WHERE THE BLAME LIES EARNED CENSORSHIP

Guest Opinion

by Emma Smith

On the morning of December 14th, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza took a gun from the safe in his home and murdered his mother before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary, where he shot and killed 20 children and six staff members before taking his own life.

Medical reports would later reveal that Lanza “showed signs of severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems,” which had gone untreated for years.

Later that day, Lisa Long of Boise, Idaho, published a controversial blog post titled “I Am Adam Lanza's Mother.” In the article, Long shared her experience of living with a son who had an undiagnosed mental illness. She chronicled instances of having to call the police because her son was threatening her with a knife. She recalled the thousands of dollars spent on ambulance rides and hospital stays that did not amount to any functional solutions beyond safety plans that her other children already knew by heart and prescriptions that either didn’t help or merely intensified her son’s symptoms.

“I live with a son who is mentally ill,” Long said. “I love my son. But he terrifies me.”

Although it’s been over a decade since Long shared her experience of trying and failing to find help for her son, it would seem that little has changed when it comes to the helplessness and judgment parents feel when they’re faced with this situation. Onlookers who are fortunate enough to have no experience parenting a child with a mental illness are quick to place blame squarely on the parent’s shoulders.

I’m not denying that mental health conditions and subsequent behaviors can be exacerbated by a child’s environment. But in situations with non-abusive parents, where childhood trauma has no place in the equation, just where are we supposed to place the blame, if not with the parents?

In recent years, we as a society have begun an about-face when it comes to stigmatizing mental illness. That said, it’s hard to erase the belief we’ve held for centuries that mental illness is a character flaw and/or the result of a lack of morality. This notion still persists, though perhaps more often on a subconscious level, making it easy to place blame on parents for failing to instill proper values in their children.

Surely, we still often think, if a child has a mental illness, the parent must have had some role in causing it.

Our desperation to make sense of things, to know the “why” behind a certain behavior, is human nature. Because if you know why something happens, you’re more likely to be able to avoid it, to control it. We take comfort in the idea that mental illness is the result of poor parenting, if only because it gives us the reassurance that the situation is within our control.

If poor parenting is the cause, we think, then by default the opposite must be true. We can rest easy in the knowledge that because we are good parents, our children will not be at risk of developing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, or any other serious mental illness.

This belief is pervasive enough to cause even those parents who are doing everything in their power to get treatment for their children to feel inadequate and ashamed. Not only that, it allows the rest of us to wash our hands of the problem facing the 49 percent of teens in the U.S. who have or have had a mental health disorder.

And it is a problem. In 2022, firearm fatalities became a leading cause of death among youth in the U.S., 30 percent of which were suicides.

After Lisa Long published her article, she was contacted by a child psychiatrist in New York who expressed interest in her son’s case. He diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and prescribed him medication. Finally, Long’s son was able to get the care he needed, but not without a hefty price tag. “My sweet boy,” Long said in a 2016 interview. “He’s received amazing treatment. But it cost an entire paycheck to visit that doctor, who didn’t take insurance. What about people who can’t afford that?”

What about them, indeed? What happens to the children whose parents can’t afford quality psychiatric care?

If mental health disorders are addressed and treated at the first sign of a problem, we can prevent these outcomes for children. But in order to do that, we have to start supporting their parents by advocating for more accessible mental health services.

That looks like more funding for school counselors and social workers; more beds and trained professionals at youth inpatient facilities; more implementation and training of evidence-based treatment interventions; more accessible homebased prevention programs; and more support groups for parents. It looks like a partnership with parents who are overwhelmed, exhausted, and terrified of what will happen to their child if they don’t get help soon.

It looks like learning more by listening instead of making assumptions about where the blame lies.

Emma Smith is a Leelanau County native who now lives in Traverse City. She works on the development team at Child and Family Services and is also a clinical mental health therapist.

spectator By Stephen Tuttle

Sometimes censorship is well earned. Other times, it’s appalling.

A good example of the first, deserved version is Scott Adams and his comic strip Dilbert The strip, a sometimes wicked and often accurate satire on the corporate world, was syndicated to 2,000 newspapers that were read in 65 countries. The cartoon was often funny, but Mr. Adams never was.

Dilbert is now being canceled by hundreds and hundreds of papers after Adams went on an unpleasant racial rant on his podcast. He said Black people—all of them—are a “hate group” and that white people “should get the of speech business yet again. The First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging our speech, which should be obvious from the very first words of that amendment: “Congress shall make no law…” It does not now, nor has it ever, applied to the private sector. Adams might have some legitimate contractual beefs with the publications that no longer run his strip, but there are no constitutional grounds on which he can stand.

Which brings us to the appalling version of censorship which feeds a full meal of “wokeness” to all of this. We are now changing the language in long-existing hell away from Black people.” Regrettably, it was not Adams’ first foray into what can very charitably be called racial insensitivity.

Scott Adams earned his banishment with his intentional intolerance. Rewriting the works of long-dead authors to appease someone’s current hyper-sensitivity is neither earned nor justified.

Adams had previously said you can determine the quality of a residential neighborhood by the “racial mixture” of who lives there. He claimed that an animated version of Dilbert for television was canceled “...because I’m white” and the network running the cartoon wanted to “go more Black.” It was the third time, he said, he’d lost work because he’s white.

Adams hasn’t always traded in racial nonsense; sometimes his ignorance is directed at women. Here’s his take on discussing pay equity with women in one of his internet posts in 2011: “The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. You don’t argue with a four-year-old about why he shouldn’t eat candy before dinner…And you don't argue when a woman tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar…” Yikes.

He also said Republicans would be “hunted” if Biden was elected and that the Holocaust has been turned into a left-wing talking point. Well, yes, the hunt apparently continues unabated, though it would seem unsuccessful thus far. And, yes, the left and other thoughtful groups do use the Holocaust as a talking point, and we should be thankful they continue reminding us.

Of course Adams and some right-wing supporters are now yammering away about the “woke cancel culture” and wondering aloud what happened to the First Amendment and freedom of speech. The answer is that Adams’ cartoon is being canceled by papers whose editorial departments represent both liberal and conservative opinions. He earned this result long ago.

It’s a little depressing we have to go over this entire First Amendment and freedom literary works lest they offend anyone.

Roald Dahl was a popular children’s book author. His two most-read works still are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Enormous Crocodile. According to The Guardian, Puffin, the current publisher of Dahl’s work, hired “sensitivity readers” to examine the books so they can “continue to be enjoyed by all today.” So, words like “ugly” and “crazy” have been removed. The character Augustus Gloop, described by Dahl as “enormously fat” is now just “enormous” which, by the way, is not the same thing at all.

In The Enormous Crocodile, the title character says of his friends, “…we eat little boys and little girls…” That has been changed to “…we eat children…” which the sensitivity readers believe is somehow better.

This is sensitivity run amok, and the same treatment is now being used on Ian Fleming’s James Bond books and has been at least discussed for Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, among other works the busybodies have decided to sanitize. (Twain does use the “n word” regularly as part of a character’s name. But the critics always ignore it’s one of the first times in American literature a Black and a white character have had a true friendship.)

The changes being made eliminate ripe teachable moments we can now just ignore. Why did the author choose that language? Why is it considered offensive today? What was different when the work was written that made people accept those words and that language? Why are those words considered offensive or even banned today? What words should we use that convey the same meaning in place of those that are unacceptable?

Scott Adams earned his banishment with his intentional intolerance. Rewriting the works of long-dead authors to appease someone’s current hyper-sensitivity is neither earned nor justified.