Yesterday in the federal courthouse here in Salt Lake City, Brian David Mitchell — the man on trial for kidnapping Elizabeth Smart — had a seizure. 

Online commenters immediately jumped on the headline and accused him of faking. Just read any article and scan the comments. If you are in Salt Lake City, just listen in at coffee shops; it will not take long before the subject comes up.

As an epileptic myself, I cannot let this go unaddressed. 

Yes, I find Brian David Mitchell revolting. Yes, I am sick of his phony outbursts into song that disrupt his trial. I use the word “phony” because observers have noted Mitchell’s penchant for waiting until the trial gets underway to sing for his Tony. According to the Deseret News, he sings until the judge boots him out of court into an annex, and he “never sings once he has been seated in the annex.” 

In any case, his little outbursts hardly seem relevant: an insanity defense has a very specific legal meaning, and just being mentally ill never cuts it. 

That is not to say MItchell’s mental illness is phony; he has, after all, been diagnosed with schizophrenia by one psychiatrist, and I am not qualified to determine his mental health. Rather, there just seems — at times — to be method behind his madness. 

Seizures, however, are hard to fake and get away with it. Worse, this suspicion that seizures are “not real” or “easy to fake” only serves to undermine epileptics who live with this disease every day. 

You see, even average, everyday, non-criminal epileptics suffer accusations like those littering the Internet about Brian David Mitchell. Once, when I suffered a grand mal seizure following a track race, I woke up to discover my track coach hovering over me, chewing me out for making the team look bad — not to mention, wrecking her plans for the next race in which I was slotted to run.

Bosses have accused me of just trying to get out of work.

One employer became hostile and embittered because I needed some very minor accommodations in scheduling. 

Of course, MItchell may have done this to himself by “crying wolf” with his apparently phony outbursts. More importantly, his antics – if they are indeed phony – only serve to harm people truly suffering from mental illness, making them appear crafty. Then again, I suspect the media would portray him as crafty no matter if an MRI showed a chunk missing from his hippocampus or temporal lobe. 

I suppose I just hate that epilepsy has yet another negative association. It was the last thing epileptics need. 

The response to MItchell’s seizure comes from deep anger and disgust—and rightly so. But the response to his seizure is not all that different than the responses to mine or those of friends I know with epilepsy. That is a truth that must be faced.