"Inmate escapes from asylum in Vermont."

That was the message on a billboard in Oregon advertising maple nut ice cream, and it attracted the attention of more than just Oregonians with a sweet tooth.

It also caught the eye of at least one psychiatrist and not a few relatives of the seriously mentally ill, who protested the advertisement as offensive to the mentally ill and succeeded in getting the manufacturer--Darigold, Inc.--to remove the advertisement and to make a public apology.

Psychiatrist David Pollack, M.D., medical director of Mental Health Services West in Portland, told Psychiatric News that he contacted the Darigold corporate headquarters after seeing the billboard and convinced the advertising director to take the ad down.

As an instance of combating stigma, it seemed unremarkable at the time.

"The advertising director got back to me, profusely apologetic, said he had learned a lot from my comments, and promised that the ad would never see the light of day again," Pollack said.

But the ice cream was just about to hit the fan.

It seems Pollack was not the only one to have complained about the advertisement. A patient advocate in the state also contacted the daily newspaper, the Portland Oregonian, about the ad, and the newspaper ran an article including an apology from Darigold, Inc.

That led to radio and television interviews for Pollack and a backlash of criticism from those decrying "political correctness."

The latter perspective was captured by a cartoon that appeared in The Oregonian by Jack Ohman, satirizing the episode.

Pollack said the controversy even made it to the attention of Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative television and radio personality, who cited the episode as one more example of what Limbaugh likes to ridicule as the humorlessness of the liberal left.

But at least one letter-to-the-editor in The Oregonian protesting Ohman's cartoon underscored how misperceptions of the mentally ill are no laughing matter.

"The mentally ill have faces and lives and people who love them," wrote Jane Marie Todd. "They are not 'nuts' to be mocked or 'escapees' to be feared. They should not be exploited to sell ice cream. Those who found Darigold's billboard offensive are not members of the politically correct police who would rise to the defense of 'bovine Americans' or Vermonters. We are the loved ones of ill, vulnerable, and sometimes desperate people who deserve sympathy and respect."

To Pollack, the episode underscores the deeply entrenched stigma against mental illness.

He cited the failure of parity legislation in the Kassebaum-Kennedy health reform bill as evidence of how society at large--inundated with messages like the Darigold billboard ad--cannot come to grips with the serious nature of mental illness.

An insensitive billboard advertisement would hardly be worth the trouble of complaining about if it were not compounded by the "bitter irony," Pollack said, of a real disparity in real benefits and resources for the care and treatment of the mentally ill.

(Psychiatric News, September 6, 1996)