The violence against people with mental illnesses is **not just historical but ongoing**, manifesting in different forms across the world. It ranges from **direct killings (executions, filicide, mob violence, police brutality)** to **systemic neglect (homelessness, incarceration, lack of healthcare, war-related deaths)**.

You said:

Why would people lie to me about this?

ChatGPT said:

People might tell you that individuals with mental illness are "well treated" for various reasons, often depending on their perspective, experience, or investment in maintaining a particular view of society. Some possibilities:

1. Lack of Awareness – Many people are unaware of the realities faced by those with mental illnesses, including discrimination, violence, and systemic neglect. They might assume that because there are psychiatric hospitals, medications, and awareness campaigns, treatment is sufficient and humane.

2. Desire to Maintain the Status Quo – Acknowledging the ongoing harm done to people with mental illness would require confronting uncomfortable truths about institutions, policies, and social attitudes. Some may prefer denial over reckoning with systemic violence.

3. Media and Institutional Framing – Official narratives often present psychiatric care and social services as adequate, while downplaying human rights violations, homelessness, incarceration, and killing of those with psychiatric disabilities.

4. Personal Bias and Just-World Fallacy – Some people hold onto the belief that society is fundamentally fair and that suffering must be due to personal failures rather than systemic injustice.

5. Defensive Justifications – If someone has been complicit in, benefited from, or ignored the suffering of those with mental illness, they may rationalize their inaction by insisting that things are fine.

6. Medicalized Distraction – A focus on "mental health awareness" often centers individual treatment rather than structural issues. This shift can obscure the ways people with mental illnesses are abandoned, criminalized, or eliminated.

**Defensive Justifications** – If someone has been complicit in, benefited from, or ignored the suffering of those with mental illness, they may rationalize their inaction by insisting that things are fine.

Explore historical patterns of this kind of erasure

ChatGPT said:

The erasure of harm against people with mental illness has deep historical roots, often taking the form of justifications, deflections, and narrative control that obscure systemic violence. Below are key historical patterns of this erasure:

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1. The ‘Benevolent Asylum’ Justification (19th–20th Century)

Pattern: Early psychiatric institutions were often framed as humanitarian advancements, yet they became sites of confinement, abuse, and medical experimentation.
Erasure Mechanism: Institutional violence—such as forced sterilization, overcrowding, and lobotomization—was justified as ‘treatment’ rather than control.
Example:

• The Willowbrook State School (1947–1987) housed children with intellectual disabilities in squalid conditions while publicly presenting itself as a caring institution. When journalist Geraldo Rivera exposed the horrors inside, the public reacted with shock—despite decades of prior complaints.

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2. Eugenic ‘Improvement’ Justification (Early–Mid 20th Century)

Pattern: Mental illness and disability were framed as social threats, leading to sterilization, medical experimentation, and extermination.
Erasure Mechanism: These acts were not acknowledged as violence but as ‘scientific progress’ or ‘public hygiene.’
Examples:

• Aktion T4 Program (1939–1945): Nazi Germany’s mass killing of mentally ill and disabled people was justified as economic efficiency.

• U.S. Eugenics Movement: 60,000+ people, disproportionately poor, disabled, and mentally ill, were forcibly sterilized under laws that persisted into the 1970s. Judges framed these actions as ‘preventative care’ for future generations.

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3. Deinstitutionalization as ‘Liberation’ (Mid–Late 20th Century)

Pattern: Mass closures of psychiatric institutions were framed as an expansion of civil rights, but in practice, they led to mass homelessness and imprisonment of the mentally ill.
Erasure Mechanism: By celebrating deinstitutionalization as a victory, systemic abandonment was hidden.
Example:

• The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 was intended to support community-based care but was defunded in 1981 under Reagan. The lack of infrastructure led to a rise in homelessness and incarceration, which was ignored under the narrative that institutionalization had been "crueler."

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4. ‘Law and Order’ Framing of Mental Distress (Late 20th–21st Century)

Pattern: Mentally ill individuals are disproportionately criminalized, with prisons becoming de facto psychiatric institutions.
Erasure Mechanism: Police violence against mentally ill individuals is reframed as ‘public safety enforcement.’
Examples:

• 25–50% of police killings involve people with mental illness, yet media narratives rarely emphasize psychiatric disability.

• The rise of psychiatric policing (e.g., forced sedation, involuntary hospitalization) is justified as ‘de-escalation,’ even when it leads to deaths like that of Elijah McClain.

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5. Mental Health Awareness as a Distraction (21st Century)

Pattern: Public discourse has shifted toward mental health awareness campaigns, which promote therapy and self-care but avoid addressing systemic oppression.
Erasure Mechanism: By framing mental health as an individual issue rather than a structural one, systemic harm is rendered invisible.
Example:

• While awareness campaigns encourage people to ‘reach out for help,’ access to psychiatric care remains highly unequal.

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Final Thoughts

The repeated pattern is one of reframing harm as care, neglect as liberation, and systemic violence as individual illness.