Not Mentally Crazy

The shooting in Arizona on Saturday that killed six people, including a nine-year -old girl and wounded fourteen others, was tragic. And the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, must surely be a "nutcase," "mental," or "paranoid" for doing such a horrific thing. The consensus on the web is that the 21 year old suffers from paranoid schizophrenia in view of his uploaded YouTube videos. But actually, the amateur diagnosis that Loughner suffers from a mental illness is no explanation for his actions. It's beside the point because mental illness has no correlation with an inclination to violence.

Doctor and neuroscience blogger, Vaughan Bell has a very good article on Slate which details the erroneous view of the public that there is a link between psychiatric disorders and violence. I highly recommend that you read it. Bell lists some strong scientific evidence that ultimately concludes that "psychiatric diagnoses tell us next to nothing about someone's propensity to violence."

So why do we automatically assume that persons suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorders or dementia are violent? I don't know, but I shall speculate here. For the majority of us, our inherent notion of mental illnesses is formed by what we've read in books or seen in Hollywood movies. Perhaps we perceive all schizophrenics as Dr. Jekyll and his alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, or as John Nash, a Nobel Prize-winning US mathematician who was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the hit film, A Beautiful Mind. But not all schizophrenics suffer from "multiple personalities" or are paranoids. Sufferers of the disorganized type may have problems thinking and expressing their ideas clearly while those suffering from the catatonic types may be in a constant state of unrest, underactive, or totally motionless.¹

I believe that we are afraid of what we don't know. When someone is different from us, we automatically get on our guards or worse, we frown. We don't know enough about schizophrenics and, therefore, we get scared and assume that they can hurt us or worse.

To counter this exaggerated and prejudiced behavior, we need to educate and sensitize people more about mental illnesses and their variety. People need to know about mental illnesses and understand how people suffering from those illnesses live their lives. They need to see that at the end of the day, many of those persons are not as different from us as we might think.

On the science versus mass media note, we must take care with our prejudices and stop associating violence with mental illness. It's too simple an explanation. Science has said this all along: Mental disorder does not equate to violent behavior. It is high time we move away from the unfounded (and unscientific) biases we may have about persons suffering from mental disorders. Otherwise, we might merely and stupidly accept that Loughner's mental illness condones his actions.

Reference:

Medline Plus. Schizophrenia (2010).