David Harbour has strong words for those blaming mental illness for mass shootings
Alongside video games, another thing Donald Trump blamed for the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio was mental illness.
"Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger," he said during a press conference. "Not the gun."
In the days since, many people have taken to Twitter to share their own experiences with mental health, using the hashtag #IAmNotDangerous.
Hi, I’m Cara. I have bipolar disorder and anorexia. Never once have I considered a mass shooting.
These incidents we are seeing time and time again in America are not as a result of mental illness. They are a product of male entitlement and white supremacy. #IAmNotDangerous pic.twitter.com/NOON0oypUC— Cara Lisette 🧜🏻♀️ (@CaraLisette) August 6, 2019
On Thursday morning, Stranger Things star David Harbour shared his own Twitter thread.
Over five tweets he spoke about his personal experience with mental health — "I'm a card carrying member" — before going on to share his views on the way society treats those that suffer.
SEE ALSO: Violence in video games? Hasan Minhaj spotlights the real issues.
"In times of cultural strife to focus rage, hatred and deep uncertainty on a weak, already ashamed and outcast group seems, at best cowardly, and at worst calculated evil," Harbour wrote.
The ‘mentally ill’ (this arbitrary societally agreed upon cattle brand to differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’ re: pain) are overwhelmingly SUBJECT to violence, not perpetrators. I am a card carrying member and those I’ve met in asylums are some of the kindest, lost people I’ve known.
— David Harbour (@DavidKHarbour) August 8, 2019
More often it is the societally sanctioned sane that are violent. Being lost and confused and cracking up amidst the overwhelming hypocrisy and apathy of a society who’s very earth crumbles and decays by their own indifference seems to me a very considered response to daily life.
— David Harbour (@DavidKHarbour) August 8, 2019
I tire of this archaic branding of a subset of the species altogether (who does not suffer), but certainly in times of cultural strife to focus rage, hatred and deep uncertainty on a weak, already ashamed and outcast group seems, at best cowardly, and at worst calculated evil.
— David Harbour (@DavidKHarbour) August 8, 2019
Who does not suffer, should read with a question mark after it, as it’s rhetorical. (Who does not suffer?)
— David Harbour (@DavidKHarbour) August 8, 2019
It is an ‘ism’ like all others. ‘Sanism.’ And most days I deal with it with a certain duck-back-like-grace. But when you brand us the cause of societal ills, I bristle. And I think of where the ‘sane’ have gotten us. And where the ‘sane’ continue to lead us.
— David Harbour (@DavidKHarbour) August 8, 2019
Harbour, and the people of Twitter, aren't the only ones who've spoken out in the wake of Trump's comments.
Various mental health experts have warned that stigma can be created when mental illness is blamed for mass shootings.
"As we psychological scientists have said repeatedly, the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent,” Arthur C Evans Jr, CEO of the American Psychological Association, told the Guardian. "And there is no single personality profile that can reliably predict who will resort to gun violence.
"Based on the research, we know only that a history of violence is the single best predictor of who will commit future violence. And access to more guns, and deadlier guns, means more lives lost."
