Stigma Kills

I wrote about mental retardation in my last two posts because there is a definite stigma against the MR population. But this sort of stigma reminds me of a soft, very loving yet uncomfortable stigma. Where people stare, but it's a sweet "awwww" kind of stare. When I worked in the MR field, I used to hear the cliche comments that everyone seemed to make when they saw me with one of the individuals I served. "It takes a special person to do what you do". It always bothered me, because I didn't think I was particularly "special". I was just doing my job.

The stigma of mental illness on the other hand, is hard, unforgiving, and potentially deadly. Its the type of stigma that makes women hide their children. It's the kind of stigma that makes doctors push mentally ill patients out of their office with a prescription for Prozac and a "you'll be fine".  While the gentle stigma of mental retardation doesn't seem to cause much harm, the cold, neglectful stigma of mental illness can be deadly.

Sunday's cover story in the Reading Eagle, entitled "Nowhere to turn" by Jason Brudereck describes the story of Katrina Pugh, a 21 year old graphic designer (among other things) who committed suicide early in January after battling mental illness her entire life. She killed herself with her boyfriend's rifle, which prompted a particular amount of attention given the nation's outcry over gun control.  But this is not a story about guns.

Katrina's story is not unlike thousands of other people in this country living with mental illness. According to the article, Katrina began getting treatment by a psychiatrist as a child and was diagnosed as bipolar, with anger, anxiety and defiance issues.  As a teenager, Katrina was brutally raped by a classmate.  Her mother tried over and over again to help her daughter, which at one point during her teen years, involved her living in a family care giving setting as part of a long-term therapy program.  But like thousands of other teens who hit the age of 18, the mental health system abruptly ended support for her, and now considered an adult according to the law, Katrina could not be forced to obtain help for her mental illness.  Her mother, Kristine desperately searched for other options; but to no avail.

Kristine attempted to involve the police several times, in order to have her daughter involuntarily committed, but the police never offered any support; instead telling Kristine that there was nothing they could do because Katrina was an adult.

After being forced to testify in a court case against her friend, which brought Katrina an immense amount of anxiety because of her previous experience as a young teen, testifying against her rapist, Katrina began to unravel more than ever before. Based on an opinion by Dr. Edward Michalik Jr.., the administrator of Berks County's Mental Health/Development Disabilities Program, who said, "that as long as a witness is not judged to be incompetent, there's no reason to keep her from testifying" (Brudereck), Katrina was not kept from the stand in the court case.

Katrina ultimately chose to kill herself months after the court case, because she simply could not fully recover from the courtroom experience.  She snuck into her boyfriend's house, retrieved his rifle from the closet, and locked herself in the bathroom where she shot herself in the head.

The saddest part of this story is not the fact that Katrina's boyfriend kept a loaded rifle in his house, it's not the fact that Katrina unravelled as a result of a severely stressful court testimony, and it's not the fact that Katrina was raped as a teenager. The saddest part of this story is that there wasn't adequate support for Katrina throughout her life. It's the fact that her mother's insurance company wouldn't pay for consistent mental health care. It's the fact that the law considered Katrina an adult at 18, and therefore didn't feel that Katrina needed help for her illness anymore. The police wouldn't intervene. The court system wouldn't intervene after her rape. The mental health system shuffled Katrina through their doors with a handshake and a smile, and told her that everything would be fine.

There needs to be real change in this country when it comes to mental illness and the treatment of it. Our society sees guns as the reason for violence and death, and places blame on the deranged mad men that use guns to commit awful attrocities, but why doesn't society turn their pointing fingers on doctors/psychiatrists who push those in need through the system? Why doesn't society blame the police for turning a deaf ear to a desperate mother, trying to keep her tortured daughter from harming herself?  Why doesn't society take a stand against insurance companies for treating mental illness as a non life threatening problem among their policy holders?  Mental illness isn't treated as a SERIOUS issue, and as we have seen in newspapers, and on TV, mental illness is astoundingly life-threatening.

The answer to these questions is simple. Mental illness is stigmatized.  Mental illness makes people uncomfortable. It scares people because they can't see it. It costs money to treat it. People are afraid of it.  The bottom line is that Mental illness carries with it a stigma, and as in the case of Katrina, a life that could have been spared, that stigma kills.



Brudereck,J. (2013, February 17). Nowhere to turn. Reading Eagle, pp. A1, A4.