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Old 12-26-2012, 07:53 AM   #113
ape descendant
 
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Smexyville, Colorado
Posts: 2,424
Just because you don't understand someone's motivation, doesn't mean they're mentally ill. It just means you don't know what's in their head.

Here are a couple articles and bits of information that may help.

http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php

And http://psychcentral.com/archives/violence.htm

Quote:
Predictors of serious/severe violence included a subset of these risk factors, including younger age, being male, having less than a high school education, history of violence, juvenile detention, perception of hidden threats from others, and being divorced or separated in the past year. This model had an AUC of 0.87 and was statistically significant, accounting for a quarter of the variance in serious/severe violent behavior.

Predictors of substance-related violence included younger age, being male, lower income, history of violence, juvenile detention, history of physical abuse by parent, substance dependence only, comorbid mental health and substance disorders, victimization in past year, and unemployed and looking for work in the past. This model had an AUC of 0.90 and was statistically significant, accounting for 30% of the variance in substance-related violence.

Across the 3 multivariate models, violence was not predicted by schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder alone.
I'll leave it at that because the second article is pretty long, but it is worth the read.

I wouldn't worry so much about this conversation if the idea itself did not predispose people to mistreat those who've suffered from mental illness. It wasn't that far in our past that those who did, also suffered deplorable conditions, "treatment" that was more akin to torture as well as eugenics laws that called for their mandatory sterilization as well as the sterilization of their siblings.

The idea that mental illness and violence are inextricably related are part of a harmful, untrue, ableist stereotype. Perpetuating that stereotype is dishonest, irresponsible and just plain wrong.
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