The Dallas Morning News published an excellent series of five articles about mental illness by Tom Siegfried and Sue Goetinck. It's as real as cancer and much more common. It strikes the young and the old, the right and the poor - some sort of mental disorder afflicts more than one in five Americans in the course of a lifetime. Just as clogged phone lines or misrouted signals can slow down or lock up a computer, misplaced molecules and malfunctioning nerve cells can slow down, confuse or lock up the mind. Sexism and racism and supposedly taboo Jokes about physical handicaps are condemned as tasteless.
Nobody shuns cancer patients any more.
But people with mental illness are still fair game. News accounts rarely say if a murder suspect has diabetes or cancer, is a vegetarian or Episcopalian. Dear Abby - Actually, it's from Ann Landers, her sister. The column had a question which related to manic depression. The Utne Reader - Search articles.