[Sometimes psychotic]

The Mind of the Mass Murderer | Psychiatric Times

So this was interesting to me....its a free article but I believe requires registration...

Anyway this is Allen Frances who generally thinks we've gone too far in labeling people as mentally ill in that many of them are having entirely normal reactions to life events. He's commenting on the work of another guy a forensic psychiatrist James Knoll whose work is in the gray box in the link. Mostly he talks about an attitude issue where the murderers feel the world is unfair to them...

In the final paragraph we get sort of a shrug regarding mental illness as he says its controversial and hard to classify and represents a full spectrum from no mental illness to sz/psychosis.

So what I get from this is the overall attitude of the person toward the world is so much more important and consistent than any sort of mental illness. I wonder why when we have news reports we don't talk about changing people's sense of entitlement rather than the usual forced meds and gun control---ie basic restrictions of human rights for people who are not guilty of being anything other than being sick are more palatable than any sort of look into the mirror for the country and how we teach our kids. Given that this sort of thing happens a lot less in other counties it's clear that there is a cultural component and its only getting worse...

I'm just so tired of everyone assuming everything has to do with psychosis---take this latest guy---he was autistic and a pdoc at one point offered him risperidone---which is often prescribed for people with autism to control outbursts etc but now there is this huge implication that he may have been psychotic because he was offered but refused an antipsychotic.

I understand the human mind has this tendency to label people and things and look for patterns but it's about as accurate as racial profiling....if you want to see a pattern you will find it simply by looking harder at a certain group....

Here is a quote from the article...
The frequency of mental disorders in mass murderers is controversial because it is not clear where to draw the line between ‘bad’ and ‘mad.’ The paranoia exists on a spectrum of severity. Some clearly do not meet criteria for any mental disorder and often may justify their acts on political or religious grounds. Others have the frank psychotic delusions of schizophrenia. Many perpetrators are in the middle, gray zone where psychiatrists will disagree about the relative contributions of moral failure versus mental affliction.” - See more at: The Mind of the Mass Murderer | Psychiatric Times

[Travelinglady]

I agree. This article makes a lot of sense to me from what I have read about young mass murderers, like the recent guy in California.