Joni Mitchell

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

         - Joni Mitchell

In my last post, I ranted about how the increase in gun violence can be directly attributable to our failing mental health system.  My darling niece, who has bravely faced her own struggle with mental health (and with the assholes in t her Health Insurance Carrier’s Claim office) pointed out to me that not all people who face mental health challenges are violent.  She is, of course. 100% correct on this, and I apologize to everyone if I somehow implied this in my last post.

Let me elaborate further by looking at the Flip Side of the Sandy Hook tragedy.   The gunman who slaughtered the innocents obviously suffered from his own demons, but he was (thankfully) in a violent minority of people with mental health issues who are somehow intertwined in this tragedy.  Witness if you will the throngs of the Westboro Baptist Church, the tiny independent fundamentalist Christian church based in Topeka, Kansas.  Seems that they planned to ‘protest’ at the funerals of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and declaring“God sent the shooter.”  You may recall that this is the same group that has protested many funerals of slain American soldiers.  ‘Freedom of ‘religion’ aside, these people, are, in my layman’s opinion,  as mentally troubled as the shooter himself.   

Sadly, there are even more mentally unbalanced groups who are being drawn to the Sandy Hook tragedy like moths to a flame.  There apparently a group of ‘Truth Seekers’ who are organized and are demanding the ‘truth’ about what happened at Sandy Hook.  Yhey are apparently harassing and threatening some the Sandy Hook first responders and their families.  They somehow feel that the events of that awful day are not being reported truthfully, and they are demanding that the ‘real’ story be told.  Mind you, these people have no other connection to Sandy Hook – they are just self-appointed guardians of ‘the truth’, and they therefore feel that it is their duty to investigate imaginary alternative scenarios that explain the awful events of that day.  Some say that Sandy Hook was a the start of a government plot to take their guns away.   Obviously, there isn’t a rational person among them.

I know that ‘conspiracy nuts’ have been around for a long time, but it seems that this country is growing a bumper crop of these mentally unbalanced folks.  Of course, their actions will no doubt further upset the real victims and families of Sandy Hook, and drive many of them further towards the cliffs of sanity.  Mental Illness can be contagious – in many cases, it can be downright virulent.

Many dismiss these conspiracy theorists as harmless ‘nuts’, but this is not the case at all.  I shudder when I imagine the additional pain, anguish, and emotional damage that they are bringing to the grief stricken families.


Must be because I had the flu for Christmas
And I'm not feelin' up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like lookin' at my mirror and seein' a lit up police car
                                   -- David Crosby

These unbalanced individuals also can bring a great deal of harm to themselves.  I knew a Doctor who was a skilled diagnostician, well respected by his peers, loved by his patients and staff.  His whole career unraveled when he became involved in a 9-11 conspiracy group.  Fueled by meetings of like-minded individuals and internet postings, his obsession with 9-11 conspiracy became all consuming.  He soon could not have a conversation with anyone – including a patient – without espousing the latest 9-11 conspiracy theory.  This once sober minded physician’s eyes would open wide, his nostrils would flare, and he would literally dance around as he regurgitated the latest ‘theory’.  In spite of repeated warnings from the clinic administrators, he just could not control himself.  Ultimately he lost his job as a result of his inability to control his obsession.

The mass hysteria continues to proliferate throughout our society.  There are now several television shows about ‘doomsday preppers’ who spend ungodly amounts of money (often which they do not have) to build expensive underground bunkers to protect themselves and their families from Armageddon.   

There have always been a small group of conspiracy theorists  living on the fringe of our society, but with modern communication fueling their fire and limited ways of controlling their angst, it seems that their ranks have been growing at an alarming rate.  The mental health crisis continues to grow, largely unchecked, due largely to the mental health being ‘managed’ by health insurance carriers.  Certainly, these conglomerates are making windfall profits, and their executives make salaries that would make Carnegie jealous, but at what cost? 

I am beginning to sound like I’m starting my own conspiracy theory here, so let me dial things back a few notches.  Am I 100% convinced that there is a direct cause and effect between lowered mental health coverage and the growing number of paranoid people in our society?   Absolutely not.  However, I do believe that it’s time that this phenomenon is studied by persons more learned than myself.  At the very least, our leaders need to start having the conversation.

It’s the rational thing to do.

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M.C. Hammer

I’ve been asleep at the wheel for quite some time now. After this long of a nap, it would take some extraordinary event to wake me from my blogging slumber.

 Unfortunately, we all just lived through such a terrible wake-up call. It’s now time to post another blog entry. It’s Hammer Time.

 Most Americans of my vintage associate the phrase ‘Hammer Time’ with M.C. Hammer, the baggy pants wearing pop star of the 1980’s. Personally, I have a different, disturbingly violent association.

 I used to live in a very nice town house. It was spacious, well built, and it had plenty of room for my growing family. It also looked a lot like a hundred similar units in my development. And this led to a very frightening turn of events one evening.

My townhouse had a street number of 123. So did an identical-looking unit a few blocks over. My wife and I both went to Rutgers University. So did the residents of the doppelganger unit. Fortunately, this is where the similarities ended. Thank God for that.

 You see, one evening the man living in the doppelganger unit #123 decided to murder his wife. Not with a Glock 9mm or an AR-15 assault rifle mind you – he used a much more brutal weapon - a Stanley 16 ounce hammer. Bashed the poor woman’s skull in. I guess she shouldn’t have nagged him about leaving the toilet seat up…

 This soon turned into a minor nightmare for me when the story hit the local news. Video about the ‘Rutgers man’ who murdered his ‘Rutgers wife’ with a hammer showed the exterior of the doppelganger house, complete with a very distinct #123 emblazoned on the front door.

It wasn’t long before the phone calls started. Friends and relatives soon started calling the house and asking ‘if ‘everything was OK’. Every caller was indeed surprised when I answered the phone. Some insisted on speaking with my wife to re-assure themselves that she was still among the living.

 Of course, as the days wore on, my entire neighborhood was abuzz with discussions of the random violence that happened, quite literally, in our own back yards. Everyone was shocked by how our neighbor just snapped. It was all so surreal. That terrible incident was 20 or more years ago. I’ve long since moved from that neighborhood.

 Unfortunately, while I haven’t since been suspected of the violent murder of a loved one, similar events continue to happen in this country – in fact, it seems as if they have grown in frequency and scale. 20 years ago, during the many ‘over the fence’ discussions about the murder, no one once ever mentioned ‘hammer control laws’. While the Second Amendment doesn’t mention ‘the right to bear hammers’, no one – not even once – called for making hammers illegal.

While this may sound facetious in light of the horrific incident at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, please bear in mind that I have an important distinction that many seem to have lost post Sandy Hook. Regardless of what side of the gun control argument you may align yourself with, the guns used to murder those innocent children were not the root cause of this - or any other – murder. Like my murderous ex-neighbor, the primary cause of the violence was a sick mind. A sick mind that was undiagnosed, untreated, or both. No normal mentally healthy person could ever be driven to take the life of innocents or loved ones so cavalierly.

 I am not a ‘gun-nut’ – not by anyone’s definition. I am, however, very afraid that the anti-gun lobby is using these recent tragedies to promote their agenda. While there objectives are undeniably admirable, I think that they are unconsciously diverting our attention away from the root cause of these horrific events – namely, a failing mental health system. Diseased minds hell-bent on murder will always find a way to accomplish their mission. If an AR-15 isn’t available, a 16 ounce Stanley will accomplish the same terrible results.

 Some may argue that a hammer isn’t well suited for mass murder like an automatic rifle is, and they have a point. But let’s remember that 168 innocents were murdered in Oklahoma City using just Diesel fuel and fertilizer. Or 3,000 plus were murdered on 9/11 by an insane band of brothers armed with nothing more formidable than box cutters. The increase in volume and scale of these violent murders are more directly attributable to the decline of our mental health system.

 As health insurance carriers started ‘managing’ mental healthcare, they invariably ‘cut off’ treatment for those who truly need it. If you can’t get your head straight after 12 visits, you’re out of luck and on your own. And please don’t get me started on those $500.00 a month anti-psychotic meds that aren’t covered by your prescription plan.

 I am very fortunate that my immediate family and I haven’t faced the challenge of mental health issues so far, but I am not so naive as to ignore those who do suffer from the curse of mental illness. It is a debilitating a disease as cancer, MS, or Parkinson’s. It is a disease that not only affects the sufferer, as well as those around them. We can no longer afford, as a nation, to allow this disease to be left increasingly untreated or under-treated.

 So ‘Obama-Care’ isn’t fair to health insurance carriers or pharmaceutical companies? So it will force them to deal with ‘unfair’ competition or price controls? Tough. It’s time for us to decide as a nation what’s more important – continued landmark corporate profits or the lives of innocent children.

 Let me make myself perfectly clear – if you think that United Healthcare’s CEO’s salary or Pfizer’s annual dividend payment are more important than the lives of a classroom of first graders, you need to have your head examined. If you truly do believe that the continued windfall profiteering is more important (and many Americans still do), I can only hope, for everyone’s sake, that your healthcare plan covers Psychiatric Care and your anti-psychotic meds.

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