in the recent week horrific things happened in Seattle. the day of violence i stayed glued to the TV not sure what i was going to with my day. the crime spree came a bit to close to where i live i decided that the best thing to do would be to stay home. it’s interesting the father of Ian has come out and said that for years they attempted to get him help. what wasn’t discussed in the media reports here in Seattle is that 1 in 4 American’s have a mental illness either undiagnosed or something they have refused either drugs or treatment for.

media presents mental illness and has for years by showing that people who have hallucinations and delusions are violent. something that is not in fact true. however, for the Hollywood writer’s out there it makes for a great and dramatic storyline even though they are misrepresenting the mental illness in the show. the public is so miss informed that they believe that mental illness is something that happens to “other” people.

considering the steady and rampant increase is meth, bath salts, non-medical pot use and LSD it’s not surprising that men are eating another man’s face or the steady and violent increase in violence related to bath salts. what the general public believes is that drugs won’t cause a psychotic break or cause someone to spiral when in fact it does the majority of the time. when people are admitted into hospitals by force after becoming violent what the doctors often discover is someone’s addiction is masking their mental illness. the misconception is that alcohol doesn’t make people spiral when it does.

drug addiction along with the ratio of 1 in 4 people with mental illness actually increases the percentage of people with mental illness and addiction. my rough guess is that it’s closer to 45% of the population who has an undiagnosed what the system calls dual diagnosis of mental illness and addiction. which means the ratio of “other” people having problems greatly increases. 

what a majority of the population doesn’t recognize is that a majority of people who have mental illness are often the victims of violence rather than the person committing the crime. my last blog was about anorexia and how it has become “trendy” to be underweight. the point that i think most people are missing is that anorexia is a mental illness-the person suffering from pro-ana or anorexia are either repeatedly told that they are “fat” or they repeatedly tell themselves that. that in a nutshell is a mental illness.

next time you see someone having delusions listen to make sure they’re not in fact threatening anyone and if they are not-give them space. people with mental illness have bad days just like the rest of us-they make look much worse than yours but if their in counseling or taking the drugs the next day will always better.