10/04/2025
When Behavioral Health Becomes an Agent of Violence
I want to speak directly to my colleagues in behavioral health: our work exists at the intersection of care, advocacy, and power. And with that comes responsibility - especially when the state wields lethal force.
We have seen cases like Marvin Lee Wilson - executed despite credible expert findings that his 1Q was 61 - a cognitive score that should have made him ineligible for death under prevailing Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Yet in that moment, the state, the legal system, and bystanders wielded "expert opinion" as license to kill. Why?- because Mr. Wilson had been assessed by various behavioral health professionals, and some, neglected to actually assess 1Q (formally or otherwise), but those individuals still checked the average box on a formulaic MSE.
In behavioral health, we too often cling to the colonized mindset - assuming that our role is just to diagnose, medicate, and correct. But if we do so without humility, without reflexivity, we can become complicit in the carceral machinery. When staff casually write "average 1Q," or dismiss someone's lived experience as less than, they are echoing the same logic that justifies state violence.
We must refuse that.
Reject dehumanizing labels. We must see shared human dignity, not deficits.
Advocate at the point of coercion. When someone is funnelled into "treatment" because of criminal justice contact, we must resist becoming part of the pipeline.
Partner with abolitionist and resistance movements. Behavioral health cannot be neutral in a killing state.
Center voice, not expert judgment. People should be invited into decisions about their lives - not spoken for.
Demand structural accountability. Behavior change in individuals is not enough if systems continue to sanction violence.
Marvin Wilson's case is not just a criminal justice failure. It's a failure of multiple systems - legal, psychiatric, social -to honor human life when it is most vulnerable. Let's not add to those failures by perpetrating them in hidden ways.
If we are truly healers - not functionaries - we must commit to resisting harm, especially when it is rationalized in our name.
