We talk about mental illness like it’s a spectacle — a dramatic break, a cinematic unraveling, a person “losing their mind” in a way that’s loud and obvious. But the truth is quieter. More architectural. More about the internal scaffolding that holds reality together than the behaviors people fixate on.
What collapses in severe mental illness isn’t morality. It’s orientation.
There’s a cultural assumption that when someone is in a psychiatric crisis, their sense of right and wrong evaporates. That they become someone else — someone dangerous, someone unrecognizable, someone without a center. But that’s not how it works. The moral compass doesn’t disappear. The structure around it does.
It’s like being underwater and suddenly not knowing which direction leads to air. You’re still trying to breathe. You’re still trying to survive. You’re still trying to do the right thing. You just can’t tell where “up” is. That’s what people don’t understand: the person isn’t choosing chaos. They’re trapped in a reality where the signals are scrambled.
Severe mental illness — especially when perception is involved — isn’t about rage or malice. It’s about misinterpretation. A shadow becomes a threat. A familiar face becomes unfamiliar. A loved one becomes dangerous. A thought becomes a warning. And when medication is being adjusted, or when the internal system is already unstable, that tilt can accelerate. Not because the person wants it to, but because the brain is trying — and failing — to make sense of its own signals.
From the outside, it looks incomprehensible. From the inside, it feels like survival.
One of the most devastating realities of severe mental illness is that the people who love you most can become the people you fear. Not because of anything they’ve done. Not because of any real danger. But because the internal map of reality has been redrawn. This isn’t a moral failure. It’s a perceptual one. And that’s where empathy belongs — not in excusing harm, but in understanding the state someone was in when their world collapsed inward.
We frame mental illness as a lack of willpower, a character flaw, a dramatic break, a moral collapse. But the truth is far more human and far more devastating. Mental illness is a shift in perception, a distortion of meaning, a misfiring of fear, a collapse of internal orientation. It’s not about losing control. It’s about losing the ability to tell where safety is.
If we want to talk about these tragedies honestly — the ones that make headlines, the ones that leave families shattered, the ones that force us to confront the limits of our understanding — we have to stop treating mental illness like a moral drama. It’s not about good people turning bad. It’s about people losing their bearings in a world that suddenly stops making sense.
And that brings me to the case everyone is watching. Nick Reiner does not belong in jail, nor does he deserve freedom. He deserves all of the empathy a permanent psych ward has to offer — a place where safety, structure, and care can hold the reality his mind could not.
Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie.
Stories That Are All True 