“I’ve always been
crazy but it’s kept me from going insane
Nobody knows if it’s something
to bless or to blame
So far I ain’t found a rhyme
or a reason to change
I’ve always been
crazy but it’s kept me from going insane.”
--Waylon Jennings
There’s a country song for just
about everything. Mental illness is not
a laughing matter, but the country-music legend sang those lyrics with a smile.
Reflecting
on yet another senseless shooting, I flash back to a 12th-grade
psychology class in 1966. Our teacher
wasn’t trying to be funny, but Mrs. Nancy Larson said, “The trouble with crazy
people is that they always think it’s everyone else who is crazy.”
A
few days before the Alexandria shooting, I watched a movie: The Killing of Reagan. Even before he tried to assassinate President
Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley Jr. showed signs of serious mental illness. The president quipped from his hospital bed,
“I forgot to duck.” Humor is good
medicine, but it won’t resolve a mental-health crisis which allows insane
shooters to slip through the cracks. Take
Adam Lanza, for example. Mental-illness
warning bells were clanging, but he still staged that horrific bloodbath at
Sandy Hook Elementary School.
And
now comes James Hodgkinson. Fortunately,
he was the only one to die at that Alexandria ballpark. I read this from someone who knew the gunman:
“Do I think he’s capable (of shooting)?
Definitely. It sounds really
awful, but I’m not surprised. Every
interaction I’ve had I’ve thought ‘that guy’s crazy.’”
John
Hinckley, Adam Lanza and James Hodgkinson—besides being shooters—had something
else in common. They fit Mrs. Larson’s
profile: “The trouble with crazy people
is that they always think it’s everyone else who is crazy.”
I’ll
tell you who else is crazy. We are, if
we don’t put more emphasis on mental-health assessment and treatment.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
