Does the US have more psychopaths than other countries?

Great Debates
21

I think overall the availability of some types of mental health care is much lower than in the past.

With Reagan and the 1980s came a movement towards “community mental health.” Psychiatric facilities were massively defunded and many shut down, with the Federal government pushing treatment to community mental health providers, States mostly shut down the majority of their State psychiatric facilities.

The feel good reason for this is that there was an assertion that lots of people were being (expensively) institutionalized who could survive out in the community with the proper help. Community mental health providers who generally control chartered areas of States, could provide community based resources. These took the forms of some low security psychiatric facilities, but mostly it was group homes, and support staff who would check up on people in independent living.

This certainly has not been all bad, and in fact for some populations it’s been really good. One population that has done really well with this transition are people with developmental disorders, who frankly were largely just institutionalized because they need some level of care for much of their days but really don’t need to be in a locked down institution. However, when they reach adulthood it is often too great a burden for parents to take care of them–and most of them also outlive their parents. Group homes are a much better living situation for them, giving them more exposure to the community and something more akin to a normal life, but with the help and support they need.

One population that I think has probably not benefitted well from this transition are people with forms of schizophrenia that involves psychotic episodes, schizophrenia is increasingly understood more as a term for a lot of somewhat related mental health afflictions, so you never want to generalize about “all people with schizophrenia”, but a lot of people with the more tragic forms of schizophrenia do very poorly in the community. However, they often don’t meet the new criteria for institutional care, and they are usually too strong willed to be kept in group homes and voluntary treatment–many end up in serious drug addiction and homelessness. These are people who have truly a tragic condition, you hate to say that anyone would be better off in a locked psychiatric facility, but some of these people actually fall in that exact category, and by and large they cannot get the care they need.

When I worked for Virginia’s BHD, our State psychiatric facilities had two classifications of commitments–civil and forensic. Forensic meant that they were essentially committed as part of a criminal court process. Forensic commitments were always given a high priority for placement because there is basically a court order saying these people have to be committed or put in prison. Civil commitments likely are a much bigger population of people who need them, but because criminal court commitments take up sort of first preference, there are limited civil beds available and a ton of people that basically don’t get the care they need.

22

You know there’s a song lyric that pretty much describes the attitude of American society for the past 20 years

"do you ever do anything you want at the moment you want to?
well, that’s what I’m accustomed to
do you get everything you want the moment you want it too?
well that’s just what I do so hooray for me and fuck you "

23

Those are actually kinda rare, believe it or not. And in the case of Buffalo, we know the reason- a young impressionable man was brainwashed into thinking he was doing a Good Thing by Tucker Carlson, et al.

Tucker needs to be indicted as an accessory before the fact.

But some of those others are indeed possible psychopaths or sociopaths. Other nations have them also, but due to less guns they use a bomb (which is often worse) or a machete or something (not as bad casualty wise).

Well sorta. If spotted and treated (meaning health insurance) we have some medications that works fairly well. But Reagan, et all, shut down most of the Asylums. We used to have places we could put people before they “went off” and killed a bunch of innocents. And at Taxpayer expense.

24

See, here:

We knew this guys was a danger in 2019. If he had been institutionalized, and treated, this horror might never have happened.

25

I’d go a bit farther and say that it’s a ruthless culture without any real social safety nets for young men who aren’t successful (however they’re defining it- romantically, financially, professionally, etc…) There’s not a common societal feeling that a young man can work a low paying job and have any sort of dignity. Same if he’s not getting laid / is a virgin. They’re just considered abject, wretched losers.

I can imagine that it’s not that hard for someone with a lesser degree of mental/emotional stability could get into some really toxic thought patterns and act out on it.

26

I’ve read Elliot Rodger’s 100+ page murder-suicide manifesto before (it’s a fascinating read, well-written) and this is exactly what you described. Rodger was a loser in many aspects - and yes, he was also an unreasonable, immature misogynist - but one of the biggest contributors to his killing spree was that almost nobody lifted a finger to help him, or gave him the slightest advice or sympathy. On the contrary, he was not only bullied a great deal in school but also repeatedly mocked and ridiculed the more he tried to get help or expressed his frustration, which was gasoline on the fire.

27

I don’t believe the U.S. has more psychopaths per capita than other countries (we’re genetically similar human beings, so why would we?), we just have more triggered psychopaths. Our psychopaths are more triggered for reasons already mentioned, but we have an additional trigger not as common in other countries: dissimilar cultures living in close proximity.

Being a melting pot is good and advantageous in many positive ways, but it also has one big disadvantage—it creates a perceived “us vs. them” environment which can be a dangerous situation for people with brittle pathological personalities seeking an enemy to act out on.

28

You don’t have a monopoly on gun-crazies, as recent events in Victoria BC demonstrated:

29

I think this is it. America is a fundamentally broken culture and it produces fundamentally broken people.

30

Just because someone does something very bad doesn’t mean they’re mentally ill. Some people are just evil. Sane, but evil.

31

Again, we’re not the only country where this is true. We are, however, a complete outlier in terms of mass gun deaths.

We can’t divorce those facts. We can’t even tell if there are or aren’t “triggered” or whatever youths in the same numbers in other countries.

What we do know is that any such youths, should they exist, have a much, much harder time committing mass murder in other countries compared to the US.

A lot of this thread seems to be falling into some common fallacies - confirmation bias, just-so stories, etc.

32

Yeah, if a society is sick, is it sick to do what you think society wants? It gets into the moral relativism debate, but it’s probably safe to say the generations of Aztec priests performing human sacrifices weren’t all mentally ill. They were doing what society expected them to do. It’s important to look at these shootings as symptomatic of broader issues.

Meanwhile, ‘psychopathy’ is often used as a catch-all for “crazy violent person,” but it isn’t. There are plenty of non-violent psychopaths, and plenty more violent non-psychopaths.

33

We’re really not that special, diversity-wise. Our neighbors to the north have lots of diversity. Leaving aside African countries that dominate diversity measures:

The only western country to break into the top 20 most diverse is Canada. The United States ranks near the middle, slightly more diverse than Russia but slightly less diverse than Spain.

From here.

34

My concern with this take – one heard often – is that it’s basically capitulatory. It’s almost like saying “Some people are just evil, and – aside from taking Jesus Christ as your/their lord and savior – whaddyagonna’ do ?”

It strikes me as a way of ending a conversation that we desperately need to begin and pursue (whether it was meant that way or not).

I don’t know whether, or how many, of these mass shooters have/had a DSM-V pathology. No idea.

I do accept that some frankly mentally ill people are perfectly capable of the kind of forethought and planning seen in Highland Park, IL and Aurora, Colorado (to name just two). I also accept that not every mass shooter should automatically be assumed to be frankly mentally ill.

We’re, apparently, failing quite a large number of young men. The reasons, I’m sure, are manifold. One that always stands out to me is the grind … the rat race … the treadmill. It’s a catalyst for our individualist vs. collectivist values system. It’s a constant clarion call that ever reminds us: if you’re not getting (rapidly) ahead, then you’re falling behind. And you could lose everything in an instant. And ain’t nobody got your back.

I’m always reminded of WalMart: the High Cost of Low Price. We have relatively low taxes in the US, relative to the other advanced economies. As I brought up in another thread, I think we are being purposely mislead about who pays what, in Federal Income Taxes, in this country.

And “this is why we can’t have nice things” ties into that.

The near decimation of the middle class, and the constant threat of Stygian poverty that looms over so many Americans leads to productivity by panic, not of passion. One slip … one illness … one trauma … can land you at the bottom.

And think about parents who are working in this scenario, and for whom survival is about all they can do. Think of the intensified difficulty of raising their children in any kind of thoughtful, proactive, engaged, and deliberate way. And think about what happens when a parent wakes up one day and does realize (and admits to themselves) that their child is deeply troubled.

Then what ?

No. It doesn’t have to be psychopathy or sociopathy. It can just be leviathan chasms between what it takes to succeed in our economy and the skills one does or does not have to make that happen.

35

The key term is mass shooting. When all the weapons you can buy are hunting rifles or handguns (and with a permit and severe control restrictions) your ability to spray 60 bullets in less than a minute is limited. It is possible to buy from mob an AK-47 but it’s expensive, risky and needs connections. so even if the toughs of killing everyone in sight is there, you lacks the means.
Violence in Europe is more of a state form than individual level. We had armies and wars for millennia, but the violence at the personal level was frown upon. In the US, since colonial times, personal violence for protection or appropriation was the norm.
Those are IMHO the greatest differences between US violence and the rest of the world.

36

So the US has more evil people than other countries?

37

I doubt it. Probably just different laws and traditions. There are a lot of countries, so statistics are on your side. :wink:

38

Probably kinda off topic, but lately I’ve been reading a few novels by Donna Leone, set in Venice. The Italian government/culture play a huge role, and she regularly refers/contrasts it to the American culture.

Has had me wondering what it would be like to have been raised in a country where you weren’t repeatedly taught that your country has some unique right to force its will upon the rest of the world. In addition to the “freedoms” and consumption Americans take for granted.

39

I’m no psychologist, but I’ve often observed that the US champions success, and looks down on failure, in a way other countries don’t so much. So being poor, working class, a bit average, is harder to take than in countries where class systems are more ingrained, and where being born into the lower orders is just how it’s always been and nothing to be beat yourself (or others) up about.

40

I would argue that it’s all somehow wrapped up with the Just World Hypothesis – essentially, the belief that only good things happen to good people, and that bad things happen to people because they are bad people.

Which is hugely corrosive and toxic, but I do think it’s tied into the “anybody can be anything they want to” in the US, and the “American Exceptionalism” thing.

But I agree with this article:

If the belief in a just world simply resulted in humans feeling more comfortable with the universe and its capriciousness, it would not be a matter of great concern for ethicists or social scientists. But Lerner’s Just World Hypothesis, if correct, has significant social implications. The belief in a just world may undermine a commitment to justice.

Zick Rubin of Harvard University and Letitia Anne Peplau of UCLA have conducted surveys to examine the characteristics of people with strong beliefs in a just world. They found that people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to “feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims.”

Ironically, then, the belief in a just world may take the place of a genuine commitment to justice. For some people, it is simply easier to assume that forces beyond their control mete out justice. When that occurs, the result may be the abdication of personal responsibility, acquiescence in the face of suffering and misfortune, and indifference towards injustice. Taken to the extreme, indifference can result in the institutionalization of injustice.

And/but … also …

Still, the need to believe that the world is just can also be a positive force. The altruism of volunteers and of heroes who risk their lives to help strangers in need is a result of people trying to restore justice to insure that the world remains just. As Melvin Lerner writes, “We have persuasive evidence that people are strongly motivated by the desire to eliminate suffering of innocent victims.”

Lately, I’ve been acutely aware of the segment of US society that, essentially, writes off these mass shooters as being “evil.” I’m reminded of the (more insidious descriptions) above.

I feel like the dark side of the Just World Hypothesis has been ascendant in US politics and culture for at least the last generation or so.