Part of taking a good look at our culture is looking at how we treat those we’ve deemed insane or unstable or ill. It’s looking at how we don’t provide resources for all the people who need them, across the wide spectrum of mental and physical illness. It’s looking at how a punitive criminal justice system punishes the mentally ill. It’s looking at how a soundbite-driven media demonizes the mentally ill.

Pima County Sheriff Dupnik was on-point yesterday when he said that Arizona has become “a mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” But while we’re challenging the racist, anti-immigrant, pro-gun, anti-health-care, violent rhetoric that has come out of that state (and so many others), it’s also worth challenging the rhetoric and the assumptions we use when discussing mental illness, and especially the tenuous connection between mental illness and crime.