Pain

This afternoon, I made a grown man cry.

I could not help it. I am appalled by how patients with mental illness are being treated in their own communities because they are misunderstood. This particular patient I knew was apprehended by the law, but the details of it, I cannot discuss.

The grown man was the boy's grandfather. He only cried after he realized that he shouldn't have left the boy in the care of other people who did not know any better. "Care" is not even the right word. They just let him be.

It's easy to dismiss people with mental illness as not being as big a deal, or as big an emergency as a heart attack, or a stroke...or even a fever. And you know what hurts me the most? he got beaten up, I was told...  and he didn't even know what was happening to him, or why they were doing that to him.

I know I should be objective, and not get attached, but I'm writing about this because I think people with mental illness should be given the same rights and be treated with the same respect as other "normal" people. Is it really too much to ask?

If this were your brother...or your father, or your uncle, or whomever it is you care about, could you stand to see it that they be treated like animals because nobody understood them?

People fear things that they cannot understand.

There needs to be major changes around here.. And it starts now.