NYAPRS Note: Psychiatrists are leading the way in joining other mental health advocates in criticizing fashion house exec Kenneth Cole’s billboard (see below) that is being seen by man as wrongly linking mental health conditions and violence.
If you’d like to take action here, you can cao to https://twitter.com/mr_kennethcole/status/637017465600524288 and/or
https://www.facebook.com/KennethCole?fref=ts
and tell Mr. Cole some version of the following:
“Please take down your defamatory signs linking people with mental health conditions with violence!”
Kenneth Cole Slammed By Psychiatric Group For Gun Reform Billboard
By Ahiza Garcia CNN Money September 3, 2015
A psychiatric group complained that Kenneth Cole’s gun reform billboard is off target and it wants him to take it down.
The American Psychiatric Association slammed the fashion designer on Thursday for a billboard that read: “Over 40M Americans suffer from mental illness. Some can access care…All can access guns.”
The message was signed “Kenneth Cole” and included the hashtags #gunreform and #areyouputtinguson.
The sign looms over Manhattan’s busy West Side Highway and the APA wants it removed.
APA President Dr. Renee Binder said the billboard message is detrimental because it incorrectly links mental illness with gun violence and the need for gun control.
“It provides the gross misimpression that people with mental illness are violent,” Binder said. “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent and most acts of violence are not committed by people with mental illness.”
In response to the roadside sign, the APA tweeted a series of messages expressing their disappointment in Cole.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/news/kenneth-cole-psychiatric-group-gun-reform-billboard/