[Transcript of, "People With Mental Health Disabilities Shut Down Dangerous Ideas About Gun Violence", produced by Rooted in Rights]

NARRATOR: Mass shootings in the US inevitably lead to national discussions about
mental health...

but people who actually experience mental
illness are routinely left out of the conversation.

So we sat down with some to get their response
to messages in the media.

CHRISTIANA: Pressing play.

(Emily Miller on CNN)

EMILY: How are we supposed to catch these really
psychotic, socio-schizophrenic people…

COURTNEY: “Psychotic, socio-schizophrenic”.

She said it like it was one word.

She clearly like, has no idea
what she’s talking about.

EMILY: None of us want crazy people having guns,
look what happened.

MAN: Can we not use the term “crazy”, please.

People who have mental illness are not crazy.
(EMILY: Why?)

There’s a huge spectrum of mental illness.
(EMILY: This man is schizophrenic.)

NAOMI: What I think about that is, um, people use terms
and I don’t think they know what they mean.

CHRISTIANA: Here I am, in the flesh.

You wanna talk about a schizophrenic person?

Hi!

MARÉ: They use mental illness-related words
like “psychotic” and “schizophrenic”

to basically mean “bad” or “violent”.

IVANOVA: They keep putting violence
and mental illness together

like they’re the two same things and it’s not.

MARÉ: I’m glad that that other person
was kind of arguing back at her.

(Joe Rogan on "The Joe Rogan Experience".)

JOE: These people are almost entirely
on some form of psychiatric medication

whether it is anti-anxiety pills,
whether it’s anti-depressants…

I’m not saying that correlation equals causation.

I’m not saying that.

But to say that they’re not...this is just
a bullshit, click-bait headline.

They’re mentally ill 100%.

100% of them are mentally ill.

IVANOVA: I’m disappointed in you, Joe Rogan!

I usually like your commentary.

CLARK: First of all, he’s completely wrong

that 100% of people who have ever shot up anything

are on drugs for psychiatric care.

More importantly though, the idea of like,

stigmatizing people who are getting help

is really dangerous.

MARÉ: For many years, I struggled to seek help and
I felt so ashamed because of people like this,

and people like this are everywhere.

COURTNEY: With this kind of rhetoric,
it just makes people more hesitant

to get treatment and help themselves and,

the reality is what really happens is that
people commit suicide

or hurt themselves more often than anything else.

NAOMI: “I feel attacked”, I guess,
is the right thing to say.

I don’t think I should have to hide the
results of a hard life.

I think I should be able to wear my battle
scars proudly and not have to like, uh,

convince everybody I’m not
gonna go out and murder them. 

COURTNEY: I’m ready.

(Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.)

RACHEL: The first materially
significant stand-alone legislation

that was passed after the 2016 election.

It was a single-purpose piece of legislation

to make it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns.

That’s all it did.

So many questions about why anyone would take
overt action to make sure that people adjudicated

to be seriously mentally disturbed
(NAOMI: Rachel!)

could get guns more easily!
(NAOMI: Rachel, Rachel!)

NAOMI: I love Rachel!

And Rachel, you’re wrong! 

People aren’t being adjudicated,
uh, or even diagnosed.

It assumes that people who do have, as Rachel
said, "mental disturbance," are also the very

same people who are going to be killing people.

IVANOVA: We’re actually more likely to be victims
of violence and crime, than perpetrators.

COURTNEY: People have this misconception
about this legislation that Trump signed.

That legislation had more to do with people
who have representative payees.

MARIKO: The reason that these people
have representative payees

is because they need assistance
managing their finances.

CLARK: So gun control is one thing.

But you know, you can’t just target a certain
part of the population whose only commonality is,

you know, not being good with
managing finances.

There’s really no correlation there between like,
“Hey, you have trouble managing money?

Well then clearly, you can’t have a gun.”

MARÉ: Some of those people on the left still are
spreading, like, really bad things like this.

(MarinaShutUp on YouTube.)

Marina: In response to the shooting,
liberal comedian Chelsea Handler tweeted:

“Mental health issues without guns are
people with mental health issues.

With guns, they become murderers.”

CLARK: Yeah...okay.

COURTNEY: “With guns they become murders”,
like, what a stupid generalization.

IVANOVA: Every single person that
has mental illness, if they touch a gun,

they’re not magically gonna  become murderers.

CHRISTIANA: And imagine what it may feel like for someone who may have psychosis
or

you know, may be struggling with
their mental experience in the moment

and then they’re hearing how the public is essentially

grabbing their torches and pitchforks

specifically looking for someone like them.

COURTNEY: I’m being put under a stigma
where I’m a violent person

and I’m not, and it’s just
really frustrating.

(Donald Trump on CBC News.)

TRUMP: We used to have mental institutions,
and I said this yesterday.

We had a mental institution where you take
a sicko like this guy, he was a sick guy,

and you can’t put him in jail because he
hadn’t done anything yet

but you know he’s going to do something.

So we’re gonna be talking seriously about opening mental health institutions again.

MARIKO: The fact that he’s even talking about
bringing back institutionalization is like

fucking terrifying

COURTNEY: We’re gonna like regress back to like Willowbrook days, when people with
disabilities were

not allowed to go school
and all of our rights were taking away.

CHRISTIANA: When you have the president of the country, talking about bringing back
institutionalization,

that’s going to have a disproportionate
and radical effect on the lives of people

who may have never even
seen a gun in their life.

NAOMI: You can’t force all people who have
mental illnesses into hospitals

and think that’s gonna solve the problem of gun violence in this society, which is
pervasive.

This presumption, it just doesn’t work.


CHRISTIANA: Linking mental health to gun violence is going to increase, kinda like we
saw in these videos,

the public's reaction to people with mental illness.

And that is the problem.

(Share this video.)

[End of transcript]