People need to stop using mental illness as a get-out from abhorrent behaviour

[Never2many]

it seems that more and more these days any behaviour goes as long as it’s in the name of mental illness.

Mother murders her children? Must have been mentally ill.
Someone shouts at their family? Must be mentally ill.
There’s a thread where a man disappeared without a trace since new year then casually showed up with a sun tan and all new clothes. “Must have had a breakdown.”

Why can’t we just accept that there are some really arsehole people out there?

Why are we writing off arsehole behaviour in the name of mental illness?

All you’re doing there is painting the mentally ill as arseholes, and as most of us know, those people who are genuinely mentally ill aren’t. But the more you write off these kinds of behaviours in the name of mental illness the more of a reputation you are giving the mentally ill.

And frankly, mental illness isn’t an excuse to behave like an arsehole, to murder your children or to piss off for six months without a trace or word to your children.

It amazes me that people so confidently state that no one who isn’t mentally ill would kill another human being. I’m afraid that they do and that includes their own children. I think it’s staggeringly naive to believe that only mentally ill people kill other human beings. Yes post-partum depression/psychosis absolutely exists(And needs to be taken much more seriously) but not every case of infanticide/child homicide is due to that and not all killers are mentally ill. People kill out of jealousy, inadequacy, rage, financial gain, to be free of a perceived burden, in war, over resources, out of ethnic hatred, political beliefs etc.

They are not all severely mentally ill, though it may be more comfortable for us to believe that.

Yes, understand where you are coming from. Some people are just no good, and can and do kill. No mental health illness involved. Or it can be spur of the moment things.

But there have been cases in the press about mums killing their kids, and it has been stated they had been suffering from some sort of MH issue... yet this thread seems to be about it being an excuse.

But it is often said that people with MH issues are more likely to be a victim than anyone else. But they sometimes are the perpetrator, and that should not be ignored either. We have secure psychiatric units for a reason.

Something like 70 percent of offenders have a psychological condition or some sort of personality disorder. It’s not an excuse.

What really matters is whether that person is dangerous to others and if they are treated or detained that they can get better. It goes to how culpable they are for what they did.

@ViviennemarySadly I don’t find it unbelievable at all. This happened in my town, place is absolutely riddled with anti social and violent behaviour from both kids and adults. Nothing is ever really done about it, only lip service.

Sadly i wa involved in the care of a women who was convicted of infanticide when i was a mental health nurse ,it must be about 25 years ago now she was admitted with post partum psychosis, which was treated fairly quickly, but still suffered with post natal depression. ,i don't recall all the details but she killed her baby a few weeks after discharge ,her husband and family were supportive at the time but it must have been horrendous the baby was still dead ,
I don't know as a family how you would get over that.

There are really arsehole people out there.

but that doesn’t negate that there are also people suffering from
sig mental illness.

No mentally well mother murders her children. Post Partum Psychosis is a thing.

People kill for myriad reasons, and that includes mothers. Postpartum is not the only reason for every filicide, although part of it. A notable amount involves maternal abuse, especially in cases of long-term neglect or violence. Louise Porton, Sarah Barass, anybody? and there are others. No evidence of postpartum or psychosis in either case.

Psychopathy and sociopathy are also mental illnesses. Nobody ever says somebody like Ted Bundy, for example, wasn’t mentally ill, that’s just an excuse.
To attribute someone’s behaviour to mental illness is not to absolve them of blame.
It’s important to make the distinction in many cases but not in order to let the person off the hook.
When someone is convicted having killed somebody and it’s determined that they are mentally ill, a large part of the reason to make this important distinction is so that they can be placed in the appropriate facility.
For example, a woman I know was sleeping rough in a tent. Another homeless person, a man, set her tent on fire and she had very bad injuries and was obviously very traumatised.
He was found to be schizophrenic and at the time he was unmedicated, psychotic and delusional.
He was sent to the Central Mental Hospital (Ireland) instead of prison.
The woman was very unhappy about this because she thought he was getting off lightly and I see where she was coming from but that’s not the point of sending him there.
For one thing, he would be considered to be a serious threat to himself and to other people (staff and prisoners) in a regular prison and they are better equipped to deal with this in CMH.
He would also need medication probably injections and other treatments administered by medical staff and to be seen regularly by doctors.
It is pointless thinking about things like this in terms of whether people are being judged and blamed harshly enough or punished enough.
If someone is seriously mentally ill, schizophrenic or sociopathic, they can’t be punished in the same way. They can’t reflect on what they’ve done or be rehabilitated in the same way as someone who is not ill.
It may not satisfy people’s need to see them held accountable and to feel justice has been done but unfortunately that’s just how it is.

I think these days people think that if they put a label on themselves, it makes their bad behaviour acceptable.

Yes I agree. So he’s someone with significantly reduced capacity along with emotional dysregulation and poor impulse control from ADHD. Even “mild” ADHD can cause quite severe emotional dysregulation including anger outbursts. From the description of his behaviour his sounds severe (albeit we have limited information here). He was also a child when he committed his attack so lots of genuine and strong mitigating factors as to why the sentence given was appropriate in this case.

People generally seem to have a complete lack of understanding how some conditions and disabilities affect mental function and a person’s ability to control their actions and make decisions. Understanding there are mitigating factors doesn’t excuse what they did and they are still culpable legally (unless psychotic or similar) but these factors can and should affect sentencing.

What are you talking about? Why do you think someone with a low IQ couldn’t also have ADHD? You can have ADHD regardless of your intelligence. Stimulant medication also calms emotional dysregulation it doesn’t worsen it. Having said that I can’t see in the article where it says he was medicated? So unless you have other information we don’t know that he was prescribed adhd medications at all, if he was what he was prescribed, whether he had just started ADHD medication and a suitable dose was still being worked out (titration), whether it had worked in the past but now needed adjusting, whether he was refusing to take it or was taking it inconsistently. I could go on. We simply don’t have enough information. Also not all adhd medication is.stimulant medication, there are a number of (generally less effective) non-stimulant options as well.

I don’t think it’s a get out… it’s a reason though. If someone is experiencing psychosis and commits murder because they thought said person was the devil come to end the world it’s not really the same as doing so when mentally sound is it?

This is a great example of what I was saying above. If this man was psychotic he would literally not be in his right mind/in another world. When you are psychotic you believe things that are not true (delusions), see hallucinations and lose your sense of reality. You cannot distinguish between what is real and not real. The fact this woman thought “he’d got off lightly” is frankly ludicrous and makes no sense and just shows how little many people do not understand mental illness at all. How can he have got off lightly when he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong or that it was harmful or illegal. He had literally “lost his mind”. Psychosis is one of the few states that would meet the very high legal bar for an insanity defence for good reason.

She obviously went through a horrible and frightening experience and I suspect has her own issues to contend with if she is homeless, which may be informing her reaction, but this is one of those situations when no-one is actually to blame here (other than perhaps our horrendously poor mental health and support services). It’s just a horrible thing that happened and I hope she’s getting support following it. However it would not be appropriate at all to punish him.

I think it’s a bit more nuanced than you’ve said. There surely are “arseholes” playing a mental health card to justify awful behaviour, but also someone randomly disappearing from their lives overnight without a word to anyone and behaving out of character could well be due to mental health issues and (rarely) even murder of your own child can genuinely be the result of true psychosis where people really are not “sane” and making logical decisions and may be hallucinating or delusional etc. etc. as others have said.

I personally see the personality disorder side of things as slightly different to things like psychosis, especially antisocial PD etc rather than EUPD, in that I think a lot of people with antisocial personality disorder are fully aware that their behaviour is antisocial and unacceptable morally/ethically and simply don’t care, I personally think it’s not an excuse to behave “badly” but how to make someone like this care if they just don’t I’m not sure! And I appreciate to an extent their brains are just wired up differently basically (and often had traumatic early childhood experiences etc) hence not caring. So not necessarily their “fault”. However these people are so hard to deal with generally, they are over represented in the prison population, and I do suspect many of them don’t actually try all that hard to eg control their anger when they feel it rather than acting out or committing crimes etc, as they basically just don’t see why they should, even though they’ll say it’s because they have difficulty regulating their emotions etc. I feel like these people to some level don’t understand that we all have difficult feelings at times but we can’t all go from zero to 100 and kick off or commit armed robbery or murder etc. at the slightest perceived provocation. At the same time there probably is also a degree of emotional regulation problems happening, I think it’s interesting that even when they suffer negative consequences as a result of their actions they still don’t seem able to get control over their emotions especially anger, and the behaviours that leads to. It generally doesn’t serve them well to act like this, therefore maybe there is an element of it that is outside of their control.

And then addiction issues are another minefield in terms of behavioural problems this can lead to. I personally do think alcohol addiction in particular is a mental illness. And addictions can go hand in hand with other mental health issues. Having said that of course there is generally at least a degree of personal responsibility always in play when it comes to addictions and we can’t deny that aspect of it. I’d say the same for even things like depression, unless very severe, at some level there is some personal choice being exercised in terms of how thoughts and feelings translate into behaviours. Which isn’t to say I don’t think depression is a “real” illness.

He’s not living in the community though. He’s in a secure mental hospital.

My sd has behaved appallingly as a young adult and blames it on mental health. I don’t accept it and never will. It’s not an excuse for the things she’s done, my dh agrees to an extent but is obviously more willing to take that excuse as he’ll do anything to believe it wasn’t really her that did it ( naturally as a parent)

Mental illness includes a huge range of different illnesses that affect a person's capacity in different ways.

Someone with mild depression or anxiety shouldn't be able to use it as an excuse for murder because they are in control of their actions. Someone suffering from psychosis might have completely lost their ability to tell what's real or fake. They might not be responsible fir their actions, no matter how abhorrent they are.

Lumping all mental illness together in this way is stupid.... it's like saying that I can function normally with a cold so why is that person with end stage cancer in bed.

@TatteredAndTornSo why was he in a mainstream school and out in the community at all, and not in a secure facility, if his conditions are so severe that he can’t control his behaviour and is a danger to others?
Also, he wasn’t a child, he was 17 - at that age you’re the size of an adult and can do serious damage.
Proper institutions need to be brought back, treatment in the community is clearly not working. I live in the town where this happened, every day there are incidents with people with all kinds of issues, I don’t even feel safe going into town and our kids aren’t safe at schools because of things like this.
Frankly I don’t care about anyone’s condition - if it makes them violent and a threat to other people then they need to be locked away for everyone’s safety, including their own. One day this “child” will lash out at the wrong person and get his head kicked in.
Nobody ever thinks about the people at the receiving end of this behaviour, are we all just meant to accept being collateral damage to someone’s condition?

Hardly the same as pissing off on holiday for 6 months though is it?

This thread has been done again and again.

In the scenarios you’ve outlined in OP (bar the man who disappeared for a few months), it has to be a mental illness. And that’s not an excuse, it’s just part of an explanation. I’m not a neurologist, or a psychologist, but I really don’t believe that a neurotypical person is capable of the most heinous crimes.