ADDICTION IS STILL A WEAKNESS - AND CHARACTERS STILL HAVE FLAWS

The mentally ill should know that it's OK - make that vital - for them to
seek professional help.

But must the worthy quest to remove the treatment-blocking stigma from
"mental illness" also remove individual accountability from "addicts"?

DMH director George Gintoli and communications director John Hutto visited
The Post and Courier Thursday, armed with a "Mental Illness: It's Not What
You Think" folder full of intriguing documentation. From its inside cover:

"Some people think mental illness is a character flaw, depression is just
the blues, and addiction is a weakness. Some people actually think it's all
the work of the devil. Some people are just ignorant."

"Just ignorant"?

Who's stigmatizing whom?

"Some people" (including this person), while not "ignorant" enough to
regard mental illness as a character flaw or depression as the blues,
persist in regarding addiction as a weakness. Our logic:

It takes strength to overcome an addiction, hence the failure to overcome
an addiction indicates weakness. The intentional feeding of an addiction
indicates not just a significant degree of weakness, but a significant
degree of personal responsibility.

Though addicts deserve sympathy, they also deserve this dose of reality:
Beating ni your n habit is a direct measure of ni your n will power,
despite experts' protests to the contrary.

Though Gintoli explained that 65 percent of the patients served in DMH
facilities have substance-abuse problems, surely those patients shouldn't
be encouraged to consider themselves helpless victims.

"Some people," even those who don't see the devil behind all evil, wonder
if the "character flaw" concept is being foolishly buried under no-fault
rationalizations about "addictions."

Hey, President Clinton and Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., don't have character
flaws.

They have "sexual addictions."

At least that's the theory advanced by many "mental health professionals."

Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman's analysis of "repeat adultery" in a
recent Associated Press dispatch prompted by the Condit controversy, a
sordid reminder of the sordid scandal that nearly cost Clinton the
presidency: "It's a belief that women have the power to make you feel like
a man if you can only find a woman that thinks you're perfect - if you can
only find a woman that you haven't hurt yet."

Robert Weiss, clinical director of the so-called Sexual Recovery Institute
in Los Angeles: "When people are compulsive or addictive about their sexual
behavior they're feeling so powerful and so in control that it's a feeling
of invincibility. They're in denial."

And you thought an addiction to sex - or to alcohol, drugs, tobacco,
pornography, fatty foods, shopping, Internet surfing, ocean surfing, video
games, golf and assorted other obsessions - was a weakness, or maybe even a
character flaw.

Heck, all characters (including this character) have flaws.

And all reasonable people should recognize that the mentally ill - and the
addicted - need compassionate care, not dehumanizing stigmatization.

DMH boss Gintoli made a strong pitch for that enlightened attitude: "My
goal is to talk about mental illness and to see mental illness as no
different from any other disease."

Gintoli also made a strong pitch for more state funding of his agency. Six
months into his new job, he faces the mission impossible of maintaining
basic services despite severe budget cuts. As he put his plight: "I'm the
hatchet man, the new guy, that Yankee that's coming down here messing with
the system."

Yet he's determined to accomplish his daunting, noble task.

De-stigmatizing mental illness is a daunting, noble task, too.

That's why that message shouldn't be diluted by dismissing the inherent
weakness of addiction - or the enduring flaws of the human character.

Frank Wooten is associate editor of The Post and Courier.