Mental illness - do you care about your neighbour???

Hey guys. Earlier tonight I posted in Norwegian here on Kelitas Corner. My fingers were all so itchy and I just had so many feelings and things to say about the certain issue that I just had to “get it out”…however, in just a few hours I have received many positive comments about that certain posting as well as my dear non-Norwegian-blog-followers have been disappointed as you guys don’t understand that weird language. I am really sorry…but I am doing my best now to give you some background information on that certain posting. Please excuse my English on this one!

I woke up this morning to the horrible news that AGAIN a mentally ill person had murdered three people. There is no excuse for murdering people, however I do question not only the Norwegian way of dealing with mentally ill people, that is "the system", howver I also question myself. You. The neighbour. The parent. The teacher. The boss. “Us” who are not sick and can differ one shoe from the other. A mentally ill person often (not always, that is, but often) show irrational behaviour and it is possible to catch up on that on an early stage. I believe tragic murder cases such as this one in the Northern Norway last night, may be prevented. However, I also believe that the way the government deal with the issue of psychiatry in this country has to change…it has improve on certain areas, such as taking care of people while they need to be taken care of, not only after some very tragic incident…and it also has to be there for some time after treatment…we live in the year of 2009, the news daily debates about all sorts of issues, however mentally illness still seem to be a taboo issue… and it frightens me that many people seem to be “afraid” to care…hopefully I am all wrong about that one....

Kelita