FOR THE LAST TIME, STOP CONFLATING VIOLENCE AND MENTAL ILLNESS

[loyalsister]

Most people want to assert that “no sane person” would commit a crime like this. It's not true. Sane people do kill. In violent rages, because of financial incentives, in violent fueds and altercations, as part of military or police training.... It is more difficult to understand killing in some contexts than others, but writing off what we are not able to understand as mental illness is an intellectually lazy way of giving up on exploring other factors.

Each time an incident like this occurs and distancing language blaming it on mental illness and refusing to engage with other social factors is used, society pulls further away from mentally ill people. A study in Germany showed that levels of social acceptance for mentally ill people don’t go back to normal after such events. In other words, the stigma faced by mentally ill people increases every single time there’s a horrific event blamed on mental illness circulating in the public consciousness.

http://www.xojane.com/issues/for-the-last-time-stop-conflating-violence-and-mental-illness