An Avoidable Tragedy: Aaron Alexis And Mental Illness

Mental disorder. These are two words that people in the society fear and turn a blind eye upon. In fact, society most of the time tends to ignore mental illness rather than try to understand it. This is exactly how society treated Aaron Alexis and his mental illness. Aaron Alexis was a 34-year-old government contractor and a former Navy reservist (Fox). He is known as the gunman who went on a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard on September 16, 2013, leaving 12 men dead (Fox). Investigators later found that Alexis had psychological issues that he tried seeking help for before his outbreak. (Fox) The author of the article “An Avoidable Tragedy: Aaron Alexis and Mental Illness”, Andrew Solomon, explains some issues that could have led to the prevention of Alexis’s outbreak.
From the very beginning of the article, Solomon expresses his views on how such horrific disasters can be controlled and avoided if it was not due to the flaws in society. Starting from the title of the article, Solomon lets his readers understand that incidents such as that of Aaron Alexis’s are avoidable by using the phrase “Avoidable Tragedy” (Solomon). With this strong title, Solomon guides the readers towards the idea of stigma and how mental illness is directly attached to a strong social stigma. Stigma, which means disgrace, has a powerful negative affect in the society. The stigma that society imposes upon mental illness “causes them [people] to hide their mental-health status from those around them” (Solomon). With this statement, Solomon is trying to get across the idea that society’s corrupt thinking of the negative and spiteful outlook on mental illness is causing people to hide their troubled mental health from everyone. This leads to tem n...

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... problem can be easily solved when people start educating themselves about this issue. What is even sadder is that we live in the 21st century, where knowledge is at the tip of our fingers, yet we still fail to use our resources. Educating ourselves about mental illness and looking at patients with a different perspective can not only make the lives of the patients easier, but also solve the problems that Solomon brought forth in his article through the tragic story of Aaron Alexis.
Of course, small steps will not solve the problem, but at least it will be a step towards hope for improving our society’s perspective and the system. Not only that, but like Solomon expressed in his article, cases like Aaron Alexis’s that are easy to pick out can be avoidable. It is time that we start spreading awareness of this unnoticed problem and start taking steps towards progress.