Christy Sheats posted this on her facebook page last March.
It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semi-automatic handguns.
You know exactly where this is going, right? Sheats is dead, shot by the police after she refused to drop that handgun, after she’d used it to murder her 17 and 22 year old daughters.
I think the tragedy is that no one took her guns away before she killed two people with them.
How absolutely sad. Two young women murdered by a mentally disturbed mother who had no business owning firearms. Or, as we like to call it here is ‘murica, just another Friday night.
Fuck the NRA.
We don’t have enough information to say whether she was A) mentally ill, and if so B) that her mental illness was a contributing cause to the homicide. Anyone who does have that information is obligated to keep it confidential, and it’s counterproductive at best to speculate on it.
I’m actually much more worried about smaller scale shootings like this, than I am about mass shootings, and feel that gun laws should be aimed at reducing this kind of homicide first, and that that would have a secondary effect of reducing mass shootings. I suspect handguns are a greater contributor to the overall rate of homicide by firearms than assault rifles, and am trying to find information to confirm or refute that hypothesis.
This is not to in any way diminish the horrific danger of mass shootings, or imply that they aren’t bad, or aren’t important. I’m LGBT, and was absolutely terrorized after Orlando. Only worried that we’re neglecting small shootings in gun control dialogue.
Well, maybe we can say she was “gunnically” disturbed. It’s not surprising that someone with ten handguns found a reason to use one of them.
Christy Sheats learned the hard way the the handgun is not the grand protection she imagined it to be, as it is more likely to be used on you or your family than an intruder.
Larry:
Oh FFS, and in the first comment. Please, do everyone a favour and shut up until you inspect your anatomy, locate your brain, and engage it. If being pissed off is a mental illness, we have a big fucking problem.
Jesus wept. This is awful. There was an argument, a pretty ferocious one by the sound of it, and where tempers flare, and guns are handy, this happens.
Quite possibly(I’ve no idea). My concern here is this is stepping into Shooty McShootface territory, that is, will degenerate into arguments over magazine size, rate of fire, size/&tc of bullet, and on and on and on, missing both the point and the problem.
The ability to protect yourself and your family seems to be neutralised by the presence of firearms.
So who protects your children from you, Sheats? Who makes sure you don’t kill them, be that in murder like her or in accident?
A family tragedy like this is just one aspect of this type of problem, of guns in every home: Little kids killing themselves accidentally, “intruders” getting shot later turning out to be the teenage child coming home late, immediate access to a firearm enabling a suicide that would otherwise have been preventable etc.?
I don’t understand it, I really don’t. But worse than that, I’ve mostly resigned. It’s not my country, it’s not my society, these are tragedies, but there are so many tragedies in the world that at some point I just give up. My capacity for caring is, indeed, limited.
At least refugees aren’t doing it to themselves, their tragedies are externally inflicted. And, no, it’s not nice to generalize the American public as a whole, as doing it to themselves, I know that. But whatever the case, there’s clearly not enough political or societal will to change anything about it, despite the many individuals who might want to do better.
I need a beer, be right back.
Blf:
Aye, me too. Not once, has one of these wankers demonstrated even an iota of self-restraint, no, it’s just so fucking important to wank guns all over dead bodies.
By far the stupidest thing in contemporary American political conversation is the notion that having a firearm at home makes the home safer. I mean holy shit.
@ Gwen Re Handguns
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/06/26/we-have-a-handgun-problem/
Please don’t call it a “family tragedy”. A car crash is a family tragedy. Cancer is a family tragedy. This is murder. And while this time the perpetrator was a woman, it is usually a way to diminish the impact of violence white men unleash on women and children
I heard about the murders, but not the facebook post.
Somehow, I’m not surprised.
Gwen Sutton @ #3
Given that three people died, this incident very nearly qualifies as a “mass shooting” according to the official definition, which is 4 or more.
@#13
I did call it murder a few words earlier, you’ll note.
That said, I’d call murder within a family a family tragedy, also.
I really don’t think that diminishes it. It’s an umbrella term.
@#15
True, although the definition of a mass shooting requires 4 victims, including injured. There are lists of mass shootings you can check out, which show an incredible frequency of mass shootings, many of which are never reported on national news (although you can still find local news stations’ reporting if you specifically google for them).
Addendum to #17, I wish you could edit posts here:
What I mean to say by that, is that an attack can qualify as a mass shooting even if fortunately none of the victims ended up dying.
How about not wanking over body counts, either? One person dead is one too many.
Looks like the gun nuts have finally found a foolproof way that their guns can stop the terrorists or the government from harming their families.
Her daughters should have been armed. Thus would the tragedy have been
avoided.
That is the automatic response (no pun intended) from the gun crowd.
100% agree with Caine that one death is too many. Also didn’t want to suggest arguing over technicalities, and agree that my post had that effect. My post could have been more simply put as “handguns are bad, too, this is an example of why.”
“If being pissed off is a mental illness, we have a big fucking problem.”
It is, and we do. Sanity is a fragile fragile state, one that few of us are ever more than ‘close to’. Being angry, being hungry, being drunk, being ill, all shift our perceptions, assumptions, and priorities. Most of us have never thought of ourselves as ‘mad with hunger’, but many of us have binge-eaten. Nearly everyone who drinks has done ‘something stupid’ while drunk. For many of us our failure to be consistently sane is small and seems to have small consequences, but they are instances of insanity nonetheless. Anyone who is sure that he or she is ‘always sane’ is deluding themselves, and there is a good chance you are mistaken if you think that you are fully sane at this moment. Approximating sanity, and returning to sanity when we slip, is hard work. This is work that we all have to do, no one gets to slide through life in a consistently sane state. And it makes it harder for people to do their necessary work when ‘mental illness’ is seen as an aberration that only happens to other people. No one would think that they are special people immune to sprains or broken bones – thinking that one is immune to ‘mental illness’ is just as foolish.
Defining mental illness so loosely that “being angry” qualifies makes the term uselessly broad, IMO anyways.
@ericgarth, 23
Insanity and irrationality are not synonyms. Being irrational is not a mental illness.
Call it mental illness, call it terminal criminal stupidity, call it just another day in the USA, whatever. It’s a prime example of what Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore postulated in their work on memes (old meaning). That a cultural replicator can act as a parasite in the same sense that Dicrocoelium dendriticum modifies the behaviour of ants to ensure its own propagation (remember that D d knows nothing about this). The NRA is not the parasite, it is merely a vector in the life cycle of a self- sustaining “life” form- the idea of the gun, and I’m not even sure that that is the real replicator.
you know I hate to say it and it will probably only fan the flames but it is sunday and going to get real hot and I have heard it again. This reaction to a comment that contained mental illness in it.
mental illness / sanity is not a black and white thing it is some kind of changing continuum that probably would turn back on itself like a Möbius strip or Klein bottle if there were some way to graph it. There are many people who function most of the time while never being recognized as suffering from mental illness by anyone including themselves. there have been many who were imprisoned and treated very poorly because they were judged as being suffering from some kind of mental illness.There is much of it that is culturally defined as used. There still is confusion, fear and negative judgment around mental illness but the defensive reaction I find just a little bit superior sounding almost a superior sounding as “judging” people as being mentally ill sounds.
Almost every time the term comes up it has the effect of stifling the discussion rather effectively.
why is it singled out for this kind of treatment when other terms that have been used as othering terms are not treated in the same way?
it is boring.
uncle frogy
Regarding some of the criticism to #1’s use of the phrase “mentally ill”, I have found that people usually respond better to criticism delivered calmly without profanity or name-calling. While some no doubt feel righteously angry and may also enjoy vituperating, the offender often is not a troll or a bad person. He/she( they) may have simply misspoke , be uninformed,etc. we call be more helpful, I think, by calmly stating our opinion than by railing against such people. I know I have learned a lot here from people talking quietly to me. The ragers, while perhaps correct did little to inform me. Of course those who are clearly trolls must be taken down. I did some research on trolls and was surprised by the damage they do. I understand now the enmity toward them. But I think we should beware of false positives. It damages the innocent and ths blog.
Nice tone trolling.
Please be aware this happens every time somebody gets killed by guns. The first thing unthinking people say is “mental illness”. Some of us are very tired of responding calmly, as it does nothing, and the behavior is repeated ad nauseum. Like being calm means you don’t mean what you say.
@27 uncle f: good one. Needs saying.
unclefrogy @27
Bullshit it’s being singled out. Also, glad you’re simply bored by it. Me, I feel safe because shit like this doesn’t stand long here. I have a mental illness. I am not shooting people. It’s good to know that people have my back and don’t think of me as some as-yet killer just one tick away from snapping. Having that constantly shoved down my throat by the general public does more than just bore me.
hotspurphd @28
So-the-fuck-what? Do you think they stopped to consider the feelings of mentally ill people? No, this type of response isn’t for them. It’s for those affected by them. If they don’t like it, maybe they should think for two fucking seconds about who their words affect.
The only thing vaguely unusual in this case is that the killer was the mother and she did not also kill her husband with the gun bought to “protect her family”. If the killer had been a husband, an ex-husband, or boyfriend with a gun he bought for “protection” killing his wife (ex-wife, girlfriend) and children followed by suicide or suicide-by-cop, this would only be a local story and just another day in America.
I am absolutely baffled that a person can get so angry that she murders her children, and you’re arguing as to whether the term mentally ill is appropriate.
OF COURSE she’s mentally ill! I mean really, we all feel emotions, but to have such poor impulse control that you murder your children is obviously a mental problem.
There is a line between simple anger and mental illness, but once you’ve murdered your children that line has most certainly been crossed.
Again, that this is even being discussed is mindboggling.
kdemello1980 @33: A mental illness is a disorder that has been diagnosed by a professional after careful examination. It’s not a catchall for anything that strikes you as “crossing a line”. Using it that way is both lazy and offensive.
Why? Because mental illness is a hugely broad category and to say “Mental illness!” is to make those of us with mental illnesses into scary murderous boogeymen.
Hi, I have depression and anxiety. I’m not going to fucking murder you. If you’d stop shitting on me, I’d rather appreciate that.
@31
OK You are someone who suffers from a mental illness so what. Is that harsh? You are not unique many do also. Why should everyone refrain from discussing that in public especially in cases like this one here.
One of the most difficult things about mental illness is that it happens inside of people and is often never expressed . It is very isolating people exist within their own minds without contact with others. How is that furthered by making some words and subjects off limits?
look this is close to the anniversary of “Stonewall” when the homosexual community decided to take back “queer” from those that feared and hated them and claim it.
It ain’t black and white, human reality, is full of irrational thought, misperception, misconception, emotional reactions, illusion and delusion all interacting within a human physical body that is subject to numerous sensations. just where anyone is on any day or hour changes.
I refuse to take the judgment of others to heart any longer (not that easy a thing to do)
uncle frogy
if you (generic you) can not see the many ways how someone (including yourself) could get so far out of it and lost inside their own mind and internal reality and so over come with rage to end up committing some act like this then I say it is you who are being judgemental.
uncle frogy
@ 33 kdemello1980
Response here http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php
@ 17 & 18 Saganite, a haunter of demons
Here is one such source I’ve used recently.
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
This part is particularly useful.
http://www.shootingtracker.com/Main_Page
I also have mental illness: chronic depression. It’s bad enough that I am not quite able to function consistently in a job and I am living on disability benefits. I live in Western Europe, obviously, not anywhere near America.
I am not offended if mental illness is mentioned in a crime/tragedy like this. It is clear to me that mental illnesses certainly CAN be a contributing factor. I am convinced that in almost all cases of family murders and such it does play a role.
To say that a lot of murders happen because of mental illness in one or more of the parties concerned (which I believe is true) does NOT mean that everyone with a mental illness will commit (or is at risk of committing) murder and violence.
A cow is a beast with four legs. Not all four legged beasts are cows.
I would never (kill someone I love). Then again, I would not trust myself with a gun either. I am scared that if I had one in my hands, it would quickly start to look as an easy way out.
Access to these murder/suicide tools need to be restricted. Mental illness is not rare and even mentally healthy people may snap; it baffles me that Americans are even still having this debate. Good luck.
As a mentally ill queer person (really hate using that word at all, but I use it for emphasis), I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t use stonewall as a hammer to justify fucking over mentally ill people.
@kdemello1980 #33
I am mentally Ill.
One of the things that crippled me the most in my life, is that people around me had no fucking understanding of what mental illness.
The stigma is a huge barrier for mentally ill people to get treatment.
Your casual use of “mentally ill” in association with violence reinforces a fucked up understanding of mental illness THAT HARMS PEOPLE.
It’s ok if you didn’t know, but now you do, so please stop using it.
Except mental illness is fucking constantly used as a scapegoat to deny any other factor whatsoever with this sort of shooting, especially when the shooter is white.
The Charleston Church shooter (a virulent racist) and the planned parenthood shooter (a religious nut) both got written off as mentally ill and had the whole “specifically shooting black people/abortion providers” part completely subsumed. Then people turn around and use this as a justification to discriminate and target the mentally ill like you or I, because obviously it’s the mental illness that made them shoot others, not the racism/religious fanaticism.
Also, as F.O. said, the whole “Mentally ill people are violent loons that should be locked up” nonsense that gets us abused and killed is only helped by the fucking need to assert that every criminal ever (or the white ones anyways) is mentally ill.
Mental illness is not the problem here. Easy access to guns and ammo is the problem. If that woman had not had a gun, she would not have been able to kill anyone.
Vivec, I am convinced that almost all criminals (> 90%) are indeed mentally ill. Regardless of their colour.
That doesn’t mean that all mentally il people are criminals.
Of course the general public doesn’t make that distinction, or think logically about this. Perhaps they can be educated?
To deny that people who commit criminal acts may have mental illness seems also counterproductive in my view.
Rabies is a disease that often makes its victims violent.
If you wouldn’t react to a mass shooting by saying: “They obviously had rabies!” then you really shouldn’t be claiming they “obviously” had a mental illness.
And I’m convinced almost all criminals (> 90%) flew down from the moon on a rocket made of cheese. It’s about as plausible as yours.
And I think that is a highly unlikely claim that you almost certainly don’t have enough evidence to back up.
Either way, you’re making that claim in a world that does accept your claim, and uses it as an excuse to discriminate against us. It’s not some value-free thing you can just throw out there and wash your hands of when people use it to justify violence and oppression.
Even if a mentally ill person commits a such a crime, it’s a gross over simplification to say that the mental illness caused the crime. Unless they’re insane, which is a legal, not clinical term, they are still capable of understanding right from wrong, and choosing not to kill people. People who can tell right from wrong, i.e. not legally insane, are perfectly capable of choosing wrong without mental illness. And since only a competent medical authority in a position to observe and diagnose an alleged, can determine either mental illness or insanity, or decide what role that played in the crime.
I think the mental illness claim is desirable for some because it displaces both the attacker and the speaker from the act. If the attacker is highly places socially, they can be excused (they couldn’t help it.). They also no longer reflect on their class, (white male in many such cases, though not here), so we don’t have to feel like it’s something we could do, because we’re not (presumably) mentally ill. As explained above, this winds up harming mentally ill people by associating them with the criminal acts instead. Normal people don’t shoot people, only mentally ill people do.
There is a correlation between certain mental health diagnosis and criminal activity. Still doesn’t make it okay to assume criminals are mentally ill.
@uncle froggy
So… are you suggesting we should start telling people that we’re probably going to start murdering people some time soon in order to reclaim the idea that mental illness is uniquely responsible for all murders that aren’t explicitly committed by some hated out group?
“Hey guys, I’m a young, queer, probable murderer, looking for friendship and a good time. How’re you all doing? What do you do for fun around here?”
I’m having some trouble with making that work.
@Olav
To assert that people who commit criminal acts do have mental illnesses is counterproductive. For one thing, what’s a person’s motive? Oh, they’re mentally ill? Motive sorted. Because why do you need a motive if the perpetrator’s simply mentally ill?
For another, I have anxiety and depression. I am 30. I was diagnosed at 29, about five months ago, even though I’ve known for years, for more than a decade, that there was a serious issue that was getting in the way of my actually living a full life. So why didn’t I seek treatment sooner? Why didn’t I speak to someone and get it diagnosed sooner? Because it’s a mental illness, and mentally ill people are dangerous! So if I am mentally ill, then that means that I’m dangerous! So I’m obviously just not, and I’ll keep on pushing through, and dealing with it alone, and dropping entirely out of my social life, and losing jobs, and losing partners, and losing everything because then I don’t have to be one of those dangerous people. So, seriously, fuck your “>90% of criminals are mentally ill” bullshit, unless you have a single, solitary fact to actually back that up, and fuck your support of the narrative that keeps us afraid of seeking help.
Part of socializing children is teaching them to control their anger and to use appropriate ways to deal with frustration and the world’s unfairness when you don’t or can’t get your way. A not insignificant number of Americans, and especially men (again, the main unusual feature of this story is that it was the mother who killed), have somehow learned that violence is an appropriate response when the wife/girlfriend wants to leave. Guns just make it easier to be successful in that violent response.
Those who are automatically and without evidence blaming mental illness for this case:
You don’t realize how much like right-wing demagogues you sound right now. Instead of the gays and the Mozlemz, it’s the mentally ill.
“She killed her children… of course it has to be mental illness” falls very, very short of the freethinking/skepticism/rationality mark.
And doesn’t even come within a mile of compassion and empathy.
Olav, #45
“Convinced” implies you have encountered ample evidence for your statement.
Wonder why you’re sitting on it.
Vivec
it is not me that assumes that using the word mental illness is a judgement of good or bad and is used to fuck over those who suffer .
Nor am I using the example of stonewall as some kind of hammer to beat people over head either. I used stonewall because it was current and charged as an example I thought would be clear where someone took a term of derision used against them and claimed it as their own seems like I remember chants of “were queer and we”re here!” at the time That was what I was thinking of.
It can be the same with all who suffer from mental illness. shame and shame of being is not a sign of health.
uncle frogy
@uncle frogy
I’m too young to know for sure, so I’ll just ask instead of asserting – was it automatically assumed, before the stonewall riots, that, whenever anyone committed a crime, the reason for their committing that crime was that they were gay?
“Killed 15 people? Huh. Must’ve been gay.”
Well, we still have some people who equate being gay with being a pedophile… just as many people assume mental illness is a sign of being dangerous. There are suggestions each mass shooting of making it so ‘mentally ill’ people can’t buy guns because people assume mental illness = dangerous.
@57
no it was assumed that queers were bad, sinful, degenerate and perverse from the natural order and against the will of god, could not be patriotic citizens and in a word evil dangerous and just barely people. who might be tolerated only if they lived there perverse life in complete secrecy and did not ever bring it up or be noticed in any way.
not so very different from the hay days of Bedlam and incarceration for being mentally ill.
uncle frogy
So what you’re saying, unclefrogy, is that you *didn’t* hear people saying that every murderer was gay… whereas you pretty much hear that anyone who commits murder while white is mentally ill.
Annoyingly, I knew that and still asked. That’s what you get for engaging with a topic when angry.
Anyway, I think the fact that the constant accusation of mental illness was a major factor in my refusing to make any effort to seek treatment for over a decade is a good enough reason to justify calling it out, even if it is boring to some people, without it needing to be significantly different from the bigotry against gay people.
Oh, I came up with a fun slogan for us to chant, btw:
“We’re mentally ill! And we’re on a hill! Come to terms with the fact that mental illness does not automatically make us a danger to your or anyone else, and that people without mental illnesses are far more likely to harm us and others than we are them.”
Catchy, huh?
sure guys just make up anything you want I meant there is no way I can keep up and like I said it was going to be, it is hot and uncomfortable here just now so endurance and energy is low.
you need a bad guy use me as a stand in to until someone else shows up just like usual.
uncle frogy
@62
the rhythm needs a little work.
my problem was not identifying what the problem was because I was pretty sure there nothing that could be done about it anyway .
uncle frogy
There are some really big problems with the whole “mental illness” argument. What does that mean? Are they broken? If so how? What does getting to apply that label gain you?
On a personal level I have a DSM-V and Pubmed open in front of me and I would like people applying mental illness to get specific. Right now. On a less personal level…
You want to desperately have something you can point to as a solution for how someone could do something so terrible but even if you do decide to put them into the “mentally ill” box you still have to figure how to deal with it. I have a better question, are what they are natural to the human species? If you can have cults decide to kill themselves then parents deciding to kill themselves and their family with them is not much of a stretch. The atrocities omitted during wars are natural to what we are, why is this such a stretch? Humans doing awful shit is totally natural to what we are and the convenience of tossing the “mentally ill” label gains you nothing. You still have to figure out who to do with humans doing fucked up shit as a part of what we naturally are.
A lot of what we call “mentally ill” is not a state of brokenness. It’s a state consistent with how our minds work based on lots of factors that we really need to understand really badly. The application of “illness” is arbitrary in ways that hides this and lets society get the heebie jeebies about the term in many ways that screw society up. Besides the diagnostic criteria it’s basically that the features are harmful to the patient and other people. On many many fronts placing blame on a label is utterly fucking useless for more than making yourself feel better about something.
Saad@#11:
By far the stupidest thing in contemporary American political conversation is the notion that having a firearm at home makes the home safer. I mean holy shit.
I just wanted to repeat that. Word.
You’re less safe when you have a gun in your house. It’s a public safety issue. When I run into someone who says “I keep a gun to protect myself” I ask them if they have a fire extinquisher and 1st aid kit in the kitchen, because that’s way, way, way better.
Is going to war a mental illness?
Is fucking up the environment a form of mental illness?
Is racism a mental illness?
Is religion a mental illness?
“Illness” is something that happens to you, it’s not something you are expected to choose about.
The problem with calling something a “mental illness” is that it weakens the personal responsibility of the person in question and lessens the accountability for their actions and the ideas and culture that enable that action.
almost all criminals (> 90%) are indeed mentally ill
Well, that’s a bit of circular reasoning that comes from the way psychology diagnoses are done.
Being a criminal is, by definition sociopathic. So, criminals are sociopaths. “Sociopathy” is no longer a thing – now we talk about “antisocial personality disorder” but they’re the same thing. And if you look in DSM (5) it says antisocial personality disorder:
Right. So yeah most criminals are by definition exhibiting antisocial personality disorder but it’s completely circular. You actually don’t know what the disorder is you just know what the list of symptoms are. Psychology has a severe problem with epistemology of disorders. A disorder implies that there’s something wrong with the person, but an inventory of behaviors doesn’t actually argue what’s wrong with them, it just says they exhibit some behaviors. Is everyone who exhibits those behaviors antisocial? Is that the “disorder”? Or is there some underlying thing wrong with the person (i.e.: the disorder) that causes the behaviors? Is there an “asshole disorder” and if not, why not?
Other articles regarding this tragedy have stated the mother had “a history of mental illness.”
I’m with Brony.
If you want to diagnose ‘mental illness’, be specific.
Okay, if that’s true and she has a history of mental illness, you still cannot assume that it was directly causative. As your very first go to explanation for why this happened. That idea has at its root that mental illness IS the reason this happens. At most, in most cases, it can be a contributing factor, but could very will be relevant. You would have to know her medical history and be a qualified medical authority to make that call.
Clarification: it sounded like I said that in most cases, mental illness is a contributing factor. I mean that in most cases WHERE it’s a factor, it’s at most a contributing factor, compounded by many other and likely more important factors.
To those using the “mental illness” canard:
What does it take to become a rapist? Does it require being a drooling masturbator walking down the street, looking for someone to select as a victim? Or does it only require saying, “Let’s just finish…” when the other person doesn’t want to?
Anyone is capable of rape. Everyone is just one bad decision away from being a rapist.
In the same way, what does it take to become a murderer? Does it require being a drooling sociopath with a knife, looking for someone to kill? Or does it only require saying, “Why YOU…!!!” when having an argument?
Anyone is capable of murder. Everyone is just one bad decision away from being a murderer. Christy Sheats’s bad decision was
picking up that gun while angrybuying that gun.(Usually, I use that analogy in the other direction, using murder to explain how anyone is capable of rape….)
@Gwen, handgun violence does outstrip all other forms of firearm violence. I can’t recall the website offhand, but the FBI does collect such statistics.
The reason is simplicity itself, handguns are small, easily concealed, trivial to handle and use.
As for comments on mental illness and anger, most mentally ill people, as in the overwhelming majority, never harm another person. Angry people, on the other hand, are infamous for harming others.
@45 Olav
What would such education be based on? Is there a set of rigorous criteria for diagnosing mental illness in specific criminal acts that I wasn’t aware of?
Even if you could shoehorn every criminal under one diagnosis or another, this would not make it logical to ascribe causality to mental illness as though it were demon possession.
The terrifying thing is that both she and her husband were 2A and extremist Christian fanatics and his twitter stream is as bad as hers. The argument not only involved the daughters but also her husband who scuttled away (implication deliberate) to safety.
According to the New York Daily News police have been called multiple times to the address.
I’ll post a link to his twitterstream but will understand if it needs to be deleted.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonsheats
Anyone who can’t imagine murdering someone just lacks imagination in my mind. The worst murderers are still human most often with just the same brain plasticity, desires, motives, but who rationally or irrationally decide to use violence to attempt to solve their problems. Anger, fear, impulsive behaviour, gun culture and conditioned violent behaviour are the root of the problem, not only specific diagnosis.
In discussions of mental illness as related to crime, let’s not forget that temporary insanity seems to be a thing. Some (not going to speculate about numbers) people who commit a crime while/because they are not sane at that moment are completely sane before and after that event. (But, again, not everyone who loses their sanity temporarily then automatically commits a crime. You can break your arm from skiing, doesn’t mean when skiing you’ll break your arm.)
That said, there are certain kinds of crime where if you argue that the perpetrator could have been perfectly sane all the time, then the term “sane” would seem to lose all meaning. (If that person shaking, with high temperature and a rash, is completely healthy, then what does healthy even mean anymore? They’re clearly sick, even if I have no idea what their sickness is, and even though not every sickness has symptoms even remotely like these.)
Oh, and as for defining mental illness as something that only ever happens to a minority of people (because majority defines healthy), I think that’s at best an oversimplification used because of a lack of understanding of the subject (yes, even experts can have a lack of understanding). A few thousand years ago, I’m pretty sure some things we now know as sickness of some kind were pretty much universal – parasites of some kind maybe, or bad teeth, or whatever. Being universal is not a reasonable synonym for healthy. Normal isn’t a synonym for healthy, which means abnormal is not a synonym for unhealthy. Statistics are not a synonym for understanding. Well, at least outside of particle physics. Particle physics are just weird.
Now for a different point: it’s not that if you buy a handgun, it will end up hurting someone in your family – it’s just more likely than protecting them. Either is rare. And we humans have a piss-poor sense of statistics.
Re the “mental illness” thing*: I can understand why people do it. It isn’t a pleasant thing to think that a mentally healthy human can murder multiple people for no (to us, right now) apparent reason. But the truth is that most murders and most mass shootings are committed by people with no identifiable mental illness. Mentally normal people shoot each other. Including their children. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to accept that.
This is wild speculation, but I think the fact that she shot her children is significant. I think gun lovers are basically people who believe that they should have more power and are frustrated at the limited control they have over the world. And when they get frustrated enough to shoot someone, their victim tends to be someone they have power over. Possibly someone trying to or appearing to try to escape that power. White men have power over everyone so they might shoot anyone. Women only really have greater power within the context of the family, specifically over their children. Note that the husband was able to get out. The daughters were not. Perhaps because, on some level, the shooter thought she had the right to shoot her daughters/property, but not her husband/owner.
*Full disclosure: I’ve been diagnosed with Asperger’s/SPCD so that effects how I look at mental illness and my understanding of the mental state of the mentally “normal”.
@68
I would like to extend that a little and say that we do not know what was going on in this woman’s head either nor do we really know what is going on in any of the other shooters either we just have some behaviors that lead to a them killing a bunch of people. Until we really address people on a personal level we will be just treating symptoms and trying to control behavior. Make no mistake gun violence is a symptom guns are not the cause of the violence. You can’t find out what the problems are when people are waving guns around but taking the fucking guns away wont bring any of the dead back or end violence but it might help reduce the number killed at one time that is about all.
The pain , the anger, the grief will remain as will the delusions and the illusions and the irrationality and the fear and the lies.
there is a big part of the modern world that simple says fuck you figure it out on your own and wants to do nothing at all to help or acknowledge in any but a condescending way
where does the violence come from? are we humans just inherently violent murderous beings doomed to descend into tribal war
uncle frogy
F.O.
THIS, FFS
The constant association of mental illness with violence, and nastiness instead of suffering stops people from seeking help. We will think 100 times before we officially become “one of them”. It also make people think that what they’re suffering isn’t a mental illness because hey, they have no urge to shoot people.
Olav
So tell me, what’S the plausible mechanism by which so many more apparently mentally ill criminals exist in the USA than in Sweden?
What makes black men apparently prone to such high levels of mental illness, but only in the USA?
What’s your mechanism? Where’s your data?
Rowan
That’s actually a fitting analogy and we should react to “was mentally ill” after somebody committed a horrible crime the same way we react to “was gay” after somebody raped a child.
Marcus Ranum
Well, actually they’re not. Most criminals aren’t violent and especially in the USA not being white can make jaywalking into a crime. Also, most career criminals aren’t impulsive and fail to plan ahead. Most criminals are actually trying to be uncaught criminals, often with backup plans.
Gwen Sutton
THIS. Apart from a very few conditions “a history of mental illness” is as much correlated with horrible crime as “a history of throat strep”.
+++
I’d like to know how the “criminals must be mentally ill” people explain dictatorships and crimes against humanity. Do two digit numbers of a certain population suddenly become mentally ill, willing to rape, torture and kill the folks who were their neighbours last summer and then get cured when the country is restored to less horrible circumstances? What about those who waterboarded people? What about the person who pushed a tube up a man’s ass and shoved mushed food into it in the service of the USA? What about their superiors and comrades who all thought that was an ok thing to do?
+++
I’ll also add another aspect about how harmful “the criminal was mentally ill” is: It let’s people get away with crimes: I have a family member who is both mentally ill AND a complete asshole. He is totally able to plan ahead. If you don’t know him, he will easily convince you that he’s a nice guy who is in temporary troubles because other people fucked him over. He is very convincing. I don’t know how many people, especially young women he has hurt with this. But once in a while he’ll go too far and the authorities will get involved. He will then spend some time in the psych ward and act most sorry about what he’s done with promises and everything to seek treatment and be a good kid so he’s let off the hook. It wasn’t him who hurt people, it was his mental illness! It’ that very discussion that let’s him get away with this.
It should be noted that “temporary insanity” and “insanity” as a plea do not mean what you think they mean. If I understand correctly, legally a person is “insane” if they can’t understand that their acts are wrong (or right, I suppose.) The example I remember being given is a woman who was convinced that she was the Devil’s lover. One day she was out at a club and a man flirted with her. She decided that he was the Devil, aka her lover. He then went and danced with another woman, at which point she became jealous, went to her car, got her legally obtained gun, and shot her rival. She was not considered insane because she understood perfectly well what she was doing, what the consequences were, and that it was wrong. The bit about being the Devil’s lover was considered irrelevant. Unless the definition and/or precedent have changed, that means that a lot of the cases where the average lay person would consider a crime to have been committed during a moment of insanity are not, legally.
Ok, I propose a new umbrella term for this sort of thing. Not “temporarily insane”. Not “mentally ill” or whatever. The new term is:
homicidally irked.
Please use it from now on so we can avoid all the loaded language and fluff that got connected with the other terms and talk what the real issue is here: gun ownership and usage as a right, not a privilege. If it was treated as a privilege, it would have been normal and usual that few people have them and that you have to pay for that privilege. Tax the gun ownership, make the price of one of them 300$ and a yearly license of owning one expensive as hell. And make the people pay for the license for every gun they own, with tests and all and having to retake the tests for every gun, every year. That way, a lot of homicidally irked people won’t have a gun when they get irked to homicide with.
And as for you people who will shout “But it is a RIGHT not a privilege! It’s right there in the 2nd Amendment!” my answer to that is: “You have the right to own a flintlock pistol and a musket, as part of people militia. You don’t have the right to bear anything newer than that, or even a double-headed axe or head axe.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/29/antonin-scalia-guns_n_1715969.html . Owning and driving a car is a privilege, why is owning a gun any different?
@
jo1storm, the reason is simple enough, since at *least* 1855, the fundamental right to possess and hence, own, a firearm is a fundamental right.
I don’t possess a right to operate a motor vehicle, at all.
I have a right to travel, just not operate the vehicle of travel.
So, if one requires a a test to exercise the right to possess a firearm and operate it, one must needs also possess a right to require the very same tests on religion, irrelgion, speech, lack of speech, etc.
That said, we do have limitations upon certain classes of firearms. That is due to the National Firearms Act. Machine guns, sliencers, disguised firearms and destructive weapons (artillery and bombs), live there. One gets such weapons only if one passes the very same test as one has to pass for a Top Secret security clearance.
As, since 1934, only three crimes have been committed under the NFA, that’s saying a *lot*.
@wzrd1
Does that actually follow?
In closing with jo1storm, I will say just this.
If I want to own a tank, artillery piece or more, I can do so. That the background investigation is intrusive in the extreme is given and rightfully so.
That I’ve passed such investigations repeatedly, likely longer than you’ve been alive is also likely.
That said, the most likely usage that I’d use a firearm in my daily life is, using a firearm barrel, once released from its safe, to prop up a falling window.
I’m a retired soldier and we’ll suffice it to say, I saw my share and a few others share of combat. I’ve even killed,, both with firearm and edged weapon. I’d not grant that experience to my own worst enemy.
Seriously, I’ve drank myself into oblivion on some nights, just to not remember those events in my dreams.
That said, I’m also infamous for throwing a well grown adult man about a room, when suitably enraged.
As such an individual outweighed me by the weight of a sack of Portland Cement, that’s saying something.
That such a state was short lived is also saying something, adrenaline lasts for a short time.
If a reader is confused, I’ll suggest that the reader learn a bit more than their own narrow experience provided, deficiently.
The real world is complex, people are equally complex or simple. Honestly, I approach it as one of complexity, then winnow it down.
Far too many others approach it from a converse and deficient manner.
tldr; My primary weapon was and remains my mind. Increased data only further arms that weapons system.
@Athywren, yep.
The National Firearms Act.
Fully automatic weapons, silencers, destructive weapons are restricted.
Personally, as a man who possesses more firearms than I possess limbs, that’s totally cool, save that we have John Wayne, totally fscking our culture to death.
@85 wzrd1 “That said, we do have limitations upon certain classes of firearms. That is due to the National Firearms Act.”
Why not put the same limitations from National Firearms Act on all (classes of) firearms? What’s the difference, 2nd Amendment wise, from those restricted and those which are not?
wzrd1
This reader isn’t confused, more appalled by your bragging about the violence you have committed, especially since those particular pieces of information do nothing to further the discussion at hand.
wzrd1,
That all sounds really weird. You may think you come across as a shining example of what a good gun owner should be like, but I would definitely feel unsafe around you and your armory of guns.
o_0
Thank you for that personal anecdote. Um.
Oh for fucks sake. To who it may concern: mentally sane people are perfectly capable of doing the most horrible things. That’s all I’m going to say about this chewed up topic. It would be boring if it wasn’t so annoying.
Re: the killing. This is a great tragedy indeed, and it is disheartening to know that it will not change the tiniest thing about gun control in the US. Good luck to you all.
Gilliel@#81:
Antisocial behavior is not necessarily violent. It’s when you go against society’s constraints. Per DSM 5 it can include theft, lying, and abuse, or even self-destructive behavior.
My point is that you can get a psychological diagnosis of disorder very easily because psychologists don’t actually know what disorders are. I do not at all support caling killers disordered, on the basis that they were observed to kill therefore must disordered. Duh, much, psychology?
A diagnosis of a disorder should have predictive power or it should be rejected as circular.
Wzrd1@#87:
So how’s that toxic masculinity working for ya?
rietpluim,
I’d say you’re pessimistic, but I can only agree with this. If a slaughter of almost two dozen 6 and 7-year-olds didn’t change people’s minds, I’m not sure what can.
@Marcus Ranum
That’s consistent with my understanding of DSM diagnosis (I have no medical or mental health training). They’re convenient working labels for collections of symptoms, generally with the clause “but is not better explained by a different diagnosis.” A psychologist is not diagnosing a physiological condition of the brain that is causing specific behavior, they are labeling a package of behavior, that could have many different causes, often unknown, but which often respond favorably to specific treatments.
So it’s circular in the sense that, for instance, APD describes specific kinds of behavior, and is diagnosed by that same behavior, unless a better diagnosis is a better fit. That leads to treatement guidelines, but doesn’t necessarily imply some specific brain state the way a pancreatic cancer diagnosis would describe a specific pancreas condition.
Which still doesn’t mean you can chart a 1:1 relationship between a mental health condition, such as APD, and a specific incidence of behavior, any more than you can connect one hot day to climate. They’re about consistant particular behaviors over time, and a way of describing those behavior patters, but not an implication that it CAUSES a specific action.
Again, I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist, or mental health councilor or any other mental health expert, and everything I said could be wrong, and would be happy to be corrected on any points.
Mental illness, I am against using it because no-one actually knows what it is, in essence it is a description of a group of symptoms not a description of a cause nor of progression nor of effects beyond the currently observed symptoms. This is a major problem because it allows any non-approved behaviour to be classed by the disapproving observer as a mental illness. Such loose diagnosis allows the disruptive actor to avoid responsibility by saying, “I was ill,” it also functions as an inhibitor to people who suffer real problems from seeking help. There is a saying “There but for the grace of God go I,” which I have heard used about depressives or sufferers of bipolar disorder or about schizophrenics or hoarders. The people I have heard use it have sometimes been suffering from similar debilities but do not understand that.
Confession, I have used such an excuse (not that I believed in a deity) and I suffer depressive illness. At times this dysfunction has been serious, indeed life threatening, and at others, as now, it hardly presents at all. Both my parents suffered similar symptoms so there may be some genetic input and, as SNRIs seem to help with extreme episodes, there might be an underlying metabolic problem but there is no way of gauging this. There is also no way of judging whether a run of misfortune will trigger a major onset or will pass by without effect. On the other hand on at least 2 occasions in the past 10 years there was no proximal cause, just a sudden, debilitating episode of inaction, self hatred, destructive thought and circular reasoning.
Given this you might think I would be happy to have depression classed as a chronic illness, but I am not. it is a suite of symptoms that can be treated and which causes debility, saying I’m mad or mentally ill carries with it the understanding that it is incurable and hence seeking treatment is a waste of time.
A problem associated with loose diagnosis is that too often mental illness has been used to describe some socially unacceptable behaviours while excluding from the “Illness” category other equally unacceptable actions; worse, is that still be happens. In the past atheism, homosexuality and libertinism have all been thought of as either mental illness or as symptoms of “mental illness.” On the other hand mentoring (male/male pedophilia) was acceptable, and, as can be attested by English Public Schoolboys, not just amongst the ancient Greeks, In this time there is a nasty habit of calling this sexual action a mental illness as if that excuses anything. In practice it is and always has been a grossly disruptive and damaging behavour harming the victim of the criminal and the society in which it occurs.
This case shows that a fixation on gun ownership for defense or revenge is thought of by many in the USA as unexceptional, indeed normal and it should not be. It should be recognised as a “grossly disruptive and damaging behavour harming the victim of the criminal and the society in which it occurs” but it is not a mental illness. There may be some element of mental disruption enhancing the damaging actions, such as irrational fear or a compulsion to hoard but those are symptoms and did not drive the killer (in this case) to their crime.
http://www.youtube.com/baUmZN5XjTA
Gwen Sutton@97, Broadly speaking, that is what I recall from my course many many yonks ago about psychology. The instructor was quite scathing about the DSM of the day, with the specific criticism that I now recall (paraphrasing) “There are several catch-all diagnosis, so if the behavior doesn’t fall into anything else, it will fall into a catch-all, so ‘they’ always say ‘this person mumble mumble‘.” Embarrassingly, I now cannot recall the “mumble mumble” part — I vaguely recollect it was something like “should see a specialist” or “needs more examination” or similar, with a hint of the “they” getting moar money(which got a laugh, which is perhaps why I remember the incident, however poorly?).
Yes, an enumerated right is equal to all other enumerated right, require a test for one, require a test (potentially) for each and every other enumerated rights.
One misunderstood notion is, we require a license to operate a motor vehicle, but operating a motor vehicle isn’t a right, it is a privilege. Privileges may be administratively revoked, rights require codified law and a court of law to rescind any right.
As for other comments, including “toxic manhood”, I have no idea what you’re going on about. My firearms stay under lock and key, they’re loaded only on the range or when I’m hunting and honestly, it’s been a decade since I last went deer hunting. I’m less violent than a lawn chair, I had my fill in the military and two wars.
I’m also firmly of the view that violence is the first refuge of the incompetent and I’m far from being incompetent, John Wayne kind of crap was checked at the door of the airport that I first deployed from.
Hence, the only creature that might be in danger for its life would be either a rabbit or a deer, in the appropriate season and with the appropriate hunting license.
As for the rest of my firearms, they’re for competition only. I earn cash prizes for marksmanship, that is the only purpose for those firearms. They’re damnably expensive, so they’re secured in a safe. The only reason I currently possess ammunition sufficient for a basic combat load for one rifle is, the ammunition was on sale.
For the record, a combat load isn’t a hell of a lot of rounds.
National Match ammunition is expensive.
Now, do please excuse me. I have to go clean my… Glasses. ;)
Things that can cause harm stay locked up. The only thing I’m interested in being dangerous to is a buffet line.
To quote myself from post 89:
@85 wzrd1 “That said, we do have limitations upon certain classes of firearms. That is due to the National Firearms Act.”
Why not put the same limitations from National Firearms Act on all (classes of) firearms? What’s the difference, 2nd Amendment wise, from those restricted and those which are not?
Oh FFS, that comment is just as dumb-ass, in that it implicitly dismisses out-of-hand the very possibility of mental illness as a mitigating factor. Jumping immediately to the mental illness excuse or precluding the mental illness explanation–in a vacuum, both are equally stupid.
No one has said that it’s impossible, or even unlikely, that mental illness could be a factor. They’ve (or at least I), have said that we cannot assume it was, that describing it as a cause is an deceptive oversimplification, that it’s at most a contributing factor, and that the rush to assume mental illness as an immediate primary cause is actively harmful to people with mental illness.
#6 attributed it to tempers and the availability of guns. Which might be correct. But mental illness might also be correct. Or an admixture of all-three. Who knows? The best response to the hair-trigger mental illness defense is to point out its presence, or its absence, cannot be ascertained by non-experts over the internet.
“woman shoots daughters after a fight” gives you two facts:
-there were guns
-“tempers” were flaring up
“Mental illness” is an additional factor for which there is
-no evidence of its presence
-no evidence of its causality.
So it’s quite a different kettle of fish.
As someone else said: You wouldn’t jump to “she got rabies”.
That’s just dumb. That’s quite a different kettle of fish. Mental illness, unlike rabies, is a plausible speculation when it comes to infanticide. (Or rather, if it is rabies, it is a form of mental illness caused by rabies, so back to where we started.) You have no business diagnosing mental illness over the internet– and you have every reason to call out someone who does–but you have no reason to dismiss it cavalierly. Because it is fashionable to do so. It is just as dumb to speculate that it wasn’t a factor as it is to speculate that it was, absent more information than was given.
Yes there is, if there is no direct evidence to support the claim. If the evidence changes due to later information, conclusions can be changed. To presuppose mental illness is just plain useless, and should be challenged.
Rabies does not cause mental illness. It causes encephalitis. While it causes an altered mental state, that’s because of physical damage to the brain that is caused by inflammation.
My anxiety and depression aren’t because an outside infectious vector. It’s partly genetic, partly lived experiences. Someone can’t bite you and transmit anxiety or OCD.
We are also not dismissing it cavalierly. We’re appropriately irritated that EVERY DAMN TIME someone who is white goes out and murders people, that suddenly the answer is “mental illness!”. If they were brown, they’d be ‘terrorists’, not ‘mentally ill’. If they were black, they’d probably be called gang members.
And once again, mental illness is so damned broad a category as to be entirely useless to speculate about. It just works to make people with mental illnesses into scary murderous boogeymen. So therefore, FUCKING PISS OFF.
@Bill Buckner
I’m fairly sure it’s only infanticide when they’re infants.
Of course I do. Until I have solid evidence that no only was that person mentally ill but also that their mental illness played a significant role in what they did that is the only reasonable and logical suggestion.
Why on earth should I entertain an idea that not only is presented without further evidence but also has a nasty marginalising side effect?
You are misrepresenting me. I never suggested that you should “entertain the idea.” Where did you come up with that? In fact I was clear that it is unreasonable. I never suggested that one should diagnose or speculate that mental illness is a cause. Since I am not suggesting that, and never suggested that you or anyone should entertain the idea, it is utterly fucking irrelevant that there is no evidence.* What I am saying is that it is bullshit to take some faux high-road. It is no dumber to speculate that it was mental illness (which is plausible) than it is to speculate that it was not mental illness, but temper + guns only, which is also plausible.
Given the lack of information– you are wrong. I repeat that you have no reason to dismiss cavalierly, the possibility of mental illness. You only have business dismissing the diagnosis of mental illness.
* Aside: This is also a red herring, for what evidence would you accept for mental illness from a crime report? Would she have had to have been heard screaming “make the voices stop!”?
I stand corrected, thank you. I guess the correct term is filicide.
While I’m just a physicist, but that’s splitting hairs to me. If something causes a pathology in your mental state, be it structural, chemical, viral or bacterial, I’d call that a mental illness. But I’ll not argue the point. My larger point stands, that, in my opinion the “They obviously had rabies!” comeback is a piss-poor rebuttal.
…wow, a gun thread which wasn’t derailed by people who wanted to quibble over the technicalities of guns. Instead, it got derailed by somebody who wanted to diagnose mental illness remotely on no evidence. Does that count as a win?
Why? What are the statistics, and who correlated them?
There is no reason to cavalierly include mental illness into the discussion. It is utterly presuppositional. Nothing is wrong to wait, and splash damage occurs, which you seem utterly indifferent to, by presupposing its existence without evidence.
“You can’t prove there’s no such thing as god.”
Sigh. Let me try to be clear. What I wrote was, the two statements:
S1: Two young women murdered by a mentally disturbed mother who had no business owning firearms.
S2: If being pissed off is a mental illness, we have a big fucking problem.
Jesus wept. This is awful. There was an argument, a pretty ferocious one by the sound of it, and where tempers flare, and guns are handy, this happens.
Are equally speculative. One presupposes mental illness. One presupposes that the woman was not mentally ill, and had nothing more than a serious case of being pissed off. (Both are in agreement that the availability of firearms was tragically crucial.)
S2 is not better than S1.
They are both plausible and could be unobjectionable statements with very little qualification:
S1′: .. by a possibly mentally disturbed mother
s2′: possibly no more than being pissed off with easy access to fire arms
According to this article in a study of about 300 examples of filicide in England and Wales mental illness was involved n 60% of cases of mothers killing a child and 27% of fathers.
hotspurphd@117 that may say as much about the differences in the number of men versus women being diagnosed with mental health issues as whether mental health issues are involved in child murder.
What article? To embed a link, try this <a = “url of link”>description of link</a> which gives: Anger causes violence.
I define plausible as greater than and 1 out of three or 33%. Under that, I call it possible.
Where is YOUR evidence to show that this is the case. Example to refute you, a New Zealand report that only <5% of the murderers were considered mentally ill.
Sorry, I forgot the link:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058981
The study found that there was more mental illness among parents who killed their children than in other homicides and MI was also more common infilicide than in the general population.
The New Zealand report study only homicides not filicide so is not relevant to this discussion.
hotspurphd, next time you miiiight want to read more of the article.
The study say that the mothers involved who had a history of mental illness had primarily affective disorders, but I note that the abstract does not include information on the general age of the child nor the particular presence of post-partum depression. It does note, however, that fathers are more likely to kill their children.
More data:http://www.jaapl.org/content/35/1/74.full
This article includes the results of numerous studies. They show overwhelmingly, much more than the UK study, that MI is very often present among those who kill their children. They are often psychotic, as I expected. Further, there is a high rate of suicide among these parents. These parents are not just “pissed off”. I remember a woman in Texas some years ago who drowned her five young children in a bathtub . She was psychotic, believing that she was saving them form some demonic force.
The prevalence of serious mental disorders has been noted often in studies of maternal filicide, with depression and psychosis reported most often.5–7,9,12,29,38,40,60,61,76,78,79,83,89,90 Resnick5 found that 67 percent of the 88 filicidal mothers were psychotic and that major depression and schizophrenia/psychosis were more common in mothers than in fathers. McKee and Shea78 noted that of the 20 women in their sample, 40 percent had diagnosed psychotic or paranoid disorders and 25 percent had major depression at the time of the offense. In the study by Bourget and Gagné,12 67 percent of the 27 filicidal mothers had a diagnosis of major depressive disorder and 15 percent had diagnosed schizophrenia. Lewis and Bunce79 reported that the most common diagnoses of the 55 filicidal women in their sample were schizophrenia (48%), major depressive disorder with psychotic features (34.5%), and personality disorder (67%). In a review of the psychiatric history of 10 mothers who had committed filicide‐suicide, Hatters Friedman et al.61 found evidence of depression or depressive symptoms in 70 percent of the women and of psychosis in 30 percent.
hotspurphd, next time you miiiight want to read more of the article.
In the majority of cases, mental illness was not a feature of filicide.
Yes, I indicated that it was present in a majority of mothers but not fathers.
Rowan
Further the article says not in a majority in the whole sample of men and women but that Mi was over-represented in the filicide group, I.e. , more prevalent than in other homicides and in the gen. population. It doesn’t have to be a majority to be more prevalent and therefore an important factor in the filicide. You might read the article and thnk about what these numbers mean.
If you look at my second ref. #123, you will see that a majority of filicides involve MI.
Alright, reading further into the actual study itself (sorry, I’m used to just seeing abstracts and the article being behind a paywall)… Most of the mothers were single, young, and the victims were under or around a year, and most of the mothers were also suffering depression.
But this, to me, is equally telling and vitally important.
So… is it *really* that they’re more likely because mentally ill… or are they more likely to be in desperate social straits?
Rowen,
Both?
Look at my second reference. Many studies .
Commenting on my phone – page blocked on this location’s net – so sorry if I missed something.
Given anger is a more acceptable trait for men than women – more likely reinforced – if mental illness is present in more women than men, but shows more instances from men, doesn’t that suggest anger is still more likely – assuming anger in other cases, which might not be safe – than mmental illness?
Has there been a study about violent crime and the absence of mental illness?
Saad, to respond to your snark directly, any study about violent crime and the absence of mental illness is as a corollary also a study about violent crime and the presence of mental illness, since the two are complementary.
</pedant>
Here are some key facts about MI:
http://www.iccd.org/keyfacts.html#young
It’s would be very hard to know how often MI is associated with violence,filicide, and any homicide since MI is often undiagnosed. The prevalence of MI in the US is about 18%. So if a study shows the rate of MI in homicides is, say, 5%, it is probably much higher since MI is so underdiagnosed.
Again, if the rate were 40% among parents who kill their children that would be 8 times the rate of MI in the 5% study. All we can say about MI in a case of violence is that MI May be involved in a homicide and is very likely a factor in 40_60 % of filicides.
Oh, and the not guilty by reason of insanity defense(NGRI) , the fact that a person is judged guilty and sent to prison doesn’t mean they aren’t mentally ill. The woman who drowned her 5 children in a bathtub to save then from a demonic force was clearly psychotic but the jury didn’t buy that and did not find her NGRI and she was sent to prison. Later she was finally sent to a psych hospital.
Just highlighting the extreme amount of data on which this is based…
It’s also not clear to me when the diagnosis was made: before or after the deed.
It seems dangerous to conclude that the absence of mental illness coinciding with a violent crime means the criminal committed the act due to the absence of mental illness. I can see this stigmatizing a lot of the mentally healthy.
Saad
28 June 2016 at 1:54 pm
It seems dangerous to conclude that the absence of mental illness coinciding with a violent crime means the criminal committed the act due to the absence of mental illness. I can see this stigmatizing a lot of the mentally healthy.
? That’s really funny. Showing how logic can lead to an absurdity. Makes the point I guess that we shouldn’t say that MI is over represented in cases of filicide even if it is true because it stigmatizes the mentally ill.
#132 Giliell
Good point. The sample sizes are small. They are consistent though in that article. I am looking at a dissertation which looks at 67 studies. I’ll report what I find later.
This dissertation:https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/93331/content/tmp/package-2OEVhE/Jackson_asu_0010E_11274.pdf
Reviews 66 studies of filicide from 1970 to 2007 but does not provide enough data to assess the prevalence of filicide or MI among parents who commit it. However if you scan the Mental Illness section starting on age 163 you will see high rates among studies(40%-60%) and many references to psychiatric symptoms and treatment of the parents prior to filicide.
While violence may not be more prevalent among the mentally ill, it is more prevalent in parents who kill their children. That at least seems clear, whatever the true prevalence is.
And or course, desperate circumstances will exacerbate MI. And certain conditions, like solitary confinement, will cause psychosis it seems in most people.
Sorry. Testing. Trying to embed link as suggested. Wth my iPad .angercausesviolence
If this doesn’t work, what am I doing wrong.
anger causes violence
Some follow up reporting [Trigger warning: murder, suicide]
New details emerge of mom who shot, killed 2 daughters
Jason Sheats: ‘Christy wanted me to suffer’
Key points –
*The killer had been treated for depression and admitted to a private mental health institution three times.
*The police responded to calls about domestic disputes 14 times over the last 4 years at the house.
*The killer was separated from her husband and children.
*The killer was denied a CHL (concealed carry license).
*The killer did not buy the gun, but inherited it.