This is from an interview with Charles Cross about Kurt Cobain.
I want our country to be better at catching all the lost people who get to a place where the only way they can function in the world is by using drugs. I want us to help people dealing with the kind of problems Kurt Cobain had. We're a rich country. There's no way we should be letting people slip through the cracks like that.
The increased suicide rate has a lot to do with the "War on Terror." It's appalling how many veterans commit suicide. Some of it is a mental health issue - like PTSD - and some of it is a physical health issue, i.e. traumatic brain injury. I believe Kurt suffered from both of those issues as well, both mental (depression and physical (Crohn's disease). It's incredibly sad that most people don't care about these kinds of things unless they impact them personally in some way.
ReplyDeleteIt is just so sad. If our country could change its views of mental illness and try to really see such illnesses as nothing different than the flu or a cold, it would be transformative.
ReplyDeleteI think the issue is bigger than that, in many ways as well. We don't seem to care about what/who we feel are expendable or unimportant. The poor and disenfranchised fall so widely into that net. Homelessness is another issue. How can we have so much and share so little?