The news you didn’t read: people with serious mental illnesses are committing fewer murders

[tannybogus]

There’s not exactly a whole bunch of news going on right now. According to the Mail we are witnessing the “Invasion of the killer jellyfish” (except Portuguese Men O’ War have been reported on British shores since at least 2003), the hunt for the Yeti continues, and there’s always room for another “equation for” story.
Somehow what doesn’t get into the papers is as interesting as what does. Right now I’m looking at a press release on a story which seems pretty important to me: people with serious mental illnesses are committing fewer murders than ever before, by a truly enormous margin. Homicides in this group increased from around 40 a year in the 1950s to 100 a year in the 1970s, in line with a similar increase in the general population. But while murders by people like you have continued to increase, and roughly trebled (0.6 per 100,000 of population in the 1950s, and almost 2 per 100,000 now), murders by people with serious mental illnesses, despite the hype and the fear, the public pronouncements and the headlines, have come down massively since the 1970s, to fewer than 20 a year today.

Alongside the silly season stories, this startling new analysis of several different databases worth of information was not considered newsworthy. It got coverage in New Scientist (ooh) and BBC Online only. Nobody else touched it. What a mystery.

Journalists are traditionally fascinated by mental illness after all. Celebrities with schizophrenia or depression can expect to have their hospital admissions (and embarrassing behaviour when unwell) diligently documented by the newspapers, and murders associated with mental illness receive blanket media coverage, with extensive campaigns both in the media and at grassroots level. When the “mental health czar” Louis Appleby called for more effort at reducing murders by people with serious mental health problems last year (a “bloke has opinion” story if ever I saw one) it was news to every single newspaper.

http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-news-you-didnt-read/
Link to study:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4805076/Homicide-due-to-mental-disorder-in-England-and-Wales-over-50-years

This the UK, but is it any different in the US?:shrug:

[Ian David]

1. Not true in the United States.

See "Exhibit A":

[Warpy]

3. I like the guy behind him

checking out his arse.

[patrice]

5. Holding hands again? What do you want to bet that they pass notes?

[Warpy]

2. Not really, unless you count the voluntary, temporary insanity

brought on by alcohol and other drugs, especially meth.

Mostly, the mentally ill spend their lives afraid, not really belligerent. They rarely act out unless they feel they've been cornered. Very few are consistently violent.

The exception to this is the psychopath, but one can argue that they're sane, just born without the capacity for either empathy or remorse.

[Octafish]

4. Got what you mean right here.

The crazy warmonkey's certainly skewed the averages.

[cliffordu]

6. "Long history of mental illness..."

Is my favorite quote when they need to punch up the fear and revulsion aspect of murder or violence...

They rarely qualify it with WHAT KIND of mental illness the individual had, or whether it actually played a real part in the horror story. Sometimes people just need to kill thier mothers.

The press, on the other hand, need to add to the drama of the trauma.

It used to be "A Vietnam Veteran with mental problems", or variations:

"A Vietnam Veteran who has been under psychiatric care....."

"A troubled veteran..."

Get ready for the Iraq war version of that phrase. I've seen it used a couple of times already.

Apparently even being a cook in a war zone will make you a psycho-killer later.


So much has gone wrong in someones's life when they finally get to the point of rampage that isolating one aspect - particularly the one that creates fear in the reader - as THE reason the individual went off is not only wrong, it can be really damaging to the vast majority of us in the 'Mentally ill community' who will never harm anyone. People fear what the press tells them to fear.


The press will never tell you this, however, as they are too eager to pimp the most salacious aspects of any story without any desire to actually teach or instruct or inform; The majority are happy to sell the pornography of violence that is the "news" in this culture.

[cliffordu]

7. Kicked again, just because I heart crazy people.