Mental Illness and Homelessness Connected to Violence

By Justine Landes
Through thousands of anecdotal cases documented for forty years and also tracing the legal history of mental illness from the late 1940s, Dr. Torrey, an eminent psychiatrist, effectively makes the connecting link between a percent of people afflicted with mental illness who are at risk of violent behavior. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression are Dr. Torrey's targeted mental health areas. A portion of this population does not acknowledge their illness, do not take their medication and frequently abuse alcohol and drugs. It is this segment of mentally ill persons who most often display, or are at risk of, dangerous and violent behavior. It is also this segment of mentally ill persons who, unfortunately, stigmatize the majority of mentally ill individuals who "make good neighbors."

"One of the great social disasters of recent American history" is the aptly coined phrase Dr. Torrey uses to describe the consequences of laws and policies that have led to increasing homelessness, incarceration, violence and homicides involving mentally ill. Most importantly, the legislatively passed laws and policies have caused much anguish and pain for the multitude of families with extremely mentally ill loved ones.

During the past fifty years hundreds of thousands of people have been released from the public mental hospitals as a result of civil rights involuntary commitment law suits and civil rights lawsuits that said a person with a mental illness has a right to refuse to take medications, even though the medications are effective in treating the person. The results led to deinstitutionalization which subsequently led to documented homelessness, violence, incarceration and tragedy for a segment of the mentally ill population.

One of the documented cases Dr. Torrey summarizes in his book involves an intelligent young man who at the age of sixteen was diagnosed with schizophrenia and considered dangerous. He was in-and-out of hospitals, threatened on several occasions to kill his mother, his sister and her child. His behavior became increasingly erratic as he got older. For over ten years his mother and sister tried in vain to get help. Finally, in desperation and out of love in not wanting to see him suffer the rest of his life they killed him. Dr. Torrey agreed to testify pro bono for the defense at the trial but the lawyer declined. Sadly, Dr. Torrey states that several times each year someone in the United States makes the same decision. "Faced with what appears to be inevitable, the unthinkable becomes thinkable."

Another documented case related by Dr. Torrey is a 2004 case involving a bipolar disordered young man who was not taking his medication, strangled his mother and stabbed to death his sister and her young son. His father, a lawyer, stated, "If I had had any clue this would happen, I would have gone over there, killed my son, and turned myself in..."

Dr. Torrey's belief is that the system that treats mentally ill persons is sadly deficit. He makes the strong case that it is imperative the mental health policies be reformed and that policies mandate the extremely mentally ill persons who could be or are dangerous receive the treatment they clearly need. The final chapter of his book is devoted to the steps that should be taken to successfully fix the present disastrously ineffective system.