"Primetime" Does An OK Show On Mad Pride
And by OK I mean last night’s “Primetime” program on Mad Pride wasn’t quite the disaster I fear. There’s something about mental illness in the hands of network TV that usually doesn’t go too well for us little folks. Hell, the program even got into withdrawal issues with one woman from Massachusetts. That’s almost a breakthrough.
Of course, the violence card got played–John Hinkley and so on–and was handled well by David Oaks of MindFreedom. The primary case that got waved around was that of William Bruce, a young man diagnosed with schizophrenia who refused treatment and, deeply delusional, killed his own mother. What the program failed to point out is that Bruce should’ve been forced–as much as I hate saying that–into treatment as he had committed an act of violence before killing his mom and that was pointing an AK-47 at two people. Why the guy even had a gun is beyond my comprehension.
The big disappointment was the appearance of Penn’s bioethicist Art Kaplan. I’ve read Kaplan’s work for years and it struck me as odd that he’d be the contrary voice ABC would find to say it’s “reckless” for people with mental illnesses to be off-meds. As far as I know, Kaplan has zero training in psychiatry and he’s obviously unaware of the literature on violence and mental illness, which shows a slight increase in risk of violence but that it’s mostly connected with people with substance abuse problems regardless of whether someone is on or off-meds. I guess E. Fuller Torrey was busy.
As most ethicists know, using stray examples of any phenomenon isn’t a particularly good way to conduct philosophical inquiries nor is it a good way to set medical policies.
Another critique of the program was written by someone named Lee who’s connected with the Freedom Center in Massachusetts.