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positivepsychologyinterventions · 5 years

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Podcast: Mass Shootings and Mental Illness

It seems like every day there is another mass shooting in the news: Newtown, Parkland, Odessa, Dayton. And most of these news reports allude to the shooter having mental illness. But is this true? Common wisdom holds that someone must be mentally ill to do such a thing. But is it really that simple?

Join us for a nuanced discussion with Dr. John Grohol, the founder of PsychCentral.com, as he explains how media bias and slanted reporting have contributed to the myths and misunderstandings of who is violent in America.

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Guest information for ‘Mass Shootings and Mental Illness’ Podcast Episode

John M. Grohol, Psy.D. is a pioneer in online mental health and psychology. Recognizing the educational and social potential of the Internet in 1995, Dr. Grohol has transformed the way people could access mental health and psychology resources online. Pre-dating the National Institute for Mental Health and mental health advocacy organizations, Dr. Grohol was the first to publish the diagnostic criteria for common mental disorders, such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. His leadership has helped break down the barriers of stigma often associated with mental health concerns, bringing trusted resources and support communities to the Internet.

He has worked tirelessly as a patient advocate to improve the quality of information available for mental health patients, highlighting quality mental health resources, and building safe, private support communities and social networks in numerous health topics.

About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Mass Shootings and Mental Illness ’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: Welcome to the Psych Central Podcast, where each episode features guest experts discussing psychology and mental health in everyday plain language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. We are here again with Dr. John Grohol, the founder and editor-in-chief of PsychCentral.com. John, welcome to the show.

Dr. John Grohol: Always great to be here, Gabe.

Gabe Howard: It’s always great to have you. And this week, we want to talk about something that has been in the news a lot. Mass shootings and specifically we want to talk about, well, frankly, the way that the media reports on mental illness and mass shootings.

Dr. John Grohol: It’s a common issue whenever we have reporting done on mental illness in the mainstream media. It’s not always well connected to the kinds of conclusions that they come to. And it’s pretty frustrating, as both someone who has studied this issue for a very long time and has been writing about it for over a decade, I just find it very frustrating to continue to read the same kind of misperceptions being repeated over and over again.

Gabe Howard: One of the biggest things that gets reported after every single mass shooting is — what is the mental health status of the shooter? And this comes out before, sometimes, we even know the name of the shooter. People are already talking about, well, it must be mental illness, it has to be mental illness. That person has to be mentally ill. And I imagine that you have some stuff to say about that.

Dr. John Grohol: Sure. I think it’s where our minds automatically go to. It’s a very natural sort of thing to want to do, to understand the motive, to understand how could someone do this? But then again, I ask myself, how could a human being murder another human being on a one-to-one scale? So for me, it’s always been a question of murder is the line that you cross, I think, in criminal activity — not how many people you murder. Just because someone only murders one other person, we’re supposed to say, oh, well, that’s understandable, you know? It was a lover’s quarrel or something like that or a drug deal gone bad. And we have an instant understanding. But do we? I mean, are most normal people perfectly okay and feel comfortable with taking another human being’s life? I don’t think so. I think that’s way outside the norm of most people’s thinking. And I think that’s what gets lost in this conversation as well as many other things.

Gabe Howard: Let’s touch on that for a moment, thinking purely as a doctor, as a psychologist, John, not as a journalist, not as somebody that writes about psychology and mental illness. Is the definition of mental illness.. is it diagnostic criteria to do something that nobody else has done means you’re mentally ill? So the first person to climb Mount Everest, because nobody else has done it — that person must be mentally ill? Because it’s unusual? Isn’t that kind of what we’re saying when we say if you murder somebody, you therefore must be mentally ill?

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah, I think it’s a slippery slope because I think it’s a far cry with being diagnosed with an actual mental illness by a mental health professional versus someone who has mental health issues, where most of the population could fall into the latter category. Most people have had mental health issues throughout their lives. They deal with trauma. They deal with grief. They deal with emotionality and upset and loss. These are common things that people grapple with. And that’s where the sloppiness in the reporting comes from, in the first part, is that they don’t differentiate between these two very important categories: mental illness and mental health or psychological issues.

Gabe Howard: That’s a really good point, and I want to touch on that for just a moment. Even in mental health advocacy, we have this tendency to say this phrase, well, he has mental health instead of what we mean is that person has bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or psychosis or severe and persistent mental illness. We’ve sort of made mental health and mental illness mean exactly the same thing. So there’s already that confusion that… Anybody, literally anybody, can have a mental health issue. For example, grief, which we’ve covered on this show before, grief is a mental health issue, but it’s not severe and persistent mental illness. Do you think that the media does any job of separating those two things out or do we just see all mental health, all mental illness, as exactly the same, no matter what the symptoms?

Dr. John Grohol: So I categorize mental health in the same way that we look at physical health. And when you talk about mental health, it’s actually a good thing. We all have mental health. We all have physical health. When people confabulate mental health with mental illness, it’s a serious problem. You can have mental health issues, which I think is something different. But every human being on this planet has mental health, just like every human being has physical health. And we can talk about things that you can do to improve your mental health. Even if you don’t have a mental illness diagnosis. And yes, I think that’s an important point that often gets lost in the conversation, that mental health is something that everyone has. Mental illness is something that one in five Americans have.

Gabe Howard: It’s like physical health. People have good physical health. It’s the physical illness that is the issue. And again, when we talk about the reporting of it, I think that the average person listening to this believes that any mental health can only exist on the negative. This really does boil down to there’s not a lot of understanding of mental health versus mental illness in our society. And that is reflected in the reporting and adds further confusion.

Dr. John Grohol: I think it is a confusion point, but I don’t think it’s the primary confusion point. I don’t think it’s the reason that people are misreporting on the connection between mental illness and violence.

Gabe Howard: Which begs the question, why do you think they’re doing it?

Dr. John Grohol: I think they’re doing it because they have not looked very hard at the research and the reports that have come out from respected bodies that have done deep dives on the research to understand what do we actually know about mass shooters? What kind of characteristics do they have? And it’s easy to go to the sloppy, easy reporting such as Mother Jones mass shootings database. But Mother Jones is not a research institute. While it’s usually a good source of journalism, this particular data point that they’re trying to put together does a really poor job in differentiating what different mass shooting perpetrators have as primary characteristics, say they confabulate, again, mental health issues with mental illness.

Gabe Howard: And do you think that’s just done because we want the quick and easy answer. Does society just want to say, “Oh, that’s mental illness. So as long as I avoid people who have mental illness, I will be safe from violence?” Or do you think it’s deeper than that?

Dr. John Grohol: It’s an easy, low hanging scapegoat. It’s always easier to have an alt group of people where they’re a minority of the population and to point to them and say, hey, this is the cause of all of our problems and then work on ways to legislate that small group of people. And that legislation obviously would not make much of a difference if you’re talking about mass shootings.

Gabe Howard: Well, not only would it not make much of a difference if you’re talking about mass shootings, but it would make all the difference to people like me, people who live with bipolar disorder, that would be impacted by those laws. So not only are we not solving the problem, which is mass shootings, but we’re making it harder for people with severe and persistent mental illness to seek treatment. Because last time I checked, we’re not seeing an uptick in spending on mental health issues. We’re just seeing it’s your fault, and then there’s the story kind of drops off there.

Dr. John Grohol: You’re primarily seeing a lot of rhetoric and a lot of promises that are easy to make but very hard to follow through on. When it comes to mental health spending in America, we’ve seen a decline over the past two decades that shows no sign of letting up and not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s really, really important not to gloss over that. Some people are talking about taking away a constitutional right from one in five Americans, the right to bear arms, the Second Amendment. And I think that’s a huge problem. I don’t want anyone’s constitutional rights being taken away for a medical or mental illness diagnosis.

Gabe Howard: I want to kind of ask a devil’s advocate question on that for a moment. You know, John, we live in the real world, and we don’t want somebody who is suffering from psychosis. They don’t know their own name. They don’t know who the people around them are. They think that everybody is an enemy combatant. They’re, for lack of a better phrase, they’re out of their mind. We don’t want that person to have an assault rifle. We don’t, right?

Dr. John Grohol: Certainly. And there’s a criteria that you can use. And we call that if you’re a danger to yourself or others. And we already use that criteria day in and day out today to help differentiate whether people need to have their weapons taken away from them. They’re called red flag laws, and they’re growing in popularity across the states. But that alone will not solve the problem of mass shootings because, again, most mass shootings are not being conducted by people with mental illness.

Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after this message from our sponsor.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: And we’re back speaking with Dr. John Grohol. So what would solve the problem of mass shootings?

Dr. John Grohol: Well, it’s good that you ask that question, because the National Council is a large organization that focuses on behavioral health, the profession, the administration of behavioral health in the United States, put together a research panel to actually look at this issue. And they released their findings in August of 2019, and they found that perpetrators share certain characteristics. And those characteristics cut across demographic, sociological, cultural and occupational groups. The characteristics that really identify mass shooters are that they are most often males, most often expressing hopelessness or harboring grievances that are frequently related to work, school, finances or interpersonal relationships. They feel victimized and they sympathize with others who they perceive to be similarly mistreated. That’s why the Internet plays such an important role in this harboring and encouraging mass shooters. They have a general indifference to life, and they don’t mind dying by suicide. So those are the primary characteristics that differentiate a mass shooter from everyone else. And you’ll notice that mental illness diagnosis is not in there because it is not a strong characteristic or an indicator that was shared by most mass shooters.

Gabe Howard: This raises an interesting question, though, again, as a mental health professional, John, somebody who doesn’t mind dying by suicide is not exactly mentally well, right?

Dr. John Grohol: If they’re suffering from psychological distress, that’s something different than mental illness, and you can’t forget the fact that there’s no mental illness necessarily diagnosed. Just because someone is suicidal doesn’t mean that they qualify for a diagnosis of a mental illness. It may seem like they should. And in many cases they would. Suicide in and of itself is not usually the key indicator of qualifying for a diagnosis.

Gabe Howard: And there are examples throughout history of people who have been suicidal or have completed the act of suicide who are not mentally ill — war times, criminals, people with their backs against the wall. This doesn’t mean that they have, you know, bipolar schizophrenia, major depression or psychosis. It just means that they have some strong feeling to do something. Biggest example that I can think of is like kamikaze pilots. They didn’t go and round up a bunch of mentally ill people. They found people who believed in the cause so much they were willing to die for it. And that’s not mental illness, correct?

Dr. John Grohol: Correct. That’s very true. There are other predictors and characteristics that are more important to focus on than mental illness. And reports like the one from the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center does a really deep dive and really good analysis of mass shootings that have been perpetrated in the United States. And a grievance is really a key indicator, someone who carries a heavy grievance for work-related things, school, finances, or interpersonal relationships. That’s a much stronger indicator than anything like mental illness.

Gabe Howard: And we can see how this plays out on a much smaller level. Human resources, people, have all kinds of ideas on how to reduce, not violence, but outbursts or conflicts or problems when it comes to, for example, laying people off or firing people or even discipline. I think a lot of people have heard that human resources or supervisors will let people go on Friday afternoons. And the logic behind that is that way, when they wake up on Saturday, they wouldn’t have been going to work anyways. So their life seems normal until Monday when they realize, oh, hey, I’ve lost my job. And hopefully that gives them time to calm down now. That’s not to prevent violence. I’m not trying to say that every person that gets laid off or fired is going to come back and shoot the place up. But it does prevent things like screaming and yelling, swear words on your way out the door. Flipping over a desk, causing public relations problems, etc., etc., etc.. So this is just like an extreme version of that, right? Mass shootings are an extreme version of that. Just you have a grievance. This is how you deal with it.

Dr. John Grohol: Absolutely, and it doesn’t come out of a vacuum, it doesn’t come out of the blue. Ninety three percent of attackers had engaged in threats or concerning communication. In other words, they’re making their intentions clear that they want to do something about what their perceived slight or upset was about. People have warning that this person probably could have the potential for something really bad to happen. And I think we need to be more sensitive to that kind of communication since so many mass shooters engage in that communication before an attack. We could do a much, much better job in capturing those communications and being aware of them ahead of time and then contacting law enforcement, see if this person really has potential for engaging in a mass shooting.

Gabe Howard: Well, that does open kind of an interesting question there as well. Let’s say that you get online and you talk about how you hate a whole bunch of people or that you’re furious and all of the things that you just said. What does law enforcement do, arrest you for a thought crime? It does get kind of sticky there. Right? Which is another reason that maybe people aren’t thinking along this. Because I know that every time I post something on the Internet, I don’t want to call from the police asking me what I mean by it.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah. The threats aren’t generalized, they’re not like, hey, I want to shoot up my workplace. They’re usually pretty specific and they’re often directed to a specific person at the workplace, at school, and interpersonal relationships. They would send threatening emails. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to slit your throat. I want you dead.” And that at that point, that’s where I think you need to draw the line and report that person to law enforcement, because I think they’re making a very clear and conscious effort to try to threaten you. And I think that’s a fine time for a good intervention.

Gabe Howard: To bring this back to sloppy reporting by the media. Why do you think that the media doesn’t report on this? We see lots and lots and lots of stories on, you know, mentally ill people. And but again, you’ve described direct threats, direct access, a plan. The last person literally had a manifesto of everything that he wanted to do, was going to do, and how he was going to do it. And we don’t see that played a lot. What we see are guns are good or guns are bad, and it’s probably mental illness. But his whole manifesto seems to be lost somewhere. But that was his roadmap, and it was posted before this happened.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah, and not everyone has a manifesto, obviously, but they do give out a lot of signs. And maybe one of the challenges is to help people become more aware of the signs to look for. Most of them don’t involve any kind of mental illness. Most of them are things like, hey, this person has significant stressor. They just lost their job. They just had a significant breakup that seems to be really, really kicking them when they’re down. They just lost someone that was really important to them in their life. You look at those kinds of things, those significant stressors, the threats or concerning communications. And then a third thing, unhealthy fixations. So many, 41 percent of attackers, have unhealthy fixations. That’s a pretty big group. So if someone is really fixated on an idea or a person to cause them harm or to try and take out some sort of retribution against that individual or that organization. I think, again, these are all good warning signs that we could all be more aware of and be attuned to. And then if you do find something specific or you do have something of concern, that’s what law enforcement is there for. It’s their job to figure out, hey, is this person going to be a problem in the future? Let’s keep an eye on them. Let’s talk to them. I think we have a lot of opportunities to do an intervention before a mass shooting takes place. And unfortunately, we’re failing to do those interventions. We are not focused on helping people when they’re giving us kind of clear signs. We’re in denial about those signs. And I think just too many people aren’t even aware of the signs. They think, as you said, mental illnesses is the sign. Mental illness is not the sign.

Gabe Howard: John, what do you think that the media could do better?

Dr. John Grohol: Well, they could stop turning to sources that obviously have some significant issues with the way that they’re collecting data. For instance, again, the Mother Jones mass shootings database is something that a lot of people are citing and turning to as suggesting that 60 percent of attackers have a mental illness or had signs of a mental illness. And those signs could have been a family member saying something like, “Oh, we always knew he wasn’t right.” I mean, that’s not a clear cut, you know, proof that the person had mental illness. And so they need to do a better job of citing sources like the National Council’s report, like the U.S. Secret Service’s report that have actually done the deep research into this issue and come up with a far less-biased sampling and methodology that gives us clear indications and characteristics to use to identify mass shooting potential perpetrators.

Gabe Howard: And of course, we’d like them to stop suggesting a diagnosis because nobody can diagnose anybody without seeing them. It’s malpractice. Even you, John, with, you know, a doctorate in this subject. You can’t hear about somebody else and determine that they have a mental illness. You must see that person in person, and you’re a specialist. You’re a trained professional.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah. It goes further than that. Yeah. As a family member, you can’t diagnose your family members as a friend, you can’t diagnose your friend. The only person who can make a diagnosis is a mental health professional or a doctor. These are the people who are trained in diagnosis. And if you don’t have that, then that person technically does not have a mental illness. And that’s the kind of proof, that’s the level of proof that we would expect if we were talking about that most mass shooters had a diagnosis of diabetes or something. We would want that the person actually had diabetes, not just that the family member thought maybe they could maybe have had diabetes.

Gabe Howard: John, I really, really like that example because there is this general idea that anybody can diagnose mental illness because we can all tell when our loved ones are a little off. But there’s no general hey, we can all tell if our loved ones have a heart condition or like you said, diabetes. So I wish people would start treating mental illness and physical illness exactly the same.

Dr. John Grohol: It’s so important to differentiate and start understanding that, hey, I’m in psychological distress, that doesn’t necessarily mean I have a mental illness. I might be going through a really rough patch in my life. That could last weeks or even months. But if I don’t see a mental health professional and get a diagnosis, then you have no proof I have a mental illness, but I have a psychological distress and might have some issues. But whether any of that rises to the level of an actual diagnosis, only a professional can make that determination. And we need to hold mental illness, and people who use mental illness as some sort of scapegoat, to the same standard as we would for any physical illness. It’s ridiculous that we think that people with mental illness don’t have the same challenges and shouldn’t deserve the same respect and just appreciation for the challenges that they have to face every day that we would for anyone with a physical illness.

Gabe Howard: John, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any final words for our listeners?

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah. It’s through conversations like this where I believe that we can help mainstream media sources better understand that their sloppy reporting is actually contributing to the problem and not helping shed light and insight and understanding into what to do about mass shootings. This is a really serious national problem. Mass shootings remain a pretty rare event, but they are happening far more frequently than they were 20 or 30 years ago. And we need to come to grips with that and start having a better plan than just to suggest it’s all a problem of mental illness or it’s all a problem of this or that. It’s not. It’s a problem that is complex. And we need to report and solve it in the same complex, subtle ways that the problem it presents itself.

Gabe Howard: And in problems that have worked historically for our country, for America. Cars used to be more dangerous. And now they’re safer, not because of one big thing that we did, but because of lots of little things that the data showed: better cars, better roads, better safety, etc..

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah. And you could look at any kind of public health or crisis or problem and how it was addressed. Cars were a huge cause of death for many, many decades before the federal government required seatbelts. Cigarette smoking didn’t end overnight. Cigarette smoking took many, many decades of increasing warnings on the packages, increasing awareness campaigns, where finally we’re at the point decades later where most people don’t smoke anymore. And I think it’s the same kind of thing that we need to do with understanding how to decrease the frequency of mass shootings. It’s not going to happen overnight. But we have to have a better plan than to scapegoat a minority in our country.

Gabe Howard: John, I could not agree more. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I appreciate it. I always love having you on the show.

Dr. John Grohol: Always a pleasure, Gabe. Thank you.

Gabe Howard: You’re very welcome. And listen up, everybody, please don’t forget to review our show on whatever podcast player you found us on and tell a friend. I’d take it as a personal favor. And remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We’ll see everyone next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Psych Central Podcast. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at GabeHoward.com. PsychCentral.com is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, PsychCentral.com offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. If you have feedback about the show, please email [email protected]. Thank you for listening and please share widely.

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positivepsychologyinterventions · 5 years

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Podcast: Police Officers and Their Interactions with the Mentally Ill

Everyone is subject to interacting with police – whether one has a mental illness or not. The police, of course, are there to keep us safe and enforce the rule of law. However, when you live with mental illness, police have another function: first responder. In this episode, Gabe & Michelle discuss how people living with mental illness feel about the role of police in our care. Listen Now!

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“People believe police go through all of this training to help people with mental illness. . . They don’t.” – Gabe Howard

Highlights From ‘Police’ Episode

[2:50] The story of Pamela Turner, a schizophrenic woman shot by police officers in Texas.

[5:30] The story of Debra Danner, a schizophrenic woman shot by police in the Bronx.

[7:00] Gabe helps train police officers.

[10:40] Is there a better way for police officers to help people with mental illness?

[16:00] It’s an Us vs. Them mentality.

[18:30] Politicians don’t seem to want to help the mentally ill people they blame for gun violence.

[21:00] Should mental health care be free for the greater good?

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Police Officers and Their Interactions with the Mentally Ill’ Show

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: For reasons that utterly escape everyone involved, you’re listening to A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. Here are your hosts, Gabe Howard and Michelle Hammer.

Gabe: Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. My name is Gabe. I am the bipolar one.

Michelle: And hi, I’m Michelle the schizophrenic one I guess. Got to

Gabe: Yes.

Michelle: Be.

Gabe: You’re the only one left. I mean it’s simple, it’s math. I mean how many times have you screamed that it’s just math?

Michelle: I’ve never ever screamed that in my life. But sure, Gabe, whatever you want to do.

Gabe: I happen to know that in another episode involving a police officer you screamed at her, “It’s just math. I’m the only one left.”

Michelle: No no no. I said process of elimination, process of elimination.

Gabe: Isn’t process of elimination just math?

Michelle: I guess so but she was still an idiot and didn’t know that.

Gabe: I don’t mean to bring up traumatic things in your past, although that was a great episode and I really encourage people to look in the show notes and find that episode and check it out, but we want to talk about you know the things that happened to people with mental illness. They’re not always fair. Like, for example, as you told the story you were having an episode. You were having the symptoms of schizophrenia you were experiencing psychosis and they sent the police to you. Could you imagine if you broke your leg and the police showed up?

Michelle: You know that would be absolutely absurd. But yeah the cops did show up. Well one cop showed up and instead of you know helping me she decided to beat the crap out of me until I was brought to the hospital because she couldn’t figure out which one was the guilty one. You know.

Gabe: And it’s good that you were brought to the hospital for you in that situation. It started off poorly but it ended up with you in the hospital. And again we don’t have to tell the whole story again we already did an episode on it. But you didn’t go to jail.

Michelle: No, I did not go to jail.

Gabe: And for many people that’s not the case.

Michelle: Well, I didn’t end up dead which was which is better because a lot of times you call the cops the person ends up dead.

Gabe: You know a lot of times is probably unfair to policing in America but sometimes it does happen and we have stories about this and really the number should be zero. Zero people who are experiencing a disease an illness a disorder who are not well. Zero people should end up in prison or arrested or on trial or dead. I mean that’s fair right?

Michelle: I completely agree with you on that one that’s for sure.

Gabe: You were alluding to something very specific. Tell the audience what you’re talking about because I think some people are going to hear: What do you mean somebody with mental illness ends up dead because of seeking help?

Michelle: Just last week, May 2019. There’s a woman in Texas. Her name is Pamela Turner. A cop approached her it was actually was all caught on social media. Cop approached her. She actually had outstanding warrants. But everybody in the community, they all knew that she had mental health issues and she was actually schizophrenic and a cop approached her, started arguing with her as she was resisting arrest and he began to tase her. And in the scuffle she grabbed his taser and started to tase him. And what he did in to retaliate was take out his gun and he shot five times. And one of them hit her and she ended up dead. Does that seem reasonable to you?

Gabe: None of it seems reasonable. I think that it’s unfair for all sides. I think that it is completely unreasonable of our society to expect police officers to be first responders for mental health crises. I mean think about that for a moment. Could you imagine if your house got robbed and society said OK we’re going to send a doctor with no police or law enforcement training whatsoever? But doctors now investigate crimes because that’s what happens. We expect police officers to deal with this. And when things go wrong we’re like stupid police. But at the same time. Oh my God!

Michelle: I mean

Gabe: Oh my God.

Michelle: What kind of cop gets their taser taken away from them? I mean what kind of cop is tasing a woman anyway? And they said she was just resisting arrest but she was also schizophrenic and obviously mentally ill. They said everybody in the complex. Everyone in the area. They all knew she had schizophrenia. They knew there was mental health issues. But a cop gets his taser taken away. I mean what kind of cop are you? They said that he was an 11 year veteran cop. Like what kind of cop is that? A taser ripped out of her hand? Like come on dude. And then your retaliation? Five shots? Really? Really five shots? They have your taser there’s a much better way to handle that. You don’t need to fire five shots and then one hits her? Like bad aim dude.

Gabe: You said a lot of things there and what I really want you and our listeners to focus on is the frustration in your voice. The reality is that we weren’t there. It’s unreasonable to say things like he fired five shots. What kind of a cop gets his taser taken away? How did he not know that she was mentally ill? Cops aren’t magic. They’re not clairvoyant. You can respect that. What I’m responding to is that I’m mentally ill. What happens if I have a mental health issue and somebody tries to get me help and I end up dead?

Michelle: Yeah. This isn’t the only issue though. Do you know what happened in October 2016 to Deborah Danner? Have you heard that story in New York City in the Bronx?

Gabe: I have not.

Michelle: She was actually also a Fountain House member before I was ever a member there. She had some multiple episodes the cops had been called on her before but nothing ever really big happened. But on one day the cops were called. She was in there with her sister and a cop and first she was wielding scissors. They said don’t wield those scissors, put those away so she put the scissors away and she comes out with a bat. Now the thing is, did she swing the bat or did she not swing the bat? But what had happened since she has the bat in her hand. The cop shot her dead. And what happened after that is when it was brought to trial, the cop was acquitted and not found guilty of it but the city of New York gave the family two million dollars.

Gabe: I always struggle with this one as a citizen. I don’t think that we should charge police officers with mistakes that happen on the job. We don’t charge doctors. If a doctor makes a mistake and kills their patient we don’t try them for murder. I’m not saying that

Michelle: Well, Michael Jackson.

Gabe: What the police did was right or wrong.

Michelle: Michael Jackson’s doctor. Michael Jackson’s doctor went to jail.

Gabe: Well but Michael Jackson’s doctor wasn’t making a split second choice in the moment.

Michelle: True, true.

Gabe: He was continuously doing this against medical advice. Yeah there’s a lot there. I don’t want to set this up as police officers versus people with mental illness because I really see it as damaging to both sides. I have talked to many many police officers over the last 10 years doing Crisis Intervention Team training. That’s where I train police officers on how to better help people who are having psychosis, depression, schizophrenia symptoms, bipolar symptoms, and their families in desperation call the police and the police officers all say the same thing. Why are we here? Why are we being called? Why can’t medical people go? But medical people won’t go.

Michelle: But I don’t understand how holding a bat equals getting shot in the chest.

Gabe: Listen I’m not a police officer, how can I answer that?

Michelle: But

Gabe: I don’t understand how graphic files are in layers? It’s one picture but you tell me week after week after week that it’s seven and you say assets. What the fuck is an asset? All I see is a logo. There’s not seven assets

Michelle: But

Gabe: Michelle. I don’t understand that.

Michelle: It doesn’t make any sense that the cop would be found not guilty. But then the city of New York would pay her family two million dollars

Gabe: You’re completely wrong about that. Civil trials and criminal trials are two completely separate things that have nothing to do with one another.

Michelle: But he’s not guilty? But they gave her family money? Hmmmmm?

Gabe: Right. Because

Michelle: Then they know they did wrong.

Gabe: Why? That doesn’t mean anything. This is just accord and satisfaction under the law. It might be easier just to pay the settlement and admit no guilt then on and on and on. For example, if you run into my car and you get arrested for manslaughter you’re like look it was just an accident. I couldn’t stop on time, my brakes were bad, so you get acquitted of manslaughter but then you have to pay my family for damaging my car and accidentally killing me, right?

Michelle: But two?

Gabe: You can accidentally.

Michelle: They got two million dollars.

Gabe: I don’t care if they got 80 billion dollars. Mistakes are not illegal nor should they be. Do you want mistakes to be illegal? Because the next time you make a mistake you could go to prison for that mistake.

Michelle: I don’t know, I just I think the city knows something wasn’t right.

Gabe: Knowing that something’s not right and something illegal occurring are very different. Michelle, sincerely, If you and I are walking down the street and I trip you, that’s not right. But if it was an accident you’re going to forgive me. But I would know that I did something wrong. I accidentally got my giant boot in your way and you fell on the ground and I owe you new jeans and I owe you an apology. It doesn’t mean that I assaulted you. It means that my big fat boot got in your way because I walked too close.

Michelle: I don’t think it’s an accident to shoot a woman.

Gabe: That’s literal nonsense. What you are doing, and I’m being sincere. What you are saying is that police officers are targeting mentally ill people on purpose to assassinate us.

Michelle: I’m not saying they’re targeting. I’m saying that the officer thought that she was completely out of her mind and he felt threatened by this bat.

Gabe: Yeah, right.

Michelle: Which was not swung. It was a whole thing that she did not swing.

Gabe: Who cares? So?

Michelle: The bat and his retaliation was to shoot her.

Gabe: Yeah.

Michelle: Do you think this woman, a 66 year old woman, he believed he was in danger? This man couldn’t take a bat away from a 66 year old woman? He had to shoot her and not just take the bat? He couldn’t fight this 66 year old woman to really take the bat out of her arm? Don’t you think that would’ve been better?

Gabe: You know that’s a good point, you’ve completely convinced me. I agree with you 100 percent.

Michelle: Thank you, Gabe.

Gabe: And you couldn’t peace, and you couldn’t peacefully go with the police officer? You had to attack her?

Michelle: No she attacked me.

Gabe: You couldn’t peacefully go?

Michelle: Well I said very politely to her I’d like to show you in my bedroom. Can we do that?

Gabe: Well he said very politely put the bat down. This is the problem, Michelle. Every time you tell a story you’re blaming law enforcement. It doesn’t matter. You are always right and law enforcement is always wrong. That is not a message that we as people living with mental illness want out in the public. That’s not right. And police officers will not respond to that.

Michelle: Well there has to be a better way to deal with it, Gabe.

Gabe: That I agree with and that’s why I’m trying to say. I think we’re both fucked. I think that both sides are fucked. We’re just trying to hash out this idea that many people living with mental illness believe that law enforcement is out to get them and that means that we don’t have help and many law enforcement police officers don’t know how to help us. You know why they don’t know how to help us?

Michelle: Training?

Gabe: Yeah they don’t have any training they are told to come out and help us with zero training.

Michelle: Hold up. We’ve got to hear from our sponsor.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counselling. All counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist, whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counselling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe: And we’re back trying to correct a systemic flaw between the way the police officers see mental illness and the way mental illness really is.

Michelle: We’re all in this fucked up boat. But why is nobody trying to resolve it? I remember actually in my disciplinary meeting after that cop thing the cop did come on the phone and we had to call her and hear her version of the story. And she said that our situation was beyond any crisis training she ever had.

Gabe: Now I know you said that kind of in a you know an angry mocking way, but think about that. Remove all of your emotion and consider that for a moment. The person that was sent to help you received no crisis training.

Michelle: She said it was beyond the crisis training she ever learned.

Gabe: Right. Good.

Michelle: I’m just wondering what kind of crisis training she ever learned?

Gabe: Zero. None. People think I’m making this up. People believe that police officers are going through all of this training. They’re not. In the best case scenario, they get a one week course. Could you imagine if your doctor that prescribed your birth control had a one week course on women’s biology? Would you go to a gynecologist that had a one week course?

Michelle: Well I hope I never went to a gynecologist that had a one week course. That would be ridiculous.

Gabe: Ok. But the police officers that are going to be called to help us one week course.

Michelle: That’s ridiculous.

Gabe: It’s completely ridiculous. And that’s why we have to work with police officers because listen nobody’s going to listen to people with mental illness. That’s what’s messed up. We can say look we’re dying, we’re being killed, we’re scared, we’re going to prison and to jail because of the symptoms of mental illness. Why is nobody trying to make serious systemic changes? Why can’t a police officer and a social worker come out? Why can’t a social worker come out? Why can’t police officers receive more than one week of training since they’re the first responders for mental health crises? Why?

Michelle: And there’s so many mentally ill people in jail it’s unreal how much. They’re not even being treated too. I feel like if God forbid something happened and I’m in jail right now they wouldn’t even be giving me my medicine. Can you imagine how I would be acting in jail without my medicine?

Gabe: And not only would you be acting that way because you don’t have your medication, but all of the crimes that you committed in prison or jail while off your medications., you’d be tried as if you were perfectly fine. Even though we know that these are symptoms of schizophrenia you are unmedicated because of the behavior of the state. You would still be held responsible for those medications. Now these are extreme cases. Ladies and gentlemen, please, please, understand that we’re giving the worst case scenarios. Often this works out OK. But you know often isn’t good enough. You know? Let’s say that it’s 50 50. 50 percent of the time people like me and Michelle get the right treatment. What about the other 50 percent? And the thing that really upsets me is that the more money you have the more likely it is you are to be treated fairly. The better neighborhood you live in the more likely these police officers are to have training. The more wealth that you have accumulated the more likely you parents are to drive you to a crisis stabilization unit rather than call the police. And if you don’t have a support system, if you aren’t Gabe and Michelle and you don’t have mothers who love them, you’re just all on your own and somebody who calls the police doesn’t even know you.

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. I mean if you’re screaming and hollering in your own apartment your neighbors call the cops on you and who knows what’s gonna happen then?

Gabe: Yeah and the police are gonna knock on the neighbors’ door and the neighbor is gonna say I hate that I hate that woman. She screams all the time and that person is gonna be upset. At least when your family calls the police, they say this is my daughter and I love her and I don’t know why she won’t calm down. And police officers are influenced by this. They’re human. They’re there. They’re tired. You get a police officer with no training at the end of a double shift with a woman screaming and swinging a bat? Bad shit’s gonna happen.

Michelle: She didn’t swing.

Gabe: It’s not fair.

Michelle: She didn’t swing the bat. She didn’t even swing the bat.

Gabe: And that just makes it all the worse because we know, after the dust settled, after an investigation occurred, we know how sick that woman was. And you know look we can’t get the police officer on the show, but I can’t imagine that this guy feels good about it.

Michelle: She wasn’t a criminal. She was sick.

Gabe: Exactly. And we are criminalizing mental illness in this country and we have to do something about this. We just have to because many many many many many people feel what Michelle is modeling. You know everybody’s like well that’s crazy nobody thinks that. Everybody thinks that. This is a traumatized group of sick people that feel the police are out to get them. I would venture to guess that half of our listeners feel this way right now and they’re like dear God, Gabe, let Michelle go. This is how we feel. But that’s not going to work because that’s just an us versus them mentality. And if we’re fighting each other, nobody’s solving the problem.

Michelle: Not at all.

Gabe: I don’t even think anybody’s looking into the problem, personally. We know how many mentally ill people are in prisons and jails nobody cares. We know how many mentally ill people are homeless.

Michelle: I’ve seen Lockup. There are so many people in jail with mental illness and when they do something this guy was cutting himself all over his arms. There was blood everywhere all over his cell. He’s done it multiple times and they’re saying that he doesn’t have an issue. He just wants to get out of you know his cell and go into the psych ward. That’s in the hospital and just he wants a different change of scenery. He’s just tired. There’s nothing really wrong with him. And I’m watching this going, this jail is awful. They see what this guy’s doing to himself and they’re saying he wants attention and he wants a different change of scenery. This is awful. This is awful. Why are they even putting this in the show because this makes the jail look terrible? This is bad on the jail not bad on the guy. What they’re showing is awful.

Gabe: And that’s what’s so sad. The fact that it made it to a mainstream show and the fact that nobody realized that it made the jail look bad makes us realize people living with mental illness the people who have this burden that the average citizen out there thinks it’s all our fault.

Michelle: Yeah.

Gabe: They think that we the sick people have to change the way the police police and the way that medication is handed out and the way that the mental health safety net. It’s all on us. People with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, people who are very very sick also have to create sweeping reform across the nation on the way that mental health treatment is done in America. And we’re the ones that are crazy.

Michelle: I know, I know. Everyone talks about how we have to help people with mental illness because they’re just so violent but then they’re not helping anybody.

Gabe: That’s what I love the most. Every time there’s a shooting we always say mental illness, mental illness, mental illness, mental illness, mental illness. OK. Are we going to fund the mental health safety net to make sure that people who are mentally ill get the treatment that they need? No.

Michelle: No, not at all. Nope.

Gabe: Well, so it just goes to show you that the politicians at large don’t actually believe that people with mental illness are responsible for this violence because they’re not putting any resources into stopping this, the scourge of mental illness. They’re just letting it go.

Michelle: You know in all these shootings they’re all done by men. So really we just got to, we have to stop all men. Stopping men from being born because men are doing all the shootings. It’s not mental ill people, it’s men. Come on let’s be real, Gabe. It’s men.

Gabe: That’s of course what’s fascinating to me

Michelle: The problem is men. The problem is men. Let’s fix men.

Gabe: This is what I love, Michelle, people listening to this right now are like wow that woman’s an idiot blaming all men for shooting. But I bet five minutes ago when when we blamed all mentally ill people, the people are like that tracks. You can just blame an entire group for the behavior of this teeny tiny portion. Unless they’re men, then you’re an idiot.

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah.

Gabe: You replace men with any other word, you’re a genius. You replace men with with minorities, Muslims, feminists, just mentally ill people, all of a sudden you’re a genius. That’s speaking truth to power. But if you blame it on white men with guns, you stereotyping bitch, How could you?

Michelle: I’m sorry, Gabe. Haven’t all the shooters been men?

Gabe: I mean yeah.

Michelle: Come on. It’s all men. So really, Gabe, you’re at risk of being a shooter because you’re a man.

Gabe: And of course people hearing that would think that’s nonsense, right?

Michelle: Yes, it sounds crazy.

Gabe: But now say it the other way. Change man to mentally ill. Say the exact same sentence and we’ll see how people hear it then.

Michelle: Now, Gabe, you’re at risk of being a shooter because you’re mentally ill.

Gabe: Yeah and half of society is like, that makes sense. That makes sense. So you went from being a moron for stereotyping me for being male to being a genius for stereotyping me for being mentally ill.

Michelle: Absolutely.

Gabe: And this is what we have to change about our society and it’s going to take more than a bunch of mentally ill people you know frankly dying. It’s gonna take more than a bunch of mentally ill people being locked up in jails and prisons. It’s going to take more than any of this. We need the help of law enforcement, of social workers, of the medical establishment, of our families, and our friends, and we need strangers to understand that people with mental illness we don’t have any power. We’re sick.

Michelle: Therapy needs to be free. Psychiatrists need to be free and psych meds need to be free. It’s ridiculous.

Gabe: Well now you’re sounding like a socialist you crazy whore.

Michelle: It’s true though. If there is such a problem with mental health, make all of those things free.

Gabe: You’re not going to get any arguments from me, but the minute you start talking about how to help people, people start screaming socialism, you know? You know what is else socialistic? Roads, parks, schools, police officers, teachers. But helping sick people? That’s the kind of socialism that we just don’t need.

Michelle: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.

Gabe: Michelle, sincerely, you know, we’ve bantered back and forth. We play devil’s advocate and I think we’ve really touched a lot of nerves about how many of our listeners feel because it does. It feels like it’s us against them. So Michelle, if you were in a room full of police officers right now, law enforcement officers, politicians, just whomever, and these are good people, they got into law enforcement because they want to save lives and help people and they’re tired of this happening too. And Michelle Hammer is standing in the front of the room and everybody in that room is like what do we do to help people with mental illness have better outcomes? What do you say?

Michelle: What I would say is if you’re in a situation where someone’s having some sort of psychotic episode, you really need to de-escalate the situation and not try to make it worse with violence of some sort. So if a police officer walks into a situation where there is somebody having some sort of psychotic episode, they really need to de-escalate the situation and not try to bring on any type of violence because that’s really not going to help. You got to really talk it out and calm down.

Gabe: I know that the threat of violence is what police officers are worried about. And let’s just look at all the pop culture. Remember that movie that we talked about several episodes back? Where it was just this was just a person minding their own business and they found out that because they were on psychiatric medications all of your friends were like Are you violent Michelle?

Michelle: Yep.

Gabe: And these were your friends. Like these are people that are sitting in your apartment watching your TV on your stolen Netflix account and they wanted to know if you were violent. So I understand why police officers think that violence is around every corner when it comes to people with mental illness. Would you tell them to think of you and your life and how well you are because you’ve got the right help and that it’s possible that they can do that for the person that they’re standing in front of?

Michelle: Oh, absolutely.

Gabe: How do we get people to see mentally ill people as potential rather than risk?

Michelle: I think we need to show police officers. We get to share our own stories of what we’ve gone through with police officers and let them kind of know what was wrong and what was right. What should have been, what should have been done differently and what can happen when a mentally ill person is you know has a support system, gets medicated, has doctors, and things like that. If you’ve run into a situation with someone psychotic that’s where you can take that person and bring them somewhere where they can get help, not jail. Bring them somewhere where they can get help.

Gabe: A big message that we need to leave our first responders with is that they see us at our worst. Police officers never knock on my door and tell me that I can get louder. They always knock on my door and tell me to not be as loud. You know they pull never me over and tell me that I’m an excellent driver. They always pull me over and tell me that I’m speeding and they never come into contact with people living with mental illness. When we’re doing well they only come into contact with us when something bad happened. They see us at our worst. And I wish that we could have so many more conversations so that police officers could see Gabe Howard now and Michelle Hammer now and all us who of are just minding our own business living our lives and you know we’re kind of boring now. I mean, Gabe and Michelle aren’t. Gabe and Michelle are awesome. But you once know you reach recovery you just go on to do normal stuff and then nobody ever sees us again because there’s no reason to see us. But man the minute something goes wrong.

Michelle: You know, Gabe, wellness is so private and crisis is so public, which is just so unfortunate right now.

Gabe: That is and that’s why we have to be vocal and we have to advocate for ourselves and we have to use our voices to show both sides of what it’s like to live with mental illness. Crisis doesn’t need any help. We’ve already established that; the media’s got that covered but wellness. There’s a lot of people who are living well, use your voice.

Michelle: Be the voice.

Gabe: Michelle, are you ready to get out of here?

Michelle: I’m so ready.

Gabe: All right everybody here is what we need you to do. It’s very simple first, wherever you downloaded this podcast, leave us a little review and as many stars as humanly possible. Second go over to PsychCentral.com/BSP. Find a little graphic that says Do you have any questions? Submit your questions, your comments, or anything else. If you want to send us a novel, that’s fine. We’ll try to read it. Send it over to [email protected]. And finally, last but not least, share this everywhere. This is a show created by people living with mental illness for people living with mental illness. So please share it on your wall, share it on your private groups, share it everywhere. We will see everybody next Monday. Thank you.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. If you love this episode, don’t keep it to yourself head over to iTunes or your preferred podcast app to subscribe, rate, and review. To work with Gabe, go to GabeHoward.com. To work with Michelle, go to Schizophrenic.NYC. For free mental health resources and online support groups, head over to PsychCentral.com. This show’s official web site is PsychCentral.com/BSP. You can e-mail us at [email protected]. Thank you for listening, and share widely.

Meet Your Bipolar and Schizophrenic Hosts

GABE HOWARD was formally diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders after being committed to a psychiatric hospital in 2003. Now in recovery, Gabe is a prominent mental health activist and host of the award-winning Psych Central Show podcast. He is also an award-winning writer and speaker, traveling nationally to share the humorous, yet educational, story of his bipolar life. To work with Gabe, visit gabehoward.com.

MICHELLE HAMMER was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 22, but incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18. Michelle is an award-winning mental health advocate who has been featured in press all over the world. In May 2015, Michelle founded the company Schizophrenic.NYC, a mental health clothing line, with the mission of reducing stigma by starting conversations about mental health. She is a firm believer that confidence can get you anywhere. To work with Michelle, visit Schizophrenic.NYC.

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