Thread by @Noahpinion

To the people who respond to every horrific murder with "We need better mental health": Please tell me what specific mental disorder you think these murderers have, and what you think the standard of care for that disorder is.

I have met tons of people with mental issues -- depressed people, schizophrenics, people with bipolar disorder -- and I have never met even *one* who had done anything like follow someone into their house and murder them, or who seemed at all likely to do such a thing.

Frankly, it is insulting and stigmatizing to people with mental health issues to say that brutal killers are just struggling with mental health. Most people with mental health issues are very sweet people.

The fact is, it's become taboo to say that policing and incarceration are the solution to things like this. So instead people can only talk about "mental health" -- thus stigmatizing the millions of people with real treatable mental health issues.

Because everyone is afraid to say "Keep people like this behind bars", they have to say "Get them the mental health treatment they need". I'm all for mental health care! But if you think giving these folks Zoloft and sending them to therapy is gonna work, I have bad news.

All you're accomplishing by treating murder as a mental health issue is to make people think of every depressed person and every schizophrenic as a potential killer.

That is very bad for people who struggle with mental health issues!

The people who say that "better mental health" is the new "thoughts and prayers" are only partially right. "Thoughts and prayers" means "I don't care", while "better mental health" means "I'm afraid to say I want to lock people up".

And ironically this could lead to over-policing. The movement to have mental health workers respond to 911 calls is actually great! But if we decide that every person shouting on the street is a potential KILLER, people are going to want to call the cops on those folks.

Anyway, I don't claim to know what the solution to murder is. But I AM very sure that labeling it a mental health issue is not going to help, and is going to stigmatize a lot of harmless folks who are already suffering.

Please, stop.

(end)

Wow, this was the first time I've actually gotten mad and ranted on Twitter in...years.

Feels refreshing. 😃