My years as a writer of various types taught me that people think in stories, not numbers. I used pepper my EPA speeches with data, not realizing that one powerful story was worth all the numbers in Nerddom. Effective communicators know this; it’s why ASPCA ads don’t cite cold statistics about animal mortality — they make you stare into one specific dog’s eyes and then tell you “Biscuit will die if you just sit there watching Sportscenter.”
The power of narratives is on display in the public reaction to an exceptionally brutal murder on a light rail train in Charlotte. The killing was captured on video, and the video has circulated on social media because it’s nightmarishly awful; a mentally ill man stabs a woman to death out of nowhere. Of course, this is one incident in a large country; no crime, by itself, can tell us anything about broader trends. But a human reaction to such a shocking crime is to be horrified, angry, and to demand a response. Charging into that debate with a regression analysis of the relationship between violent crime and mental illness will probably not win you many friends.
Of course, the broader context — how society handles severely mentally ill people — is heavily influenced by a narrative from decades ago. I’m talking, of course, of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the Academy Award-sweeping 1975 film that was originally something called a “book”, which is a type of media left over from the days when entertainment included campfires and holding hands in a gazebo. One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest portrays mental institutions as an instrument of authoritarianism, and it’s impossible to not sympathize with the inmates. Quiet sufferers of the hospital’s cruelty include the gentle soul Billy Bibbit, stoic giant “The Chief”, and free spirit Randle McMurphy, who is played with such brio by Jack Nicholson that you forget that his character is in the hospital for having sex with a 15 year-old.1