Registry of People With Mental Illness January 27, 2011
Posted by Crazy Mermaid in mental illness.Tags: mental illness
8 comments
I just heard something very scary from the lips of Mayor Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, on Lawrence O’Donnell’s new show. Mayor Bloomberg said that we need a registry of people with mental illness so that we can keep them from buying guns. This was his response to the recent Tucson shooting by a young man who is thought to be mentally ill (as far as I know, he doesn’t have a diagnosis).
Forcing people with a mental illness to register is beyond belief in the year 2011. I get chills down my spine just thinking about it.
From a practical standpoint, this new registry law, if implemented, would probably not catch the people it was designed to catch. Although people like the Tucson shooter are known by the world at large to have bizarre behavior, they don’t have a diagnosis. They’ve managed to fly under the radar, at least until they do something horrible.
As part of my Least Restrictive Treatment contract (in order to leave the mental hospital), I had to agree not to own a fire arm. But that was supposed to be for my protection from suicide. Never in a million years would I have believed that I would become a name on a mental illness register.
Who decides who belongs on the register? Where’s the line in the sand? Do you need to have a diagnosis before registering? What kind of criteria will be used? Will people avoid getting a diagnosis because they don’t want to land on the register? And most importantly, what else will the list be used for? All of these are legitimate questions that must be carefully considered before the list becomes a reality.
It’s a slippery slope.
