Tag Archives: mental illness

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051124/NEWS01/511240312/1001

Tired of persecuting and convicting the mentally ill, Thomas Testa of San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney office, has said enough is enough. Each of his cases deal with a victim dying  “under heinous circumstances” as he says, with the perpetrator having to serve life sentences in a state prison or shipped off to a mental institution. At least for Testa it could have easily been avoided if either the family or a local agency made sure the perpetrator took their prescribed medicine in the proper amount. But as other attorneys and psychologists have articulated, the situation is not as simple as it seems. Despite the small population of mentally ill people that commit violent acts, they argue that there is disproportional attention in relation to the act. Evidence of this can be found in the frequency that these acts are exhibited in the narrative of the national media; as well as the fierce sentencing that occurred in response, in several of the cases they portray. Collins of the Health services alludes to the fact of the stigma that mentally ill violent offenders face: “Criminals first rather then fighting a chronic disease”.

Goffman in “Stigma and Social Identity”, gives us an inside glimpse into the sources and justification of Stigma and its effects within the framework of society. In it we can specifically classify mental illness as of the “discreditable” kind, and the notion that stigmatized individuals are constantly linked  with their “defect” (in this case mental illness) in a way that is nonexistent in the traits of a normal person.