Arrest of Wisconsin man with mental illness quells public alarm about mysterious vials found taped to utility poles in several Wisconsin communities. The suspect told police they contained plain water and he’d taped them to utility poles because he was testing radio frequencies he believed were bombarding him, authorities said. When you reflect on it, it’s much more likely than the scenarios that were probably going through people’s minds about biological terrorist attacks, isn’t it? As a psychiatrist, I teach trainees that there is a way in which the distress we feel when we’re engaged with someone with mental illness is, in an initially mysterious way that has to begin to make sense to do this work, an inroads into the internal distress that the client feels. But I’ve never seen it illustrated in quite this way, or affecting an entire community. The story, it seems to me, isn’t over now that the mystery is solved and the “perp” arrested; the interesting part, I hope, might just start now. It could have a positive effect on the ongoing public misconceptions about and stigmatization of those with psychiatric illnesses if anyone speaks out, in a manner akin to my point above; or it could merely reinforce…