This is the American attitude toward people and things we find distasteful. We seek to wash our hands of them, not fix or rehabilitate. We throw criminals in ja

This is the American attitude toward people and things we find distasteful. We seek to wash our hands of them, not fix or rehabilitate. We throw criminals in jail and forget about them, we hand off the mentally "ill" to clinicians and forget about them. The last thing we would do is help them ourselves, or see what in our society might be so damaging. Every person for themselves, autonomy and independence is the American way. Fundamentally we seek to reaffirm Puritanical attitudes of being born good or bad, and by emphasizing how "different" we are, how "specialists" must handle "those people" and not just friends who can listen, we create distance and make ourselves feel better. The opposite would be to humanize them, but that makes us extremely uncomfortable.