Month: August 2018

By Tim Fromla

Mental illness is often the reason behind any violent act.  Here are some recent examples:

A Vietnam Veteran who visited Uganda as a missionary was taken into custody by law enforcement for assault after attacking a hotel employee. The man blamed mental illness for his outburst according to the U.K.s Daily Mail. According to the Daily Mail, the man was drunk.

Yes, racism played a role, and if it were me, as an atheist, I would probably have been a victim. If I lied and said I am a Christian, I would probably have been left alone. Mental issues and not alcohol is the excuse the missionary used for his action. Kampala Metropolitan Police reported in a Friday post on Facebook that it has arrested the U.S. citizen, Jimmy L. Taylor, after security cameras showed him punching and cursing at an employee at Grand Imperial Hotel.

Back in Florida, according to the Independent, a U.K. News organization, “The suspected gunman behind America’s latest mass shooting had a history of mental illness and was prescribed anti-psychotic medicine, court records revealed.” Once again, a mentally ill person was responsible for the massacre and not a firearm. The shooter, David Katz legally bought the guns legally according to the ABC affiliate in Chicago.  It was his poor mental health and not the availability of pistols nor the stress of a painful divorce of his parents that was cited by ABC as the cause that led to this tragedy.

But, are all, or even many violent incidents due to mental health problems?  What do mental health experts say?  According to the New York Times,

“Overall, mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent 1 percent of all gun homicides each year, according to the book “Gun Violence and Mental Illness‘ published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2016.”

Or in 2017, with 345 cases of the mass shooting  (three or more victims) nationwide, about 3 of these cases were committed by mentally ill folks. Now, if anyone went through treatment or if there was a ban on purchasing firearms, then 342 people will still be killed because 99 percent of all shooters are not ill.

As a person with mental health issues, the last thing any of us want is to be a part of any stigma. More than 99 percent of us are not violent nor do we wish to hurt anyone. As a person with a disability, it sickens me when the media, our elected officials or even the public blame the illness on a massacre, but even more disheartening is the stigma that maybe leaving people like us alone is the better path to take than addressing our issues head-on.

Hello, my name is Tim, and I have mental health issues. I would never have written something like this because of the stigma associated with mental health. Today, I am writing what I want to say, as verbally speaking my truth and experience is still hard. Many believe that issues with the mind are just that, mental and by picking yourself up from the bootstrap and being responsible would be the panacea needed to quell my anxiety. It isn’t. It’s like me telling someone to buck up and get off your rear end, even though you have stage four cancer and in hospice.

Makes no sense, does it?

The same makes no sense when a person returns from war and is suffering from PTSD, or when a victim of a sex crime survives their ordeal, or even a child separated from their parents because the government says they are illegal to buck up.  An illness is an illness and must have treatment to get better.

So I’ve been going through therapy for more than a year, and it’s a learning process. I am getting treated by a psychiatrist, but I am also going through cognitive behavior therapy too. I am learning to unlearn what was a norm or cultural experience in my life. What I have done to myself was based on years of cultural norms, but my environment, being born and raised in the U.S. can counter each other.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I am an atheist, a recovering Christian; jokes aside, my family and culture cling to religion as a norm. And deviation would cause shame in the family but discovering that the faith is racist, I could not be a part of this culture. My church or conference was not racist, my denomination was. Becoming an atheist in the Japanese Christian culture is disgraceful. I could not find peace though, so I sought therapy.

My current therapist told me that after speaking to me, he says that I have an analytical mind. I keep asking why and would not be satisfied with,”Because God said so.” Add racism, and one becomes a nonbeliever. I continued to search and became a U.U. PoC. To me, the Bible, Torah, Quran, and so on to me is merely text. Some call it Holy book, while others call it fiction. Regardless of the documents, it’s something important to someone.

Regardless, asking questions is an integral part of mental health, and my therapy consists of searching. In all honesty, I may not find all the answers, but the searching never ends. When I was  young, I was always a curious person, and as a child, I was fascinated by a spider making a web. Why are a spider’s web sticky, and what is its substance?

Spider Silk
The protein in dragline silk is fibroin (Mr 200,000-300,000) which is a combination of the proteins spidroin 1 and spidroin 2. The exact composition of these proteins depends on factors including species and diet. Fibroin consists of approximately 42% glycine and 25% alanine as the major amino acids.

I was not satisfied with God did it, but the above answer should suffice. It doesn’t. As society compounds us to believe in one thing, that is where the problem lies. My therapist explained that there is nothing wrong with being curious about any subject but to seek answers and sharing it is a lot harder than one thinks. I can’t change my family’s especially the adult’s mind, so I have to explore this journey by myself.

Therefore.

My and many other’s mental health issues are what it is, a health issue and all, in all, ask is to have a little understanding, not sympathy as some of us cannot change a culture that has been in our genetic code for several thousand years. I guess the next step is to express what I am blogging by word of mouth. I can’t right now and…

That’s why I am going to therapy.