Because of the recent shooting in Tucson by 22 year old gunman Loughner, allegedly mentally ill, shooting 19 persons and killing 6 (including a 9 year old girl), mental illness was featured on tonight's Katie Couric national news broadcast. I have taped it for closer study of the facts reported. In America, she reports that 20 out of every 100 persons are mentally ill and 5 of those 20 are chronically mentally ill and 1 of those 5 a serious threat to self or others ..... then she reports that mentally ill persons are no more likely to commit a crime statistically than those not mentally ill according to recent research.
Okay, so it is now finally time to take mental illness out of the closet and make much needed improvements increasing overall individual, societal, and governmental mental health without further false belief-every-thing-is-ok hegemony. Mental health can not be achieved for an individual separate from the society and government which are also similarly afflicted. Improving sanity versus the varying degrees of insanity is the goal.
Each and every citizen can
improve their individual sanity,
work to improve their interpersonal relationship in society,
improve their productivity economically,
improve their performance to potentials and beyond,
influence their government to focus on mental health,
and construct systems that promote mental health eliminating obstructions eroding it.
One such important improvement would be examining the language of madness (read Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison's book that has a chapter on that subject) ..... another would be allowing problems with mental health to receive the same treatment as physical health problems and in fact, I believe mental health problems are predominantly physical health problems localized in the brain and nervous system and are exacerbated by the unhealthy, contradictory and confused socialized environment in which those without mental health, the mentally afflicted, live.
Friends don't let friends avoid the necessity of being mentally healthier each minute of every day for the rest of their lives. Then, when mental health is clearly evident to all around the world, Americans will finally be able to rest in peace, passing prosperity to the next generation as proud Americans who won the most important battle-- the battle for mental health winning the war within ourselves.
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