I was diagnosed with Bipolar II last summer, spent 3 weeks in a psychiatric day program.

[HereSince1628]

42. Not all violence is the same. The cause of safety won't be helped by conflating the unlike

Last edited Sat Dec 15, 2012, 08:48 PM - Edit history (1)

A blending of these differences will produce a murky mud of reasoning (just as will the mixing of all mental illness into some generic homogenized but fearful mental illness) and that can't help.

America needs to reduce the occurrence of mass murders. No doubt.

Keeping guns out of the hands the mentally ill who represent increased risk of others may be a part of that.

But, creating a mental health screening tool that actually works, that doesn't create operational difficulties, that doesn't wrongly, unreasonably and unjustly deny 2nd amendment or other civil rights (prior restraint, Americans with Disabilities Act, etc), by creating huge discrimination against ALL the mentally ill demands that the nation, and in particular its law and rule makers, get a correct understanding of violence and the populations likely to commit it.

A fair number of variations come quickly to mind.

Some violence is done by the mentally well, and some of it is done by the mentally ill.

Some violence is very severe and destructive and some (angry yelling, arm-waiving, and hitting oneself) is not.

Some violence is done against inanimate objects and some is done against living things.

Some violence is self-harm and some violence is directed at non-self.

Some acts of violence are against strangers, most violence is directed against persons known to the perpetrator.

Some violent acts are impulsive some violent acts are planned.



When we talk about violence in the mentally ill, it is important to realize that, the vast majority of mental illness represents no increased risk of violence to self or to others.

Much of the violent behavior of persons with mental illness is reactionary and impulsive. That means it is done when someone/something stimulates a response, and that response is spontaneous and immediate.
Mass murders are not impulsive they are typically carefully and deliberately planned over a long period.

Much of the violent behavior of persons with mental illness is self-directed only a small fraction of acts of violence by the mentally ill is directed at strangers.



If the goal is to make America safer from mass murder then we must understand mass murder, and differentiate it from other forms of violence.

If there is a psychological profile to be found that can be used to identify potential mass murderers, it must be constructed in a way that isn't confounded by spurious correlations to violence of other forms.

To date, several attempts have been made to create such a profile. They've all proven to find far too many false positives to be reasonably applied as public policy.

The nation may need such a screening tool for potential of future violence to others. (so that persons can reach treatment or possibly institutionalized isolation from society) It may need a new mental health screening tool for purchasing guns. But a useful, legal, tool won't be found via conflations that simply confound all statistical interpretation of the data.