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December 08, 2005
When Bipolar Turns Deadly
According to the BBC News and the CNN report I watched this morning, the American shot by air marshals in Florida after claiming to have a bomb was mentally ill, probably suffering from bipolar disorder.
As Rigoberto Alpizar "ran down the aisle of the plane, a woman assumed to be his wife shouted for him to stop. Witnesses interviewed after the shooting described how Alpizar's companion tried to tell fellow passengers or air marshals that he suffered from bipolar disorder, or manic depression.
" 'I did hear the lady say her husband was bipolar and had not had his medication,' said Mary Gardner, another passenger.
" 'I saw the woman... she was hysterical.'"
No wonder. I'm no expert but it seems that people with severe cases of bipolar disorder may become reckless, impulsive and/or violent during certain phases of the illness. That's never a good combination and sometimes turns deadly. Family and friends may be assalted by an ill person or an ill person may commit suicide or be killed. If Rigoberto Alpizar was bipolar, he's certainly not the only bipolar person to be killed by law officials in Florida.
I'm not questioning the actions of the air marshals. All I really want to point out is the hell that mental illness creates for sufferers and their families. A friend has coped, many years now, with an ill spouse incapable of parenting or anything else. My friend works full-time, raises the kids and tries to stay sane in the face of enormous challenges that include utterly inadquate medical treatment from the family's HMO and callous indifference by society at large.
When it comes to mental illness, America is practically in the dark ages still. Study after study after study demonstrates that crazy people are crazy for a reason that has nothing to do with character or moral fiber or class or education. But not so very deep down, we don't want to believe that brain chemistry can be faulty and create an illness that affects thoughts and emotions, those intimate experiences that seem to define our very being. We prefer to think that crazy people and their families some how asked for their condition. We ignore them, whenever possible, and allow insurance companies, the medical establishment and society at large to treat mental illness as a faux illness and mentally ill people as second-class citizens who don't deserve the respect and treatment accorded to those suffering from more familiar, less scary illnesses such as diabetes.
What will it take to remove the stigma from mental illness so people can get treatment (and acceptance) as a matter of course? I wish I knew. My heart goes out to the family of Rigoberto Alpizar, to the air marshals who shot him and to the airplane passingers who witnessed it. The air marshalls didn't mean to kill an ill, unarmed man. They were protecting the passingers by doing what they were trained to do. I don't know how this particular tragedy could have been prevented. I do know that other, less visible tragedies are being enacted each day in homes all across America because mentally ill people--and their familes--aren't getting the help they so desperately need.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at December 8, 2005 03:59 PM