Here’s a good one. Mental-health experts fear that the portrayal of Greyhound bus headhunter Vince Li, as presented in the media, will undermine attempts to treat mental illness.

Let’s flip it around. Look how Vince Li undermined the confidence society has in this same mental-health experts.

To be horribly blunt, the knife cuts both ways.

I am in Winnipeg still, guest-hosting the Charles Adler show on Sun News television, and Vince Li is just a half-hour down the road in Selkirk, Man., and now legally allowed to visit the town for a half-hour a week, with a security guard and a health worker.

This, as you know, caused a big stink.

Only four years ago, in a schizophrenic meltdown, Li stabbed to death a young man asleep next to him in a Greyhound bus, and then lobbed off his head as a trophy near the town of Portage La Prairie

Now his shrinks think he is good enough for outings into town and, according to one psychiatrist, has less than a 1% chance of re-offending if he stays on his meds. If, if, if.

But don’t throw ifs at psychiatrists. Many think they are God and Li’s shrink, in fact, thinks Li has a 0.8% chance of re-offending.

Do you believe that kind of precision when dealing with anything?

Neither do I.

Categories: General

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