People with mental health problems are almost never dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. At the same time, mental illness has been the common denominator in one act of mass violence after another.

But Hey, Guess What
Crazy means I'm not liable
for my actions. So screw it,
I'll go home, propped up on
Prozac against distractions

To think too much is a disease.

There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.

In my community, mental health isn't taken seriously enough. Therapy is replaced by prayer. Tears are a sign of weakness. When you are different, you are told to change. And really, what does that do? It isolates desperate, vulnerable people and creates victims.

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.