Do mental health issues excuse bad behaviour?
That’s the question dominating Australia’s music scene this week, after high-profile Sydney band Sticky Fingers announced an indefinite hiatus. Their statement followed a more personal one from frontman Dylan Frost, who acknowledged recent “unacceptable” behaviour that had affected “all people around me”, and wrote he had been “dealing with alcohol addiction and mental health issues” and would be “attending rehabilitation and therapy”.
The band cited only “internal issues” as the reason for the split, and both statements were worded vaguely enough to avoid explicitly acknowledging that just days before, fellow Sydney musician Thelma Plum alleged Frost had physically threatened, verbally abused and spat at her and her boyfriend at Camperdown’s Lady Hampshire pub on Friday night.
“There was an incident between Thelma Plum and Dylan from Sticky Fingers on Friday night which left Thelma feeling very shaken,” Plum said in a statement. “Taking responsibility for one’s actions had to happen, it’s up to them as a band and people to work towards a solution.”
It isn’t the first time Frost’s behaviour has drawn criticism from the Sydney music community. In July, Birrugan Dunn-Velasco, a guitarist with Indigenous hardcore outfit Dispossessed, accused Frost of aggressive behaviour towards them during a show the two acts were co-headlining at Marrickville’s Red Rattler. Sticky Fingers denied allegations Frost’s behaviour was racist: “[Frost] is actually a Maori, so it kinda doesn’t really make any sense … Us being accused of being racists is ridiculous.”
Since the Thelma Plum incident, several music websites have published first-hand testimonials detailing Frost’s history of similar behaviour and taking Australian music journalists to task for not holding figures such as Frost more accountable for their actions.
“For the past couple of years now, most people with a passing interest in the behind the scenes of Australian music will have heard a story about ‘Diz’”, writes Troy Mutton of Pilerats. “Whether it’s allegations of racism, verbal abuse, actual physical abuse, or something else, the evidence has been there for some time of a troubled individual who needs help.”
The AU Review’s Sosefina Fuamoli writes that “Frost’s reputation off stage and behind the scenes is not breaking news”.
But that’s not the story Frost or Sticky Fingers wanted told. Numerous media outlets broke the news of the band’s hiatus uncritically, swallowing the “internal issues” line, and looking no further. It was only once Plum’s allegations started gaining traction that the story began to change. In those first, crucial hours of any media announcement, Sticky Fingers did what PR managers do best: control the narrative.
In the eyes of thousands of Sticky Fingers fans, Frost’s public image remains intact, even bolstered, by the careful wording of the two statements, and the damaging allegations levelled against him have been swept aside by a wave of understandable concern for his mental health.
“Thank you so much for your honesty Diz it’s so important people talk openly about these things,” one of the top comments on Frost’s statement reads.
“These issues are hard to overcome but just know that you’ve got extensive amounts of fans out here that love and support you, and will do until the very end,” reads another.
All of which turns Frost’s seeming frankness into something else.
It transforms the perpetrator from someone who should be held accountable for the consequences of their actions into the “victim” of some vaguely nasty thing that happened to them. In all the sympathetic buzz, the real victims are forgotten.
We’ve seen this dance before. Many high-profile men accused of abuse or assault have responded in similar ways – by offering vaguely contrite language for intentionally ill-defined bad behaviour, redirecting attention on to their mental or emotional “struggle”, and reaping the PR rehabilitation that follows.
None of this is to cast doubt on or downplay the seriousness of Frost’s claims of mental illness and alcohol abuse. He’s acknowledging he has those issues and is seeking treatment, and that’s an important first step.
But having a mental health condition or a substance abuse problem is not a licence to assault or racially abuse people. Nor can an apology like Frost’s be taken in good faith when it obscures the behaviour it’s supposedly apologising for, and directs people’s attentions elsewhere.
It’s at best cynical, not least because it conflates mental illness with abuse.
Violence against women has myriad causes, and mental illness can’t be discounted as one potential factor among many. But explaining away violent incidents as being the result of mental illness reinforces stigma, and bolsters the incorrect and dangerous idea that only people with mental health conditions are capable of violence.
If perpetrators of abuse use mental illness or substance abuse to avoid accountability, we have an obligation to say so. It’s an uncomfortable and fraught conversation, but silence is a much worse alternative. We do an immense disservice to abuse victims and to ourselves by allowing it to stand. It’s time to stop playing the game.
