Mark Stephenson

Geek disappointment in church: Years ago, I asked a parishioner if I could borrow the videotape he had made of the most recent episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I knew he recorded every episode, and I had forgotten to set my videorecorder for that one. I never saw the episode though. When I asked him, he exclaimed, "And lend out one of my original master copies!?"

Oh well, live long and prosper anyway!

Rob, good observation. As you point out, the context of Belk's quote would help one understand his intent, and he may have been trying to avoid saying that mental illness was the cause of Dantzler's attack. However, if a reporter had asked him about Dantzler's mental health diagnosis, that would still suggest that a reporter was trying to finger mental illness as the cause.

Terry, thanks for this link to "The Autism Defense." I know very little about the legal system, nor about "the insantiy defense." But it seems to me that if McKinnon's defenders try to get him off the hook from his criminal behavior solely because he has Asperger's syndrome, they are walking into a nasty compromise. On the one hand, if they convince a judge not to extradite him to the US to be tried for his actions because he has Asperger's, they win their case. On the other hand, if they "win" this case using this defense, anyone with Asperger's is smeared by stigma: "if you know someone who has Asperger's, watch out. He's probably going to behave in a criminal manner."

Once again, not knowing much about the legal system, it looks to me like the insanity defense has done the same thing against people with mental illness. An insanity defense may keep a person from going to jail if he wins the case, but the defense itself stigmatizes all people with mental illness.

This in turn raises a huge question which people much wiser than I have struggled with for centuries: when is a person culpable for criminal behavior and when is he not culpable?

Rob, I agree with you. I wrote, "Whether or not Dantzler had a mental illness is no more relevant to this situation than the fact that he was African-American. In fact, people with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims of crime than the general population, and less likely to be perpetrators of crime."

I could have stated this more clearly. Let's try again. Legal and illegal drug use, mental health status, ethnicity, age, marital status, upbringing, and many more factors need to be considered as authorities examine why Dantzler commited these crimes. My concern is that the media, society leaders, and many people in general often home in on just one of these factors, mental health status, and assume that if a person had a serious mental illness that factor alone explains why someone commits a serious crime.

You point out rightly that justice issues demand a much broader examination than simply looking at one individual. Just as the rate of inceration of African Americans is higher than that of the general population, so also the rate of incarceration of people with severe mental illnesses. One study says what I have read many other places as well, "The increased duration of incarceration associated with homelessness and co-occurring severe mental disorders and substance-related disorders suggests that jails are de facto assuming responsibility for a population whose needs span multiple service delivery systems." Of course, I'm not saying that being African American is the same as having a severe mental illness. I, like you, think that our society needs to examine why so many people from both groups are ending up in jail.

To back up my statement that peple with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims of cime than the general population, here are the sad conclusions of one study:

More than one quarter of persons with SMI [severe mental illnesses] had been victims of a violent crime in the past year, a rate more than 11 times higher than the general population rates even after controlling for demographic differences between the 2 samples (P<.001). The annual incidence of violent crime in the SMI sample (168.2 incidents per 1000 persons) is more than 4 times higher than the general population rates (39.9 incidents per 1000 persons) (P<.001). Depending on the type of violent crime (rape/sexual assault, robbery, assault, and their subcategories), prevalence was 6 to 23 times greater among persons with SMI than among the general population.

I have not kept up on all the articles written about Dantzler's rampage, but those that I have read in my local newspaper, The Grand Rapids Press, seem to have kept a broad picture and not zeroed in on Dantzler's diagnosis of bi-polar disorder as THE explanation for his actions. I hope this more appropriate perspective on mental illness and crime can be come a trend.

George,

What a horrible situation for Ron and his family. I too have walked the valley of the shadow of death with parishioners who passed away from bone cancer. It looks like one of the most horrible ways to die because it is so painful.

However, I’m going to object to your line or reasoning, knowing that doing so will make me sound uncompassionate toward Ron and his family. I’ll take that risk because this issue is so important.

My understanding of the sixth commandment is that suicide is one of the acts that is prohibited by it. It is not an unforgiveable sin as some people say. We all are sinners in need of a savior. A believer who chooses to end his or her own life dies in the Lord and that sin is forgiven. Still, it is prohibited by God, and alternatives should be pursued instead. The quality of palliative care has grown significantly since Ron chose to end his life. Toughing it out may be somewhat less difficult now that it was when Ron was suffering so terribly. My understanding is that our Lord does call us to tough it out rather than take our own lives. Obedience often involves suffering and trial.

Your example of declining chemotherapy and other procedures does not fit in a discussion about assisted suicide. Allowing death to occur by declining treatment or choosing to end some treatment after a period of medical intervention is much different than causing death by a lethal procedure administered to end a human life. To permit death to come is much different than actively bringing about death. I know of someone who, after lengthy consultation and deliberation with medical staff and family, chose to have his ventilator removed. His life was artificially kept by the machine putting air into his lungs. His death came quickly after it was removed. This choice was much different than someone who administers a drug to cause his death.

Finally, as I argued in my blog, assisted suicide is a dangerous, slippery slope. As soon as it becomes an option, some people will feel pressure from family, medical staff, or society to end their own lives because they feel they are a burden, or others feel that they have become a burden. There are no safeguards adequate to prevent this emotional pressure from being applied. Society and family often push people with disabilities to feel that their lives are a burden to others, even though God delights in the lives of every one of his image bearers. For a society to open the door to assisted suicide opens the door for that same society to pressure people who are not considered to be productive or to have adequate “quality of life” to end their lives. That's why the organization Not Dead Yet was created by people with disabilities to fight assisted suicide when Kervorkian was often in the news. They're still active because so called "death with dignity" laws keep getting proposed, and create a grave threat to people living with disabilities, especially severe disabilities.

The naming of specific people and specific situations can break one’s heart and make allowing physician-assisted suicide sound like a compassionate and loving action, but in the end it is another nail in the coffin of a culture of death.

Allen, I agree with both your points. The article has some excellent ideas for dealing with problem behaviors, as long as one focuses on behaviors rather than thinking about some small group members as problem people. And any good leader needs to help the group (often in private) deal with problem behaviors.

And to precherkid, Allen and I couldn't really figure out how to make this a dialogue, so we thought a couple comments which you have here would have to suffice. Thanks for raising the question.