Over the last two weeks there have been a number of shooting-sprees across the US. The most recent was at Northern Illinois University. It turns out the shooter had been in treatment for a mental disorder:

University Police Chief Donald Grady said Friday that Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his medication.

This article adds a couple of points about this shooter:

A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak’s parents placed him there after high school. She said he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. …
“He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill,” she said. “That was part of the problem.”

There’s probably no one who knows better than I, the desire to deny the reality of mental illness. I also have had my own battles with medication; having taken at least one of all the major varieties of psychotropic medication, I’ve experienced them first-hand and understand the desire not to take them. Really. I get it. I’ve been there.

But the truth is, folks, that none of us lives in a vacuum! We’re all responsible for our part in the lives of others. No one benefits when a mentally-ill person terminates his/her treatment; everyone else in his/her life must pick up the slack and deal with the results of that decision. Denial of the reality of mental illness has repurcussions throughout one’s life. In this case, denial killed (not only the patient, but 5 others, and wounded more). Even in cases nowhere near this extreme, there is nevertheless a price to denying mental illness; interpersonal problems, inability to keep a job or take care of oneself, and so on. A mentally-ill person who refuses treatment for his/her disorder automatically places a burden on others.

The lesson here is a simple one: No one who’s on notice as having a mental illness, can afford the luxury of acting as if that illness doesn’t exist. You have to stick with your treatment, whatever that is, no matter what. If the treatment is not helping or not to your liking, then change it … but don’t decide not to pursue any treatment at all.

Perhaps this isn’t fair … after all, neither I nor anyone else with a mental illness asked for it, so why should any of us be saddled with this responsibility? But we all know that life is not fair. Lots of people have lots of illnesses and problems that they must deal with nevertheless. Looking for fairness in life, is a fool’s errand; you aren’t going to get it. So rather than obsess over fairness, obsess instead with making the best of one’s life. This means taking responsibility for one’s condition and treating it.