A Crazy Defense
As the story goes, a young
man kills his mother and his father and then throws himself on
the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. That was a joke.
This week, it was no joke when the CNN's headlines read "Oregon
teen will use a mental-illness defense in school shooting."
The
teen is Kip Kinkel, accused of shooting both his parents and then,
the following morning, two students at his Springfield, Oregon
highschool cafeteria, leaving an additional 22 wounded.
Young Kinkel's health history reveals no evidence of traditional
symptoms of mental illness -- hearing voices, hallucinating or
the like -- and he was able to answer questions posed to him after
the shootings in a clear, rational, responsive way. The mental
disease defense will probably mean he will one day walk freely
us.
Mental health is big news lately. About ten days ago, former First
Lady Roselyn Carter, Actress Patty Duke, Vice President's Wife
Tipper Gore and Larry King chatted live on his show shining a
very bright light on mental illness. Patty Duke's "life was saved"
when she was finally diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, formerly
called manic depressive illness, and received treatment. Roselyn
Carter's interest appears to be more humanitarian than personal
and Tipper Gore is a front-and-center champion of the cause after
a personal run-in.
President Clinton named Mrs. Gore his mental health advisor after
learning that, like him, she was raised by grandparents. In her
case, it was because her mother struggled with clinical depression,
something she rarely admitted.
In this interview -- as well as other live talk show interviews
for the rest of the week, and reported in USA Today and the Wall
Street Journal, Mrs. Gore talked about depression. Would she have
talked about it were her husband not running for President, where
everything swept under the rug or hidden beneath the bed will
be brought out?
Would she be depressed at all if circumstances did not place her
where she faces the number one cause of stress? According to "Alice!"
-- Columbia University's Health Education Program, one of the
greatest sources of stress is time -- or the lack there of --
to successfully accomplish our many daily and weekly tasks.
Tipper proudly insists she's as serious about being a "soccer
mom" as she is about lobbying for the mentally ill and the homeless
... another of her causes. Being "Second Lady" means being groomed
for the part 24 hours a day with hair and nails perfectly done
and a smile perpetually placed. She has to be warm and flexible
to counterweigh her husband's being perceived as cool and rigid.
Their four children are the ages I would not like to revisit in
the lives of my own.
But, that's only Tipper Gore. Look in any home in America and
find some of the millions with more to do than time enough to
do it. Experts tell us all to prioritize tasks in the minutes
before falling asleep or just after waking up. They advise we
estimate the time needed for each task and then add about 20 minutes
for unscheduled interruptions. Stress management professionals
say we must build "quiet time" into the planned day where there
will be no phone calls or visitors, when we use the time to write
thoughts in a journal.
When such advice found in self-help books only compounds the problem
..."where the hell is my quiet-time journal?" ... and we know
we're being hard on the family, "Dammit, I said, 'in a minute',"
we know we need help. Tipper went to one of her health agency
contacts and said "I'm not here campaigning this time." She needed
to talk to someone about her acute depression. I don't know if
she talked it out or got pills to adjust her serotonin levels,
but she's comfortable and in control again.
Asking why some people can cope and others apparently can not,
is like asking why some people are psychic while most aren't.
We don't know. We do know that if you're a hot reactor, chances
are your level of serotonin is imbalanced. Prozac™ adjusts your
reaction times while Zanax™ will take the edge off and carry you
over the hump. It's like a parent saying "there, there, baby,
Mommy will carry you."
I have to admit, I'm caught between new help for the stressors
of life and old attitudes toward how to cope.. Tipper Gore wants
the stigma of mental disease eradicated in this century. I think
more and more everyday maladies are being categorized as mental
illness.
Pre Menstrual Syndrome is now treated by sessions with a therapist,
a prescription of Prozac™ and a mood ameliorator. And, by the
way, insurance companies are letting the $200 prescription for
Prozac™ become affordable for $8.00 if you're a participant. Additionally,
they pay for the therapist's time. That's a costly coping mechanism.
Talking it out has taken the place of thinking it through. This
gives us someone else's take on the subject, borne of the therapist's
own sensory memory not our own. All the self-help books, designed
to be "self" help, are really instruction manuals based on someone
else's thoughts and experiences.
I know it's simplistic to think saying "get a grip, get hold of
yourself, stop getting in your own way, you're not the first one
who...." will cure clinical depression. But, every day we spend
down in the dumps will not require a psychiatrist. Stress and
our reaction to the stressors in our lives is not mental illness.
Life is full of pressures but we have strategies for coping with
the pressure -- coping before the pressure becomes so acute that
the preventable stress becomes clinical depression.
Referring to stress in Newsweek's June 14th cover story, Jerry
Adler says "The worst part is, we inflict it on ourselves."
Regarding Kip Kinkel: we have evolved to where we have freedom
to choose. Kip Kinkel chose to kill his mother and father. Perhaps
it was in a fit of rage, perhaps his murders the next morning
were premeditated and he didn't want Mom and Dad to be "disappointed"
in him.
Whatever he thought, he never before in his life displayed any
symptoms of mental illness. Why must we assume he had to be crazy?
Unless we mean, crazy to think he could get away with it.
I would hope all this media attention surrounding his defense
does not taint the jury assigned to Kip's trial. How sad if they
were so anxious to destigmatize legitimate illnesses like schizophrenia,
paranoia, bipolar disorder, etc., they would make him a poster
child for Tipper Gore's crusade.
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