Problematic Treatment of Functioning as Well as Severely Mentally Ill (lawyer, 2015)

I feel very strongly about the way we handle our mentally ill, the functioning mentally ill as well as the non-functioning. See Liberals Are No More Compassionate Than Anyone Else - It Shows in Inaugural Violence and Charleston Demonstrates: You ARE Your Brother's Keeper; Mental Health, Not Guns, Root of Problem.

One of my early memories was how Eagleton, his VP candidate, was treated by the McGovern campaign. Jack Anderson disclosed that Eagleton had been succesfully treated for bipolar disorder. Shortly after this revelation McGovern dumped him from the ticket.

Remember, this was the liberal, "social 60's," a time big on compassion. The hypocrisy was glaring as well.

Liberalism is supposed to be about giving people a chance. The majority of the mentally ill are functioning, albeit with deficits. At the time of the Eagleton episode I was 15. For about eight or so I had taken the brunt of what we now call bullying. The likelihood is that I brought a significant amount of it on myself.

Through the love of family and the help of some unusually competent peers, I am now a fairly successful lawyer. I am happily married for almost 27 years, with two children. Many of those friends are of very long standing:

1. One is a bit of a "jock," with whom I play tennis and argue politics. I have been with him through the collapse of his first marriage and his health-plagued but happy second marriage. Friend since 1965, and one of the few that bucked the earlier bullying;
2. One is a near-genius with whom I have been close friends off and on (mostly on) since 1972. He gives direct and hard-hitting advice often when requested and sometimes when not. I don't mind since it's all true;
3. One is a friend since 1973. When I was removed from the dorms in 1977 temporarily he arranged for me to be housed in his dorm room. He was the best man at my 1991 wedding;
4. One friend I met in college in the fall of 1977. My wife and I had lunch with him and his wife today. We last say each other at his mother's Shiva and my stepfather's Shiva;
5. One, last but not least, have been friends since 1988, though we met at Club Med Turquoise in October 1987 and 1988. I got a bit overwrought about something in 1987 but we were both on the 1988 outing. We maintained our friendship through my courtship of my now-wife in 1990-1 and his courtship in 1995 through 2000 (his wife's conversion to Judaism delayed the wedding which I attended in NC in 2000). I was at his son's Bar Mitzvah in 2015 and we spoke on the phone tonight.

Not everyone is so lucky. Query, how do we help those without luck as good as mine?