More Than Just A Crazy Cousin

Reading through the news yesterday I came across two truly disturbing stories. One involves a young man, age 23, who murdered two of his younger sisters in their Massachusetts home while their grandmother was in the basement doing laundry. He stabbed his 17 year old sister to death and was decapitating the 5 year old when the police busted in and killed him.  His parents have decided to bury all 3 together. Another sister, 9 years old, is in the hospital recovering from her wounds. In the second story, a 32 year old man here in NYC has been ruled unfit for trial after stabbing a police officer in the eye. This gentleman is unfit because he is a paranoid schizophrenic. My people my people.

In the case of the brother killing his sisters, a family friend claimed that there was nothing to indicate that he was capable of doing something like this. I find this hard to believe. No one wakes up one morning completely out the blue without showing any signs of distress ever before and starts to slaughter their kin. It was reported that the young man had attacked another sister a few years back by punching her in the face in an argument over a phone bill. And he had been arrested for carrying a weapon in another incident. Does this really sound like the poster child for the Boy Scouts of America? 

The paranoid schizophrenic had a long history of mental illness. He'd been "bouncing in and out of psych wards" for the past 9 years. He wouldn't take his anti-psychotic drugs as prescribed and he would sometimes set small fires and threaten his neighbors. 

On one hand you possibly have parents who willfully failed to admit to themselves that a child they'd raised was truly disturbed as though it was a reflection of their parenting. Sometimes the worst things happen to the best people and it's no reflection on their character.  Punching your sister, or anyone, in the face over a phone bill is a bit extreme. His prior arrests on other charges coupled with the phone incident let's you know there was clear indication that big trouble was brewing. The other story was a situation in which the family and authorities knew this man was imbalanced, but there seemed to be little done to contain the illness he suffered from. 

Minorities are less likely to admit that they are suffering from some sort of mental illness for fear of being seen as weak or that getting mental help is not a Black or Latino thing to do. Getting help for yourself or your family member is ALWAYS the thing to do no matter what racial group you're a member of. We have to stop looking at family members who clearly need help and shrugging them off by saying "Oh that's just crazy cousin so and so. You know they get loose sometimes." STOP SAYING THINGS LIKE THAT. What are you going to say for yourself if crazy cousin so and so kills himself or attempts to kill someone else? And sadly, too often some family's crazy cousin has killed someone. 

We have to take the fear and shame out of mental illness and attack it like we would diabetes, heart disease, or HIV/AIDS. Oh but wait, I forgot, we aren't attacking those things as vigilantly as we need to either.