Most Mentally Ill Are NOT Violent.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As I write this, we’ve had two more incidents of mass shootings. And it has us taking again about many important issues, which is good. And many politicians have chimed in, not surprisingly, which can be good (more on that later).

But why hasn’t anyone anywhere mentioned the most important thing? Most mentally ill are not violent!

I realize feelings are still raw. But I have heard just about every other topic brought up. Why not this one?

I know that they used to talk openly and honestly about mental illness. USA TODAY in fact did a front page piece on it, almost 30 years ago exactly, ironically.

I also know with effective psychiatric medicines (antidepressants, antipsychotics, antianxiety) most mentally ill people can lead meaningful productive lives. You also have to realize, they’ve closed down all the hospitals. So they’re here to stay. Get used to it people!

And I also know changes to the commitment laws is NOT the answer. They’ve closed down all the hospitals, as I said. That’s the reason why so many are on the streets. Build more hospitals! Changing the commitment laws without opening new hospitals is like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. (Plus I read somewhere, changing the commitment laws in fact, has the opposite effect. Sorry I forget where I read it. But if I do, I will share a link ASAP.)

Also, I know most of the shooters are not mentally ill. (Yes, you heard me right.) They often get their weapons legally, because they have demonstrated no evidence of mental disorder. You have to understand, severely mentally ill people often have hallucinations, and delusions (esp. if they are in a manic stage, for example). Almost none of the shooters have shown this. According to a state senator I just saw on TV yesterday, actually only about 1% of the mass shooters have had a mental illness. (I would provide a cite to this statistic. But as I said, it was on TV. And the internet is notoriously inadequate for providing statistics, at least for free:).)

I am not saying that some of the shooters wouldn’t have benefited from counseling. But we are talking severe mental illness here people. Changing commitment laws would not affect the neurotic or disaffected. (Plus as it has been said lately, hate is not a mental illness.)

Yeah, mental illness has certainly affected my family. My father struggled with severe bipolar disorder for years. (My mother also took antidepressants at one point, which she said helped her a little. But I think her case was more subjective.)

What do the rest of you think?

:):):):slight_smile:

2

“Most Mentally Ill Are NOT Violent.”

Given how many Dopers are right nutters, I assume we know that.

3

Trump doesn’t.:slight_smile:

4

Trump is well aware that the shooters are quite literally following his orders. He doesn’t think they’re insane; he thinks they’re obedient tools.

But he can’t actually say that, so instead he throws them under the bus and slanders the actual mentally ill in one fell swoop.

5

I think most shooters have personality disorders as opposed to mental illness.

Personality disorders are far more difficult to manage than mental illnesses. And the sufferers are far less likely to seek help or cooperate with treatments once given. It doesn’t help that psychiatric drugs are useless for a personality disorder. Like substance abuse, a total change in outlook and attitude is needed.

6

Quite a few shooters (and stalkers) were schizophrenic,including possibly the Dayton one.
(hashtag whatsthefrequency)

7

Most mentally ill people are not violent. Most sane people are not violent. In the interest of justice and equality, we freely make guns easily available to all.

8

And the corrolary: (I’d wager) most violent people are not mentally ill.

9

Politics. It gets blamed on mental illness in order to deflect criticism from the Republicans; it’s been like that for decades. Most terrorism in the US comes from white, usually Christian rightwingers, but* admitting *that is taboo so it’s ignored, or downplayed as being the result of mental illness by “one wolves”. And the Republican dominated government consistently goes out of its way to minimize the threat of right wing terrorism and prevent law enforcement from even investigate it, much less try to stop it.

Now if the terrorist is left wing, brown skinned or Muslim, *then *it’s just announced to be proof of the innate evil of Islam, brown people and/or left wingers. Mental illness is no longer to blame.

The people who control the US have no problem with terrorism, they *love *terrorism; but only as long as it’s their people doing it against the people they want to see terrified and killed.

10

Because they’re not selling reason and fact, they’re selling scapegoats.

What “they” want is to reassure everyone that it’s not you, it’s these other people, and they are crazy. Therefore you and I, not being crazy, are not culpable in any way, and furthermore, have little to no responsibility to try and solve the problem, because it’s a mental health issue, and that should only be addressed by qualified professionals.

It’s not the guns, it’s not the NRA, it’s not the politicians who just shrug every time this shit happens, it’s crazy people, so you see, there’s really nothing we can do.

11

I endorse this.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the mental health system as a whole – lifesafer or oppressive institution – the stigma attached to those with a psychiatric diagnosis is a hateful nasty piece of work. We are indeed less violent than the average person. If you wanted to address the firearms assaults problem in America specifically with a bill that focuses on people who have a psychiatric diagnosis, perhaps you should limit firearms sales to schizophrenics and bipolar people and depressive folks.

That’s obviously not a reasonable policy but quit using us as the scapegoat every time someone shoots up a bunch of innocent people. We ain’t your problem.

12

I’ve been recently diagnosed with schizoid personality dosorder. I’m not violent.

13

I agree with the OP, and I hate this for several reasons

First, as stated above, most people with mental health problems are not violent.

Second, “mental illness” is as broad a term as “physical illness” So saying that this violence is caused by mental health problems is like saying people die from physical illness. Some physical illnesses will kill you, but most won’t.

Third, in the case of mental illness, it is completely counter-productive. The very people who most need help and are possibly going to be violent without that help are the ones that will avoid getting help because they don’t want to risk not being able to get guns.

Finally, even for those who need help without the risk of violence, they are still going to be less likely to get the help they (we) need because they are going to say “I’m not like that, so I must not have a problem” or “I don’t want anyone thinking I’m going to become violent, so I’m going to avoid any mention of possible emotional problems”

14

Or better yet, put more money towards health care, including for the mentally ill. Because it’s a bit disingenuous for republican politicians to be bringing up the specter of mental illness as some sort of root cause on the one hand, and then continue to endorse policies that would make health care even less accessible on the other.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think there is much to be gained from limiting firearms sales to just those labeled “mentally ill” (as if a significant number of violent offenders have received a prior diagnosis that could flag attempts to purchase firearms—they haven’t, so even if they are mentally ill, it wouldn’t really matter without the diagnosis), but it would at least be nice if all this hateful rhetoric could actually be used to push through something good (better health care). I know it’ll never happen, but a man can dream, can’t he?

15

Previous history of domestic violence and/or animal cruelty may be far more relevant than general categorization of “mental illness”; and people who commit either or both of those behaviors aren’t generally defined by the society as mentally ill. So denying firearm access to the mentally ill in general would impact a lot of people whose illness doesn’t increase the likelihood of their becoming violent, while continuing to allow access to a lot of people who actually have been violent.
Of course, not everyone who commits domestic violence or animal cruelty goes on to commit mass murder, either (I don’t suppose the human species would still be here if they did as, sadly, there are an awful lot of such people.) But denying access to firearms based on such convictions has/would have the additional advantage, in addition to the advantage of its being based on actually relevant behavior, that it would deny access based on behavior, not on diagnosis.

16

The Times on Sunday had a big article on the prevalence of a history of domestic abuse in mass killers, defined as 4 or more dead not counting the killer. In fact many if not most involve killing a family member or partner. Mental illness does not imply violence, domestic violence does by definition. Anyone claiming they want to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people should be for a law confiscating guns temporarily from those accused of domestic violence and permanently if convicted. Which means better background checks.