Friday, May 31, 2024

By Rob Waters

Good morning, MindSite News readers. Today, the last Friday of the month, is normally the day we send out Diagnosis: Injustice, our newsletter focused on the intersection of criminal justice and mental health. However, with the news of Donald Trump’s conviction, we don’t think too many people will be paying attention to the important stories we’ll be publishing. So we are holding Diagnosis: Injustice until next week.

Today, however, I have something to say:

Trump Resurrects Mental Health Stigma, Attacking Asylum Seekers and Those with Mental Illness. It’s Immoral

MindSite News was founded three years ago to do several things:

To highlight the importance of mental health as an underreported – and poorly reported – issue.

To explore the intersection of criminal justice and mental health and expose the myriad ways that people with mental illness are treated as criminals — the focus of this newsletter.

Last, but not least, we are here to do reporting that pushes back on the stigma that historically has been directed again people with mental health conditions – people who get talked about in ways that no person with cancer or heart disease is ever described. 

Today, after being convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying records to influence the outcome of an election, Donald Trump sought to deflect attention from the jury’s unanimous verdict by turning to an old form of slander and stigma: He once again castigated immigrants and people seeking asylum in this country. In addition to deriding the verdict as a “disgrace” and the outcome of a “rigged trial,” he also said:

“Millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now from prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists. And they’re taking over our country. We have a country that’s in big trouble.” 

And last year, in a speech to the National Rifle Association, Trump said this: 

“Under Biden, other countries are emptying out their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions and sending them right here to the USA. Can you imagine? Prisons and mental institutions are being emptied out? I read a story not long ago where a man who takes care of a large segment of people in a mental institution in a South American country, a doctor, sounded like a great man actually, he said he no longer has anything to do. He used to work 24 hour days. He said, ‘All of our patients have been released into the United States of America.’” 

CNN dug into these statements, and here’s what the network reported: 

Trump’s campaign was unable to provide any evidence of the existence of a news story about a no-longer-busy doctor at a South American mental institution – and the campaign also failed to provide any evidence that South American countries are emptying mental health facilities to somehow send patients into the US. Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told us they had not heard of anything that would corroborate any of Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing.

Conflating people seeking refuge with people who have mental illness and depicting immigrants and refugees as people from “mental institutions, terrorists” is the worst form of stigmatization. It should be called out for what is: old-fashioned bigotry.

If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.