Should Mental Illness Fall Under the AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT?

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.

Liberals and conservatives have clashed over the issue, the former saluting "an end to to discrimination," the latter decrying "another government-mandated entitlements."

THERE ARE few areas where liberalism and conservatism collide more starkly than in psychology and psychiatry. Individual responsibility is the value that most clearly defines the conservative reflex. Meanwhile, in most areas where Pres. Clinton has moved to the fight, he has supported, rhetorically at least, what political writer E.J. Dionne calls "responsibility-ism"--i.e., the "need to find ways of encouraging citizens to take their responsibilities as seriously as they insist upon their fights."

Thus, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued guidelines for implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 as it applies to those with mental illness, there was a natural and predictable divide in reaction. Liberals applauded the gains for a discriminated-against minority, while business interests and conservatives saw another entitlement that employs fanciful psychiatric diagnosis to undermine personal responsibility, hinder the work ethic, and increase the cost of doing business.

In The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January, 1997, editor William G. Johnson argues that the ADA is intended to express the concept "that persons with disabilities are a minority subject to discrimination based on the prejudices of others," and that the analogy was "born during the 1960s from the struggle to eliminate discrimination against African-Americans." The ADA was preceded by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and, as Johnson concedes, that legislation was to service those with "visible impairments, many of which limited mobility." Neither the Rehabilitation Act nor the ADA had in their inception the purpose of changing employees who could produce psychiatric diagnoses and court testimony into "mentally disabled" individuals warranting the protection of the Federal government.

The guidelines for implementing the ADA and parts of the act itself are as muddled as the underlying concept of mental illness on which they rest. The ADA defines disability as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities." Impairment, in turn, is defined as any "mental or psychological disorder, such as ... emotional or mental illness." Some conditions, though, specifically are excluded under the act, such as the illegal use of drugs. These conditions must be an impairment to qualify as a disability, but even impairments, according to the law, are not...