Some Of Fenton's Thoughts

I ran across an old interview of Wayne Fenton, who was murdered on Sunday by a patient, from Fred Goodwin's "The Infinite Mind" series. Here is a show summary, explaining what Fenton had to say about violence among people with psychosis:

"Drs. Goodwin and Fenton discuss the public image of psychosis and compare it with the research on that subject. Dr. Fenton says that people who are psychotic are far more likely to be the victim of violence than a perpetrator. Public opinion is shaped, he says, by a few high-profile cases like the man who shot up the Capitol building. For every one case like that, he says, there are probably two or three million people quietly dealing with a psychotic condition."

Kind of ironic in hindsight. And here's something Fenton said in a Washington Post article a few years ago:

"All one has to do is walk through a downtown area to appreciate that the availability of adequate treatment for patients with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses is a serious problem in this country. We wouldn't let our 80-year-old mother with Alzheimer's live on a grate," he said. "Why is it all right for a 30-year-old daughter with schizophrenia?"

Although the folks at TAC tried to spin that as directly relating to the mentally ill, it really doesn't quite fit. America has a really rough time getting its mind around the necessity to house the homeless, regardless of what put them on the street. I don't get it myself, but there you go.