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Comment by orionblastar | Hacker News Reader

You are right, and it was never corrected.

You will find that most if not all of the homeless became that way after they became mentally ill and there was no or very little support available for them.

If you want to end homelessness you have to bring back a mental health system that supports the mentally ill, helps them make house payments, and can train them for new jobs when they lose them.

All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent. This is, of course, not true. But news media makes popular opinion out there. If something is popular, it does not make it true.

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All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent.

If you factor out drug use, the mentally ill population isn't more dangerous than anyone else.

I don't think that the media intentionally vilifies the mentally ill. Instead, I think that people in general seek mental illness as a partial explanation for extreme violent behavior. "He must be one sick fuck." It's much easier to explain human badness in terms of illness than to confront the more complex truths: (a) sometimes good or average people do bad things, and (b) some people are just horrible.

If you start concluding that all extremely violent people are mentally ill (which is probably false) and use the flawed (A -> B) -> (B -> A) thinking that passes for logic among many people, you start thinking of mentally ill people as all potentially violent.

I think that people in general seek mental illness as a partial explanation for extreme violent behavior.

Arguably: someone who's violent has a psychological disorder.

However several of the psychological disorders most associated with extreme violence or antisocial tendencies also leave the subject in a very high-functioning state. They can also be frustratingly resistant to any sort of treatment (drug, talk, or other therapies).

Lack of empathy is often not nearly as debilitating as hearing voices and seeing visions.

Lack of empathy is usually when one is a sociopath not suffering from schizophrenia or autism.

The problem is some people on the autism or schizophrenia spectrums cannot express themselves, but they have empathy and compassion, but are misunderstood by society and the news media. They just lack social skills and people skills, but can be taught them by books and therapy. Most are even nonviolent and very good people if only they were understood.

Sort of like Sherlock Holmes, only Doctor Watson seemed to be able to understand him, everyone else misunderstood him and didn't want anything to do with him because they thought he was a mean jerk with no empathy. He had empathy but got rid of distractions to focus on solving crimes to save humanity from evils like Professor Moriarty and his gangs of sociopaths.

Lack of empathy is usually when one is a sociopath

Yes. I didn't make that sufficiently clear.

Interesting contrast in traits and psychiatric profiles you highlight in Holmes there. Nice.

I always see people using 'sociopath' as different from 'psycopath', and I also see people claim they mean the same thing, and I also see people say that neither are used anymore, technically speaking (as in psychiatrists). Anyone with formal training on the area would be kind to briefly (or not) clear this up?

I don't have formal training, but as I understand it, the formal Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnosis is "antisocial personality disorder" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde...).

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_or_sociopathy and in general also note the WHO's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), which could be a less intensely political artifact than the US DSM.

Even if it were the case that the violent and dangerous criminals were suffering from mental illness, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to strive to provide access to treatment for mental illness than just villify those who suffer from it?

"If you factor out drug use, the mentally ill population isn't more dangerous than anyone else."

Yup. In fact the opposite is the case. Folk with mental illness are much more likely to be the victims of violence.

See http://psychcentral.com/archives/violence.htm for example. Or the references from http://m.xojane.com/issues/for-the-last-time-stop-conflating....

The story that gets portrayed in the media of mentally ill people being a major danger to the general public is just that - a story. The facts don't back it up.

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