Let’s get this into the light of day, shall we?
by Emily Willingham
U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and staff have been captured on tape discussing ways to use Ashley Judd’s history of depression against her were she to run against McConnell for Senate. Judd had already decided not to run, but the discussion ensued anyway. Based on reports, the staff discussed Judd as being “emotionally unbalanced” because she was hospitalized “for 42 days” in the 1990s for a “mental breakdown” and because she’s talked about having depression.
Had Judd been hospitalized for 42 days 15 or 20 years ago for a brain tumor or a heart condition, no one would go near those parts of her history as a way to try to smear her. But mental illness-again-is an open target, a free-for-all for anyone who wants to cast doubt on a person’s ability to lead, function, and act appropriately on behalf of the electorate. If she happens also to be female, it also comes with that inevitable feminine corollary of “emotionally unbalanced.” That’s gals for ya, always tottering around on the brink of insanity.
This perception that full mental stability is a prerequisite for governance is odd, really. Particularly strange given that a Duke study using retrospective information about U.S. presidents found that a quarter of them might have been depressed-it can’t be all that uplifting to have that job as it is-and that almost 50% of our nation’s presidents up to 1974 had some kind of apparent mental illness. Yet there they were, presidenting, some of them quite effectively.
The accuracy of such retrospective diagnoses can be called into question, so let’s look around us today. The National Institutes of Mental Health states that at any given time, about one in four adults in the US population is walking around with a diagnosable mental illness. If you replace mental illness with “heart disease” in that sentence, would McConnell have discussed strategically alienating 25% of potential voters by maligning their ability to lead or govern because of heart disease? Probably not. As Exhibit A, I give you Dick Cheney. Yet even though a quarter of us has something that qualifies as a mental illness, it’s still somehow OK to talk about using mental illness as a negative campaign gambit.
Perhaps it hasn’t been stated clearly enough. “Mental illness” is physical illness. Period. It’s not a manifestation of a disconnected entity apart from a person’s physical self. It is as physical and grounded in physiology as heart disease and cancer, as having brown eyes and thinking cilantro tastes like soap. Just because it seems to manifest outside of the organ it affects doesn’t somehow make it non-organic. It should no more be a matter for shame than having a kidney stone or breaking a wrist.
Our nervous system consists of billions and billions of neurons, our nerve cells. We use them to interact with and respond to the world. Regulating those neurons and our interactions are thousands of other molecules, many of which differ in quantity, behavior, effectiveness, and availability from person to person. With that huge number of working parts, we should first all realize that mathematically, we are each individually extremely unlikely to sense and interact with the world like the individual next to us. These interactions must, by math alone, be as varied as the 7 billion-plus people on earth right now. When it comes to our sensory systems, all humans are, indeed, islands of experience.
Yet we have this expectation of a “norm” of behavior, the manifestation of this system of nerves and molecules. The reality is that not one of us is “normal” and that we all have some aspect of that system that is wonky compared to average. But having a working part outside the range of ‘normal’ doesn’t mean all the parts are dysfunctional. Mental illness is a manifestation of those working parts operating outside of the averages we’ve set for ourselves, norms that vary from culture to culture and even from individual role to individual role (imagine Steve Jobs as a social worker. Probably not). It is not, however, a manifestation of total dysfunction anymore than a broken bone means you should now write off your entire skeletal system.
Is mental illness complex to manage? Yes, it can be; see “billions of nerves” above. But it would be impossible to manage if people can’t comfortably seek help for it, talk about it, or build community around it for support. And that’s the exact behavior they might avoid if society insists on viewing mental illness as something to hide or use as blackmail or to stigmatize someone … or as a political tool to smear a woman for a class of disorder that at least 25% of us share.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
My (step) aunt died of Huntingtons disease last year, at 50 years old. Even though her father died from Huntingtons disease, my aunt went through divorce, her children being taken away (and moved across the country), and then eventually a companion she had attached with taken away and she was placed in a group home…all because she was thought to be bipolar (“just crazy” and “faking for attention” things like not being about to walk without falling or being able to chew her food. No one did a common blood test to see if she caried the gene, not that they needed to, because I could even tell her own blood relatives she met the symptoms. Eventually she was stripped from her community to be closer to ‘home’ where she “somehow” broke her hip in a residential facility…eventually dying in a hospital after hip surgery even though she was “doing fine”. But of course, her death was a “blessing”…to which I wondered aloud…a blessing to whom? Other things said posthumously (by several people): “Huh, I guess she wasn’t crazy, but really was sick.” How does one even address a statement like that. *deep breath* Maybe she is blessed after all to not have to be around to be “loved” by these people.
wow.
1) Mark Dayton suffered from depression, was elected Senator, and could not fulfill the responsibilities of the office due to depression.
2) Ronald Reagan was criticized for being old, and for having skin cancer.
3) The only way you have this information is because of an illegal wire tap.
Really, Emily. You belong in jail, not published. At the very least you should realize what a tool you are.
Well, it’s too late for the jail vs published part, but I do greatly appreciate “tool.” Leatherman, perhaps? As for the article, it’s not partisan; it’s just pinned to the most recent example of this. The list of presidents linked in the article covers both parties. Deriding mental health is a bipartisan activity.
The illegal surveillance tape of McConnell’s meeting was recorded when Judd was still considering running. The tape revealed his political team playing recordings of her speeches in which she talked about her problems; they also read relevant excerpts from her book, All That Is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir. What his office discussed is the same thing discussed in thousands of political strategizing meetings every month, your opponents weaknesses. How do you think Obama obtained the sealed divorce records of his senatorial opponent in Illinois, Jack Ryan, back when he began his political career? Obama’s political team passed Ryan’s sealed court record to the slobbering press, which of course published sordid excerpts. Judd’s information was publicly available and self-professed. McConnell didn’t have her personal legal and health records unsealed as Obama did Ryan’s.
So people aren’t supposed to write about it then?
As a voter, I would want to know the health records of those running. If someone had had cancer within the last five years it might change my vote. Mental health is somewhat different, since we treat it, not cure it most of the time. So yes, something that happened twenty or more year ago is pertinent.
There is a difference between knowing a health record and using it as a negative campaign gambit.