Mental Illness: A Flimsy Excuse?

A recent viral video captured on CCTV at a McDonald’s in Pinellas Park, FL shows a woman clad only in a thong who rips the ever-loving shit out of the joint.

For nearly three minutes she goes on a rampage like a rabid mama grizzly bear, screaming at patrons, banging her cabeza on a counter, throwing around trays and napkin dispensers, knocking over cash registers and heavy restaurant equipment, sticking her head under an ice-cream machine so she can chug the gooey mess straight into her gullet, fixing herself an ice-cream cone, and then—according to a male narrator—disappearing into the back to procure herself some French fries.

A female narrator—a McDonald’s employee who along with the male commentator has since been fired after the footage was uploaded to LiveLeak—laughs with great gusto throughout the video, saying things such as “This bitch is crazy,” “This fuckin’ ho—look at them titties,” “Oh, my goodness—this shit is fucking funny,” and “She reminds me of, like, the Zombie Apocalypse or something.”

The topless televised tantrum happened on March 24. The woman in the video was identified as 41-year-old Sandra Suarez, a mother of two who was charged with criminal mischief and resisting arrest. According to police, she launched into her psycho tirade after a McDonald’s worker refused her offer of a blow job in the parking lot. She also allegedly offered to orally pleasure an arresting officer, who also claims to have refused. A hospital examination concluded that Suarez was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of her unhinged attack.

According to a TV reporter, Suarez refused to speak on camera but claimed she was having a bipolar episode and cannot remember offering to orally service the service worker.

Do you believe her?

The footage shows a series of deliberately destructive actions, which followed the deliberate process of stripping down to a thong in public and which preceded an allegedly deliberate attempt to resist arrest and a deliberate offer to suck off a cop.

But now she’s all blaming it on mental illness, which seems like an increasingly common alibi for all manner of shitty behavior. And if it’s a valid excuse, what’s to stop everyone from using it? There’s a massive pharmaceutical/psychological-industrial complex that rakes in billions merely by enabling such excuses.

So at what point does personal responsibility end and “mental illness” takes over? Has “I’m mentally ill” become a modern secular version of “The Devil made me do it”?