Diagnosing Jared Lee Loughner for Political Gain

Posted on January 10, 2011 in Accountability Campaign 2010 Civic Responsibility Hatred Stigma Violence

They’re doing it all over again: jumping to the conclusion that Jared Lee Loughner is mentally ill because he is violent. Tea Party minions have been ordered via email to label him as a “liberal lunatic”. Keith Olbermann labeled him a “disturbed person”. I have yet to see a psychiatric report on him, but I have heard plenty of people state with the authority that comes from watching Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street that he is a “paranoid schizophrenic”.

You know me: I live with bipolar disorder. It is there every hour of my day, stilled by [[carbamazepine]] and [[lamotrigine]]. So you know I have a stake in this. Others I know with the disorder also are concerned about the publicity. If they’re new to the diagnosis, they may fear beyond reason that they might go insane like Loughner did. If they’ve known for some time, they are taking a silent breath and saying “Here we go again.” Here comes the need for secrecy, for hiding their illness from the world. Some will not attend support groups out of fear of being seen and others will come, distraught from the fear of what Society will do with them. There are those out there who will say that we have to find the Jared Lee Loughners before they hurt another and that means throwing out the advances of the last fifty years and reopening the mental hospitals. These are reckless times and our fear is not unfounded.

Slate ran an excellent article, cautioning its readers and newsmen not to jump to the conclusion that Loughner is “mentally ill”. In part the article says:

A 2009 analysis of nearly 20,000 individuals concluded that increased risk of violence was associated with drug and alcohol problems, regardless of whether the person had schizophrenia. Two similar analyses on bipolar patients showed, along similar lines, that the risk of violent crime is fractionally increased by the illness, while it goes up substantially among those who are dependent on intoxicating substances. In other words, it’s likely that some of the people in your local bar are at greater risk of committing murder than your average person with mental illness.

Of course, like the rest of the population, some people with mental illness do become violent, and some may be riskier when they’re experiencing delusions and hallucinations. But these infrequent cases do not make “schizophrenia” or “bipolar” a helpful general-purpose explanation for criminal behavior. If that doesn’t make sense to you, here’s an analogy: Soccer hooligans are much more likely to be violent when they attend a match, but if you tell me that your friend has gone to a soccer match, I’ll know nothing about how violent a person he is. Similarly, if you tell me your friend punched someone, the fact that he goes to soccer matches tells me nothing about what caused the confrontation. This puts recent speculation about the Arizona suspect in a distinctly different light: If you found evidence on the Web that Jared Lee Loughner or some other suspected killer was obsessed with soccer or football or hockey and suggested it might be an explanation for his crime, you’d be laughed at. But do the same with “schizophrenia” and people nod in solemn agreement. This is despite the fact that your chance of being murdered by a stranger with schizophrenia is so vanishingly small that a recent study of four Western countries put the figure at one in 14.3 million. To put it in perspective, statistics show you are about three times more likely to be killed by a lightning strike.

It’s the usual case of the media and politicians finding the explanation for the Saturday’s horror in Tuscon everywhere except in themselves. We need confront the media for its violent imagery and its pandering to the worst in American society. We must stand up to demogogues who employ violent rhetoric, saying “Enough of this talk of Second Amendment remedies and hit lists of liberal politicians. Tone it down. Cool it. The buck stops with you.”

Lightning probably did not strike in Arizona, but hatred did.