Furious Seasons has a post about some disturbing comments it received in response to an entry about a psychologist who was murdered in her offer in New York City this past week:

I won’t bother to quote from the comments (you can read them in the thread on the initial post), but can summarize a couple of the key sentiments: the murderer was likely on a whole bunch of meds that were making him crazy; and, mental health workers hurt patients all the time, so they get what they deserve.

Wow, so that’s the level of discourse we can expect to find when someone is murdered in the helping profession? I mean, geez, I know every profession has its bad apples (and certainly one could make the argument that because of the nature of the profession, the mental health profession attracts more than, say, pediatrics), but that’s no justification or excuse to wish one random person’s actual death.

I’m sorry to see such comments be written, because it suggests we have a longer way to go to combat mental health stigma than I had suspected. And it again reinforces that where there’s anonymity (or, more accurately, pseudonymity), people turn up their vitriol levels more than a notch. I’d be amazed if anyone could repeat some of these thoughts or comments in a group of adults, face to face.

Murders are sad, criminal acts, and as I’m sure I’ll be writing again in another day when commenting on the most recent campus shooting, often senseless and really without the kind of meaning we seek in such violence (e.g., What causes someone to do something like that?). We should not be less sympathetic to an individual person just because we might not agree with an entire profession, no?

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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From Psych Central's World of Psychology:
The Art of Airbrushing - World of Psychology (12/10/2008)

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 15 Feb 2008
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.