By Maria

A few days ago news got out that a Catholic Archbishop had suggested an amended list of Seven Social Sins (on top of the Deadly ones), including an amended indictment of greed, and novel impeachments of drug abuse, pollution, and wealth/creation of poverty. But no mention of discrimination--or either of its avatars, hatred and fear--against race, disability, or any minority. Then again, nothing new for the Church, what with, you know, Vichy France and stuff.
But while the new 7 disparages the ultra wealthy and apathetic for contributing to the conditions engendering poverty, it says nothing of the baseline narcissism that makes people turn their heads away from the underlying causes of poverty and homelessness, those being, among other, addiction and mental illness.
This discrimination and ignorance is everywhere, and it is in my opinion the most hurtful and prevalent enabler of the persistence of these social problems. I hear all the time the resentful and sometimes snide complaints about the homeless in Vancouver, how they are aggressive and filthy and lazy and should just get a job.
What these people fail to recognize is that the majority of those human beings on Hastings and elsewhere that so many find so irritating suffer egregiously from painful, debilitating illnesses--equal quantitatively if not qualitatively to pink-ribbon boutique illnesses. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mental disturbances present in unattractive ways that many people, if not most, don't want to acknowledge, because they don't understand it but also because they likely know unconsciously that these are very prevalent illnesses that could and likely will affect someone they know, or perhaps themselves, and over which they will have little or no control. People with cancer don't often present with unpleasant public emotional displays and so don't often put us out personally. What we don't like is the inconvenience of the mentally ill and homeless. Our government does scant little to help, having shut down three-fifths of Riverview Hospital and left these people to their own devices, when their very treatment requires interaction and resocialization. But behind their sometimes unpleasant behaviour is vast suffering, suffering which is aggravated by our scorn and apathy and misunderstanding. I'm not saying give the homeless the money they're asking for, because that will likely deepen their desperation. But we can't let inchoate fear block our other faculties. Marie Curie said that there is nothing to be feared, only understood.
In that right, let me attempt to enlighten. The next time you see someone weaving or ranting or sleeping on the street, consider that their very mind may have been taken over long ago by some alien voice or impulse, asking them to do things against their best interests, or constantly undermining them, telling them that other people are laughing at them and that they are a waste of space. This is what the mildest form of schizophrenia is like. Before he died last year at 28, my little brother Mark spent eight years mostly inside the house or at Coast Mental Health, or sometimes in the hospital, trying to get his broken identity together, his previous athletic, intellectual, handsome, gregarious, loving self almost completely obliterated by schizophrenia, completely abandoned by his so-called friends, completely forgotten by everyone except his family and his doctor, social worker, and music therapist. So the next time you hear someone sneering at the wrecks on the street, tell them to have a heart and bite their tongue and be thankful they don't have to suffer like that. My brother was never on the street, only because he was lucky enough not to have psychosis that bad and fortunate enough to have a family who loved him dearly. He was also the most loyal, supportive, demonstratively affectionate, and dignified young man I know--far more so than almost every so-called healthy other young man I've had the trouble to come across.
No-one runs a 10K for the mentally ill. Most people certainly bother to imagine what it might be like to occupy their mindscapes. They'd rather adopt a cute little lap dog or baby from some sexy southern-hemisphere outpost adored by Hollywood starlets with cute little lapdogs. Even the Catholic Church didn't want to get its filthy hands a little filthier. But if we don't cultivate a little empathy, how are these people going to defend themselves against anything--crime, addiction, fraud, rape, the regular pains of everyday existence--when their own minds have turned against them?