wetwareproblem:

smallswingshoes:

wetwareproblem:

f1rstperson:

bustysaintclair:

People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence.  Perpetrators of violent crime are more likely to be neurotypical than not. 

Are some people who commit these crimes mentally ill? Probably. Is there any predictable association between mental illness and violent behaviors? Not in the slightest. Some mentally ill people are violent, most aren’t. Some neurotypical people are violent, most aren’t.

The reason neurotypical people want to claim that there must be “something wrong” with mass murderers and serial killers is because you want to distance yourself from those people as much as you can.

So you scapegoat people with mental illness, you write stories and make movies about scary mentally ill people breaking out of institutions. You use words like “sick” and “crazy” to describe murderers because you want to believe that neither you nor anybody you know is capable of such horrors.  

But sure keep endangering an already vulnerable population by perpetuating these erroneous beliefs. Keep repeating these narratives that us sickos and nutcases are the real dangers to society, instead of, you know, neurotypical white men. 

(also i don’t believe for one second that you’re remotely sorry about any of this)

Murdering people is not a symptom of any mental illness/neurodivergence. It is a part of a long history of abuse against the mentally ill however. I love how our “unhealthy” brains must be responsible for the worst violence that happens, but the history of violence against us from people with so called “healthy” brains counts for nothing in your eyes. I love whenever any sort of tragic/violent event happens how it’s always about us somehow, it can’t possibly have something to do with the person having shitty ideals or extremist beliefs, or a lifelong history of prejudices and hatred, hell a killer could basically spell out “I did this because I hate (marginalized group)” and write like a 50 paged document on his own shitty reasoning for it but noooo we gotta play the “how was mental illness/neurodivergence the real true motivation for this crime all along” game. Every. Single. Time. 

Honestly though thoughts like this, people thinking that mental illness must be responsible whenever something terrible happens, is exactly what we’ve been talking about for decades when we say people like anon demonize mental illness. 

Seems like it’s time to bring this out again (bolding mine):

“ The public are no less accustomed to ‘experiencing’ violence among the mentally ill, although these experiences are mostly vicarious, through movie depictions of crazed killers or real life dramas played out with disturbing frequency on the nightly news. Indeed, the global reach of news ensures that the viewing public will have a steady diet of real-life violence linked to mental illness. The public most fear violence that is random, senseless, and unpredictable and they associate this with mental illness. Indeed, they are more reassured to know that someone was stabbed to death in a robbery, than stabbed to death by a psychotic man (7). In a series of surveys spanning several real-life events in Germany, Angermeyer and Matschinger (8) showed that the public’s desire to maintain social distance from the mentally ill increased markedly after each publicized attack, never returning to initial values. Further, these incidents corresponded with increases in public perceptions of the mentally ill as unpredictable and dangerous.”

“In this study, the prevalence of violence among those with a major mental disorder who did not abuse substances was indistinguishable from their non-substance abusing neighbourhood controls. A concurrent substance abuse disorder doubled the risk of violence. Those with schizophrenia had the lowest occurrence of violence over the course of the year […]  Delusions were not associated with violence, even ‘threatcontrol override’ delusions that cause an individual to think that someone is out to harm them or that someone can control their thoughts.”

“In the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study (1), for example, the most likely targets of violence were family members or friends (87%), and the violence typically occurred in the home. Discharged patients were less likely to target complete strangers (10.7%) compared to their community controls (22.2%).”

“Therefore, by these estimates, violence in the community might be reduced by only 10% if both major mental disorders and comorbid disorders were eliminated. However, violence could be reduced by over a third if substance abuse disorders were eliminated.” 

Source: “Violence and mental illness: An overview.”

TL;DR: Shut the entire fuck up, anon. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and in fact you’re actively contributing to violence against mentally ill people.

Literally what it comes down to is that people want to think that those who commit murder “aren’t in their right mind” because they want to believe that “regular people” aren’t like that. When someone murders another person, it’s an act THEY DECIDED TO MAKE. They CHOSE this action. And by allowing themselves to believe that only people “not in their right mind” would do that, they reassure themselves that they would never become a murderer. It’s a similar thought process to, “I can’t be racist, I’m a good person!”, imo. It’s so much easier for folks to blame “scary mentally ill people” than it is for them to admit that the only things that are required to commit an atrocity is the willingness to do so and the decision that other life doesn’t matter. That’s it.

The irony here, of course, is that this defense mechanism relies on dehumanization to work. And dehumanization, in turn, fuels violence against its victims. It also leaves you so convinced that you couldn’t do these things because only Evil Monsters do them that you never stop and check your behaviour or guard against it. The single most important moral principle I can imagine is thus to remember that even your worst enemies, even the most depraved killers, are people just like you - and, given the right circumstances, you could have been in their place.

Every time you say “Only a monster could do something so horrible!” you come one step closer to doing horrible things yourself.