Insanity

Photo by Peter Petraitis

A late-middle-aged woman recently attempted to stab two small children, one and four, after asking their mother a question on a public walkway in Boston's Charles River Park. The mother was stabbed when she inserted herself to protect her children. The stabber was subdued by a 70-year-old man who was passing by.  It came to light that the woman has an extensive psychiatric and criminal record. She had stabbed people before and had escaped containment with an insanity plea. She was offered bail of $25,000 for this offense.

The stabber happens to have an apartment on the same corridor as my partner. He and I have observed her anger and antisocial behaviors on many occasions. My experience as a psychiatric nurse caused me to speculate that she has had a troubled past with a history of refusing adequate treatment. We have given her plenty of space. 

Violently insane people are everywhere on the streets of our cities. Our mental health system is a shambles due to the well-meaning reformers of the 1980s who started the trend to dismantle large systems for housing and treating the mentally ill. I say well-meaning, but I believe financial gain was the motivation of these reformers who saw great tax savings and greater political popularity in tearing down the public mental health systems after the popularity of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"  and other anti-hospital works.

As populations grow and the ineptitude of politicians in power also grows, the weight of dysfunction and expense of society is thrown onto the shoulders of the average citizen.  Libertarian politicians exploit the complacency of the population in this regard. "Let's privatize everything," they shout. 

Who will you call when you are stabbed by a deranged person on a street in broad daylight when everything is privatized? The answer is obvious. Society is a process of mass cooperation. It is not having drinks in a pub. It is not a weekly poker game. It is not ignoring everybody while tapping on a keyboard at Starbucks. Society includes everybody in a geographic area. This means the insane stabber as well as the innocent young mother. Government should be the arbitrator and maintainer of a civil society. Government has been failing in this role for at least four decades.

As a humanist, I see voicing my dissatisfaction with government as a basic responsibility of my practice. I write emails. I speak with representatives on the phone. It is my job to deal with the details of society in my path from picking up litter to intervening when I see injustice or aggression. If the trend of the turned head and the obsession with an iPhone in the public space continues, society will become more dysfunctional and dangerous for everyone.