Mental Illness, Homelessness, Drug Addiction: Do These Sound Like Crimes? | BillMoyers.com.

Bill Moyers gets it right.  We call it ‘mental’ illness when people display erratic, unusual or abnormal behaviour but most of us don’t believe it’s ‘really’ an illness and our governments act accordingly.  No.  Most of us believe, in our heart of hearts, that mental illness is really a moral failing and if people just got their shit together they would be fine.  Would we tell that to a cancer patient?  Well, yes we would, and we do.  (If you hadn’t smoked, you wouldn’t have lung cancer, so there!) What’s really sick here?  I think our social values are, that’s what.