Skip to main content

Myth and Miriam Carey

This is Mental Illness Awareness Week. But the sad tragedy of Miriam Carey is another reminder of how deeply unaware we are about mental illness in general and its relationship to violent behavior in particular.

And how much we rely on myths to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

We all heard the news about Ms. Carey last week.  But we were not exactly informed by it. 

Ms. Carey drove her car onto a White House driveway, hit some temporary fencing, backed up, and then pulled away. She was pursued toward the Capitol by law enforcement officers in what became a high-speed chase.  Ms. Carey was eventually cornered near Garfield Circle.  Six officers, with guns pulled, approached her car there.  She apparently panicked, scattering the officers as she drove away.  At least nine shots were fired at her as the chase began again.  She eventually got stuck on a median near a Capitol guard station, where she was shot to death by an officer.

As I watched the unfolding news that afternoon, the story was embellished, to say the least.  There were reports of a possible terrorist attack on the White House and the breaching of a White House barrier.  And gunfire had been “exchanged” in an apparent attack on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, as Senators cowered in their offices.

But then the real story began to emerge.

Ms. Carey hadn’t breached a White House barrier; she had hit a fence or a gate.  No gunfire was exchanged, because Ms. Carey was unarmed.  And Ms. Carey wasn’t attacking the Capitol; she had fled in her car in that direction.

So the narrative changed.  Now Ms. Carey – suffering from mental illness – had “rammed” a barrier at the White House.  She was “obsessed” with President Obama.  She used her car as a 1300 pound “weapon” to mow down law enforcement personnel as she continued on her “rampage.”

And she “chose” to ignore officers who tried to subdue and pursue her.

Words themselves are powerful weapons.  And these new words helped paint the mythical picture of the seriously mentally ill person who stalks, snaps, and kills without warning. 

But this narrative proved to be wrong, too.

We later learned that Ms. Carey apparently drove all the way from Connecticut to Washington with her one year old baby in the car.  So she didn’t “snap.”  And there was no evidence in her home that she had been plotting against the President with whom she was “obsessed.”  And she wasn’t on a “rampage.” Not only was she unarmed, but she apparently managed to avoid pedestrians and other motor vehicles as she raced down Pennsylvania Avenue at speeds up to 80 miles per hour.

But because she is dead the pieces missing from her story – like what she was actually thinking at the time – will probably remain missing. 

And the myth-makers will have another field day at the expense of people with mental illnesses.  Because the facts about mental illnesses don’t fit the narrative.

These are the facts.

People do not acquire mental illnesses by choice.  They can’t turn them off like a faucet.  The people who knew her best said Miriam Carey was not out to harm anyone last week, and that her mental illness was being treated successfully.  But if she was suffering from a mental illness-induced panic in the final minutes of her life as she was chased and under fire, she would have been no more able to turn that off when the police yelled stop than to will herself to stop bleeding from her gunshot wound. 

All mental illnesses are not the same, but none is a very strong predictor of violence.  Postpartum depression – for which she had been treated – is not the same as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.  But if you believe the myth that any of these conditions by themselves leads to violence, then take a look at the chart accompanying this column about the low lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illnesses, from an article published almost a decade ago in the New England Journal of Medicine.

And people with mental illness do not “snap” without warning.  There are often years of warnings that go unheeded by payers looking to save a dollar.  And by public officials who cut mental health budgets and deem mental health agencies and services as “non-essential.” And then cower in their offices at the first sign of trouble – the one part of the initial reporting that was, apparently, accurate.

Let’s deal with facts, not myths.  After all, this is Mental Illness Awareness Week.

Paul Gionfriddo via email: gionfriddopaul@gmail.com.  Twitter: @pgionfriddo.  Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.gionfriddo.  LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/paulgionfriddo/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Missing Mental Health Element in the Ferguson Story

By now, everyone has heard the news from Ferguson, Missouri.  An unarmed 18 year old named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer.  Michael Brown was black. Some of the events surrounding the shooting are in dispute.  But what isn’t in dispute is that for the past two weeks, a community has been torn apart by race – a community that until recently was best known for its proximity to St. Louis and its designation as a Playful City, USA . Picture credit: Health Affairs Media reports since the August 9 th shooting have focused almost entirely on one angle – race relations.  We’ve heard about unrest in the city, the National Guard, police in riot gear, and danger in the streets.  We’ve heard about the District Attorney’s ties to law enforcement, and concerns that a too-white Grand Jury may be racially motivated not to indict the police officer involved in the deadly shooting. But the media have been strangely silent about a different angle – this comm

Celebrating Larissa Gionfriddo Podermanski Five Years Later

My daughter Larissa died of Metastatic Breast Cancer five years ago, in May of 2018.  She had only two wishes at the end. One was that we plant a tree for her. We did - in a Middletown CT city park - and it has grown straight and tall. The other was that she not be forgotten. Larissa's family and friends took pains to reassure that she could not be forgotten. If you were fortunate enough to know Larissa, you would know why. Still, I wondered how I might celebrate her a little more now that some years have passed, while sharing some of her memorable spirit with others (some who knew her and others who did not), while reminding us why she was such an extraordinary woman. In early 2017, Larissa started a blog called Metastatically Speaking, through which she chronicled her life with MBC. Unfortunately - and through no one's fault - her blog disappeared some time after her death. So, if you search for it now, you can't find it.  However, I was fortunate enough to see and retain

Judgment Day

Ironic. I was not as nervous as you would think on April 23 rd .  Martin, my mother and I drove up to Dana Farber.  All weekend I wanted plan for Poland, Barbados and Florida, as we brainstormed ideas of what could be attainable or possible. I started to realize I looked pregnant… but that couldn’t be. When the appointment began I noticed it felt like a routine visit. Everything went smoothly, but what were we focusing on? It was this: if I did nothing the outlook for me was living three weeks to a few months longer. So, is that my only option, I wanted to know?   No, I was told we can try a low dose chemo and see how it works.   Since it is low dose, they said, it won’t do much harm, but we truly don’t know how it will work. It’s not a treatment we have used a lot at low dose and technically you are in liver failure, leaving you with limited options.   Of course, the goal would still be to get you to be stable; however, this is a blind treatment. We don’t know if this approach w