Today anyone who suffers from mental illness probably knows the pain and loneliness of being shunned and ostracized, as if they were condemned to wear permanent scarlet letters, only this time the letters being “C” for crazy, “F” for freak, “P” for psycho, and so on. Often, these patients feel as though they must keep their illnesses secret, for if the world discovers they will be condemned to a lesser status, seen as weak, unworthy, as losers in the race of the survival of the fittest. But we are losing our privacy more and more by the day, including our right to have certain information stay secret. This is especially true with mental illness, with the ever present link between mental disorders and gun violence. It is entirely appropriate that if someone wants to buy a gun, their mental health should be under scrutiny. But if someone’s mental illness becomes public, they are inevitably subjected to humiliation and rejection. Part of the problem about our ...