Can we stop with attributing every atrocity to mental illness? [View all]

[moriah]

The psychopathology of serial killers like Ted Bundy is fascinating. Apparently he was abused as a child, had an extremely screwed up home life, and may have been "off" from the start. He fixated on one particular girl when he was in college and dated her briefly, but she rejected him -- until his final sorority house rampage and abduction of the young girl, his victims all had a "type" -- they looked like the girl who rejected him. Yeah, he was screwed up in the head, but not the screwed up in the head that can be treated by medication. Andrea Yates, on the other hand, was an example of someone who was psychotic when they killed. While I personally think that her doctor made a huge mistake when he took her off of Haldol, despite her previous medication noncompliance she was actually medicated at the time of the killings. Just not with the right drugs.

It's natural human instinct to wonder what can drive someone to take another human life. But as much as we want to say conspiracy theorists are nuts and clinically paranoid, the most they've got diagnosable is a personality disorder without actual delusions, same as Ted Bundy (just a different one).

And there are a LOT of people with tinfoil hats out there. I know preppers. I know a guy who wasted a ton of money buying precious metals before Y2K, another who is doing BitCoin mining and buying silver bars to have as a backup currency. Both are functional in society. I was told by very good friends when the SARS scare was about that if TSHTF I had better already be on their 80-acre property or they'd throw food and blankets over the gate but wouldn't let me in until I had finished a quarantine period. That family owns two businesses, both have been quite successful. None of these people would hurt anyone unless they saw it as self-defense (though if you come after them, they are all armed, even if the Y2K precious metals dude would have a harder time getting to his bear rifle than the others and would likely practice the art of Cane-Fu in self-defense instead... he's over 70 and a polio survivor).

What happened in Vegas was a hate crime against the police, pure and simple. Not the result of mental illness, even if they may have had more than their fair share of hate to go around.