Mentally ill people aren’t killers. Angry people are.

[uppityperson]

I think this is a good article. Thoughts on it?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/04/anger_causes_violence_treat_it_rather_than_mental_illness_to_stop_mass_murder.html

(clipPIn addition to being a valuable cautionary tale about grocery etiquette, the story illustrates an important truth about violence and mental health: Violence is not a product of mental illness; violence is a product of anger. When we cannot modulate anger, it will control our behavior.

In the wake of a string of horrific mass shootings by people who in many cases had emotional problems, it has become fashionable to blame mental illness for violent crimes. It has even been suggested that these crimes justify not only banning people with a history of mental illness from buying weapons but also arming those without such diagnoses so that they may protect themselves from the dangerous mentally ill. This fundamentally misrepresents where the danger lies.

Violence is not a product of mental illness. Nor is violence generally the action of ordinary, stable individuals who suddenly “break” and commit crimes of passion. Violent crimes are committed by violent people, those who do not have the skills to manage their anger. Most homicides are committed by people with a history of violence. Murderers are rarely ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and they are also rarely mentally ill. Violence is a product of compromised anger management skills.
...(more at link)

[Daemonaquila]

1. Not quite accurate per the science, but close.

Folks might want to read these articles, specifically on the psychology of mass killers. There's a lot of debunking to do about mental illness as the driver. They're long.

http://www.jaapl.org/content/38/1/87.long
http://www.jaapl.org/content/38/2/263.long

[Major Nikon]

8. The point of the article was it isn't about the psychology of mass killers

Victims of mass killers make up just a tiny minority of gun deaths. The much bigger problem is anger + Law of the Instrument = gun deaths.

[olddots]

2. violence may be linked to lonelyness

but thats another story .

[renate]

3. anger certainly seems to be the common denominator

(Except for Adam Lanza, maybe.)

That and narcissism--a lot of people who commit mass shootings seem to think that they have been unfairly denied things that they feel they're entitled to (respect, success, a girlfriend). Of course I don't have any information to back that up--it just sort of seems that way when their manifestos or online comments are reported.

[HereSince1628]

9. Anger and vengeance are similar.

It seems that Lanza may have been embittered about his mother's interest in the school.

Linden developed the concept of post traumatic embitterment disorder, proved it could be accurately and consistently diagnosed, and developed an effective treatment. The APA in writing it's new version of it's diagnostic manual chose to leave it out as a valid diagnosis.

We should probably not accept that all the mental disorders that exist in the real world are yet identified and accepted by the psychiatric industry.

[LostOne4Ever]

4. I think the mentally ill are being scapegoated because people want an easy answer

[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]People who do this ignore those mass murders that didn't have mental illness.

The facts show that the mentally ill are no more violent than anyone else and are in fact even more likely to be the victim of violence.[/font]

http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/our-blog/69-no-state/2030-new-study-mentally-ill-are-often-targets-of-violence

[loyalsister]

6. Agreed!

I think it's a way for people to distance themselves from it. "A person who would do such a thing is not in their right mind" is the most popular sentiment. I think when people feel like that is confirmed by armchair diagnoses it comforts them. The media is notorious for propagating assumptions and imposing diagnoses without real evidence of behavioral patterns.

[HooptieWagon]

5. I think that's probably an over-generalization.

A domestic shooting is likely anger-related. An armed-robbery shooting might be adrenaline and testosterone, or maybe under the influence. A mass-shooting could be anything...anger, mental illness, religious fervor...who knows?

[lindysalsagal]

7. Sometimes, but not always.

Just like healthy people, the vast majority of mentally ill are no danger to the rest of us.

And it's clear there are lots of angry people who are capable of violence.

But when someone really can't understand the world around them, due to mental illness, and have presented the typical lone-gunner profile, they shouldn't be buying guns.

I would like to see therapists empowered to directly contact the courts who have the power to remove guns. I trust the therapists on that, absolutely.