From the Sandusky Register…


SANDUSKY
Mental health advocates aren’t crazy about two of Cedar Point’s Halloween attractions.

As part of HalloWeekends, the amusement park has a haunted house and separate show focusing on mental health patients: Dr. D. Mented’s Asylum for the Criminally Insane and The Edge of Madness: Still Crazy.

The attractions promote false stereotypes and misinformation, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The advocacy group is asking Cedar Point to remove the haunted house and the show immediately.

“Both of these displays suggest that people with mental illness are dangerous and deranged and that the general public should be frightened of such people,” the alliance wrote in a letter to Cedar Point administrators. “Mental illnesses are biological brain disorders, they are diseases.

“Would Cedar Point ever even consider developing a display or attraction that used cancer patients as a means of instilling fear in their guests? We think not. And why is this? Because cancer is a serious disease. We would never want to paint individuals with this terrible disease in an unfavorable light,” the letter says in part. “Why then do you feel that it is acceptable to paint individuals suffering from biological brain disorders in an unfavorable light?”

NAMI letter to Cedar Point officials (Oct. 7, 2010)

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