Comments on: Is Mental Illness Relevant in Reporting a Crime?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:02:07 +0000

I think that stigmatizing individuals with a label to force medication induced involuntary intoxication on individuals is a lot of the problem. When those particular individuals aren’t yet labeled and supposedly aren’t receiving the behavioral health treatment, no one is concerned, but once they get their stigmatization label and get behaviorally healthy from treatment everyone is fearful of them. That doesn’t make much sense, because they should become more behaviorally healthy from their treatment, if you believe what shrinks say. I don’t think that behavioral health really makes them behaviorally healthy, but actually has the opposite effect. I think it was guantonamo bay that hired the shrinks to train them how to torture their prisoners correctly, and that’s a sad state of affairs when the govt. says that the best ones at torture are shrinks who are supposed to be in the helping professions. It really seems to be the opposite, to me. I think thats’ a lot of the problem. The prescription drugs also cause those individuals who are stigmatized with a label to have biochemical imbalances in their brains, and you can tell by the fact that most of them have abnormal sleep patterns(too much or too little), and most of them are too fat or too skinny. Those are a couple of really simple ways of telling if the prescriptions are truly messing with their biochemical balances in their brains.

By: Julie Ormbrek

Julie Ormbrek — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:55:48 +0000

Oops, sorry, I did not check for spelling errors before I sent my comment! I think it gets my point across, though.

By: Julie Ormbrek

Julie Ormbrek — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:51:54 +0000

My son died under a bridge in Florence, OR, probably last July — he was mummified when he was discovered. He had been variously diagnosed as severely bipolar, schizoaffective, and /or schizophrenic during his ten year illness. during the ten years of his illness, Jake mamnaged to stomp in the top of a Seattle PD cruiser, try to “fly” off of the cliffs near Carmel, CA (where his first mania occured),routinely tried to knocl people off bikes in Eugene, OR, set his father’s garage apartment on fire, set his car on fire in Sparks, Neveada when it refused to work anymore,climbed onto an idling BN train engine in Amarillo, TX, walked onto Ken Kesey’s property in Oregon and handed his wife a sheaf of garbled poetry, was arrested in Eugene and put on a five year hold in the Oregon State hospital for attempted kidnap of a two year old boy from his father’s arms–because “God” told him to do it, leapt from a car and ran down I-90 in Washington when he realized his dad was driving him to Harborview Hospital instead of taking him on a ride to California, and he spent maybe twenty months in San Francisco jail and it’s hospital,from whence he was sent to Napa State Hospital after being beaten up by an off duty policeman for singing a song about Usama Bin Laden in a Haight-Ashbury store, and swinging a walking stick at the officer when he put his hands on him and tried to push him out of the store. Aside from the very good care he did receive in Oregon, Jake was pretty much run through every hospital he was ever in…from WA, to Nevada, to TX, and back again. Once, even though we were supoenaed to testify after he tried to attack me in my home, the commtting attorney at Harborview Hospital dumped him out on the street with no shoes –only papaer slippers at 8:30 in the morning–an hour before we were due to testify. The man, an appointee of Norm Maleng, told us, “Well, he was not insane this morning”. Three weeks later, he was arrested and put on a five year hold for the attempted kidnap in Eugene, OR. Washington had a case fil on my son several inches thick, and each time he ended up in jail or the hospital, bamm…he would be out in the street within two to three days, without even being re-balanced on medication. He was a straight A student at Central Washington University when hsi illness manifested the summer afetr he completed his sophomore year there. We had no forewarning that Jake had any mental illness. He was an ASB officer one year, and a varsity tennis player and had been a finalist for the four year Willam O. Douglas Scholarship at Central when he was a senior in high school. His illness came on suddenly. After his second mania, he could not return to college, and because he was no longer a student, our insurance dropped him like a bad potato. One time, a judge asked Jake if he would do anything “God” asked him to do…would he kill someone, for instance, and my son looked the judge in the eye and said proudly, “Yes, I would!” I feel very strong sympathy for the young man’s mother. We as a family have been at the mercy of abominable mental health care here in the state of Washington, as has the Zamora family, I am sure. It easily could have been my son the “gods” of the insane were talking to, if he had not succumbed to his illness.

By: Diana Ekman

Diana Ekman — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:25:06 +0000

Hi, John. I enjoy your site and am a happy subscriber to the Wednesday updates. I hope you won’t be offended if I carefully point out that your stats are a bit whacky here- criminal behaviour is not randomly distributed, so we can’t just dismiss the possibility that no more than ten percent of crime perpetrators suffer from mental illness. It’s like saying, half of all people are women, and so half of all mass murderers should be women, too. That would only be true if mass murder was a truly random event, with the urge to do this distributed equally across society. Increasingly, we are finding specific risk factors for specific kinds of behaviours, that are associated with other risk factors, giving us at least a fair idea of who might be more prone to do what, for some (certainly not all) behaviours. We are getting a clearer idea that some criminal behaviour ( violence against domestic partners,for example, where men are predominantly the perpetrators) are NOT random. So, dear cyber pal, your assumptions here are a bit off. It’s quite possible that less than ten percent, or more than ten percent, of all criminal behaviour is perpetrated by people with mental illness. We certainly wouldn’t expect it to be perfectly matched with the percentage of people who have been diagnosed with MIs when no such perfect association has been found to date. Best from Diana

By: Points of Interest #29 « Mind, Soul, and Body

Points of Interest #29 « Mind, Soul, and Body — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:37:52 +0000

[...] Sticking with World of Psychology and John Grohol, here is another fantastic post reflecting on the stigmatization of mental illness by the newsmedia by linking it with violent crime in a manner that doesn’t hold up to reality. [...]

By: John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

John M. Grohol, Psy.D. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:41:08 +0000

J.M., suicide is a symptom of depression. Suicidal acts are a direct result of the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness that so often accompanies depression.

Violence is not a symptom of any mental illness.

By: Tamra

Tamra — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:43:16 +0000

It really is sad that we haven’t put the much needed mental health resources into public mental health care and other social services. Perhaps if we did our crime rate, substance abuse rate, and mental health rate wouldn’t be so high.

By: J.M. Snoogly

J.M. Snoogly — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:12:09 +0000

John, a couple of articles back (i.e., “Suicide Barriers are Effective”), you stated that people commit suicide because they’re irrational and suffering from depression. You categorized them as such.

But now you’re stating that you ‘object to the characterization of an individual primarily by their illness to help “explain” the tragedy…’

There is a contradiction here, yes?

By: John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

John M. Grohol, Psy.D. — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:44:15 +0000

Of course some criminals have a mental illness — I’d say 10% do, since the research hasn’t shown any greater difference. Except when substance abuse is a part of the picture.

Which is exactly the problem with Zamora. After being diagnosed with PTSD, he turned to illegal drugs to alleviate his symptoms and the mental health system failed him miserably in not detecting and treating these two primary problems — PTSD and drug use.

Read the details here: Shooting-rampage suspect described as deeply troubled

The take-away — if someone has a mental health issue and is abusing drugs, the system should be focused on helping this person get off drugs and get real, proper treatment for the mental health issue.

It really is that simple. And it really is that complicated to actually implement this strategy in most states, who have put few resources into public mental health and social work care.

By: Tamra

Tamra — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:52:32 +0000

As one highly interested in forensic psychology and the conception of “de-criminalizing mental illness” I can certainly tell you that one’s mental status is indeed significant when reporting a crime. I beg to differ with Mr. Spikol and his ideology. Mental illness does sometimes = crime and therefore this explains the overbearing (and statistically significant) number of inmates in jail who are sociopaths, bipolar, and suffering from a multiplicity of severe pathologies.
The reason society is so asleep to mental illness is because we are so sensitive to the idea of “criminal” or a crime. In other words, we are so quick to report a crime and so quick to dismiss a mental illness. I am by no means supporting a criminal, but I am protecting the rights of the mentally ill.

No…I agree, every criminal is not mentally ill, but there is a subliminal causal correlation between mental stability and criminal behavior. Statistics may not show a large number, but go to a jail or juvenile delinquent center and those statistics will rise.

Essentially, if a criminal past is essential when speaking of a criminal’s present behavior, then mental illness should remain too.

By: susan

susan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:50:43 +0000

Good Job.

Now I cannot help but wonder how the press is going to deal with Casey Anthony. Supposedly they are saying she is bipolar, a sociopath and a pathological liar.