Yes, it would really be a tragedy if mentally ill people were able to spout off whatever words they want without being called out and dogpiled for it. I'm glad you are helping the mental health situation improve via this mob-action.
My take is that people that spout off shitty things should expect blowback. Mentally ill or not, people that use slurs or what not are going to get blowback from from people who get upset by such things. Mentally ill or not, some feminist or "SJW" type rants off some shit that upsets people on the other side, they're going to get dog piled on other sites that lean the other direction. That's just the nature of the beast when sharing extreme views or things that some find offensive in public spaces. Not everyone is going to give people a pass because they have mental illness, and most probably just see whatever content generated the uproar and aren't aware of a person's issues that may be related to their behavior. People should be careful in what they share and not dropping lame ass hot takes left and right for likes/upvotes/donations. Forums are just exhausting as hell anymore with so many people seeming to have a need to have ridiculously strong opinions on fucking everything and share them as brashly as possible so they get attention. But I digress...
Where this got way out of hand on ERA to me was not the backlash from the shitty things he said, it was all the lack of empathy and belief toward his suicidal posts, dismissing it as a stunt from a bigot (in their views) with many people probably hoping he went through with it just to have one less bigot out there. That's just disgusting behavior, and very hypocritical for a site who claims to be a welcoming safe space and has an active mental health community thread and so on to have allowed that thread to exist and for a mod to have been posting that kind of garbage in it. One can think someone is a shitty person with shitty views and still wish for them to get the help they need for any mental or physical issues they have.
I hate the word toxic, but there's a ton of assholes in the gaming community and online communities in general and they're not exclusive to or even more prevalent on one side or the other IMO. Everything is just so goddamn tribal and us vs. them in more. Era is constant screeching about bigots and wrong think, sites like this have people constantly screeching about feminists and SJWs and so on. And I suppose it makes sense as gaming communities were always very tribal and hostile with all the fanboys fighting with fanboys of different platforms so as the political/social issue stuff got brought in that hostility just expanded to the various sides of those issues as well. Trolling and shit talking have always been super common in gaming and sports as well, so that's more gas on the fire as those types take advantage of the current hostility by saying and doing things just to get a rise out of people on the other side. It's exhausting, but thankfully has led me to cutting back my online presence and participation dramatically this year (recent uptick while recovering from surgery aside).
