You may have seen this floating around your facebook recently from Huffington Post. Lots of your Democratic friends will agree, they will post along and tell you that’s about how they feel about the Republican debates. The Republican debates have been ridiculous, outlandish… crazy? They are all words that pop up to describe the Republican positions taken during their debates. Advocating expanded torture. Carpet bombing of other nations. Ending choice, ending gay marriage.
They are all wild propositions. But let’s be clear: believing terrible things and advocating for them are not things we will address by properly funding mental health care in America.
Mental health funding in America is suffering a serious crisis of care, too often used as a punching bag for politicians who want to blame mental illness for everything from mass shootings to political disagreements. For persons who suffer real mental health issues, which include depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum related issues.. mental health cannot continue to be so easily linked with “terrible ideas” and “terrible things”. Classifying other people as needing mental health because they have terrible ideas and terrible thoughts demeans the battle persons with real issues and it undercuts the discussion of mental health care in America.
Before this turns into a Hillary/Bernie debate, while Bernie said it, Hillary most certainly did not correct him, nor did she bother to point out the purpose of funding mental health programs. The injection of humor into the mental health funding debate isn’t about helping to treat Republicans and give them better ideas, it is a means by which to help millions of Americans who are dealing with complex, confounding issues that require us to care for and embrace them, rather than treat them again as the unwanted.