How does the State fail us ?
It fails us when politicians who claim to be ensuring the safety of its citizens put them at risk of injury either from overcrowding in mental health facilities, over-medication of patients by family doctors, and overreacting to mostly harmless people who daily beat the stigma.
Take, for example, the State's handling of mental health.
Only effective forms of medication are covered by state health insurance i.e. Medicaid/Medicare.
Medications deemed old and inefficient are not covered, nor are the newest ones approved in another jurisdiction universally available.
The State does so to protect people from harm, since it knows what is best for the People.
Yet it does not go further to protect the mentally ill from stigma, citing "free speech" when Hollywood stereotypes the mentally ill as evil in the guise of violent psychotics, zombies or agents of the Devil.
Could it be that the stigma of mental illness is manufactured by society to motivate each of us to pro-actively develop mental health strategies through education and therapy.
Perhaps the State implies through its administration of Medicaid/Medicare that medication does the least harm while allowing local government to section/hospitalize mentally ill people who pose potential harm to themselves or others.
At the same time, it surely cannot protect the People from benign sociopaths who become politicians. Why can't the State protect the People from politicians? While the laws of the State are often written to remedy social problems such as mental illness, they also ensure that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer."
In this way, doing what's best for the People profits the State through the private sector. Hopefully it also helps us to promote the mental health of the People.
While ending the stigma of the mentally ill may not be profitable to the State, it still is a basic human right for the People.
Yet the free speech observed by Hollywood producers trades a few laughs gained by parodying the mentally ill for profit.
Even if the State fails us by helping the pharmaceutical corporations profit from increased psychiatric medication sales, that should provide adequate motivation to beat the stigma of mental illness daily.
If we want to end such stigma, then it is only worth watching a movie which casts mental illness in a negative light by discussing the stereotyping that casts the shadow stigma on the characters in it.
In that way, it is possible to educate family and friends about how stereotyping the mentally ill subtly promotes the stigma.
If we want to reduce the cost of lives lost due to over-medication, then prevention could save costs.
For not everyone wants to rush forward where the extremely nervous of people fear to tread.
Original post: June 25, 2010 1154H
Previous updated: March 15, 2013 2327H
Currently revised: November 28, 2013 0447H
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