlike yet another friend, she was not beaten.

What it has taken so far is a police chief with a sister or brother who suffers from the disease, a mayor with a son or a niece. These press to look at the rules. They overcome the stigma that prevents we who suffer from reforming procedures for our safety. There can be only so many such people in the world. We need to reach out, especially when incidents such as the Alpizar shooting happen. We need to go to media and we need to go to officials in our own community: What are you doing to handle this kind of thing so that it doesn’t end like this?

Just the word “crazy” flung without thought adds to the misconceptions about what mental illness is all about. Consider the ringer that happens in the last sentence of LB’s last(?) comment on this thread. Too many people want to reserve the right to use mental illness as a way of attacking others. They won’t let go unless we keep educating people. The course of reform slithers from left to right. It took African Americans years of pressure before moderates saw the harm of the N-Word. In our struggle, we’re dealing with insensitive leftists. That tells you how far we have to go.

One strong image African Americans wielded in their slow struggle for recognition were the black and white images of lynchings. Folks came from miles around for the spectacle of a bloated, sometimes half-roasted black man hanging from a tree. The pictures shocked outsiders who could read the cluelessness on the faces of the participants.

Think of the parties, of the blogs, where epithets suggesting mental illness get flung around callously. Think where these people work, what these people do, who these people vote for. Tonight as I write this, there are small coffee klatches or boozers where people are analyzing what happened in Miami. “He was off his meds,” they’ll say. “He was crazy.” “He was bipolar.” “The marshals did what they had to do.” Put those men and women around the corpse lying on Miami’s tarmac. Watch them posture and gape. Alpizar’s dead body could be our future just because of who we are.

* * * * *

From an article about bipolar disorder and travel on ABC News:

“If both risk factors occurred — he [Alpizar] had not taken his medications on his trip to Ecuador and he was sleep-deprived due to a long international flight — it would not be uncommon for a manic episode to be triggered,” [Dr. S. Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Emory University in Atlanta] said.

Although Alpizar’s wife was aware of her husband’s illness, she would have had little ability to predict his behavior and should not be blamed for the incident, said Linda Rosenberg, president and chief executive office of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

“It’s not [an] uncommon reaction when someone has a family member with a serious mental illness, there is often guilt. They wonder: ‘What could I have done differently?’ ” Rosenberg said. “He probably was not aware of or able to communicate [his state of mind].”

Most law enforcement personnel are given training on dealing with mentally ill people, but that’s not always enough to prevent cases like Alpizar’s, said Seattle psychiatrist Gregory Simon of the Group Health Cooperative.

“Unfortunately, in these times, anyone who acts out in a way that is perceived as threatening — that’s going to draw a lot more attention than it did five years ago.”