The Bazelon Center for Mental Health law has launched a letter writing campaign in an attempt to get 60 Minutes to do another segment about mental illness to balance what it claims was the biased viewpoint presented in a segment called: “Untreated Mental Illness: An Imminent Danger?” That program aired September 29th, shortly after the Navy Yard shootings, and focused on schizophrenia and violence. Much of the broadcast was devoted to an interview between Correspondent Steve Kroft and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who founded the Treatment Advocacy Center. The show ended with Dr. Torrey saying:
We have a grand experiment: what happens when you don’t treat people. But then you’re going to have to accept 10 percent of homicides being killed by untreated, mentally ill people. You’re going to have to accept Tucson and Aurora. You’re going to have to accept Cho at Virginia Tech. These are the consequences, when we allow people who need to be treated to go untreated. And, if you are willing to do that, then that’s fine. But I’m not willing to do that.
In its letter of complaint, which was signed by some 36 other groups, Bazelon wrote:
“Imminent Danger” portrays individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia as people with
hopeless futures whose primary life options are hospitalization, homelessness, or incarceration.
The segment provides no indication that individuals with schizophrenia can and do live fulfilling
lives, start their own families, work, live independently, and participate fully in their
communities. Instead, such individuals are painted as consigned to a life of misery and as
ticking time bombs with the potential to become violent at any time.The segment perpetuates false assumptions that there is a significant link between mental
health conditions and violence. Indeed, the point of the segment seems to be that mass shootings
would be preventable if it were easier to hospitalize individuals with psychiatric disabilities.
