silicosys4
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their abuse of alcohol or drugs would play a FAR greater factor in their tendency to be violent than their mental illness would.
Bingo.
their abuse of alcohol or drugs would play a FAR greater factor in their tendency to be violent than their mental illness would.
but i do believe a violent person suffering from mental illness is more apt to act on their violent tendencies, than they would be if they were healthy.
You're in luck. I posted a link in the post that you responded to with just such information.I would like to see some research that has been published to back that up.
That may well be true, but it's not really providing any useful information. Given that the general population is nearly 10 times greater than the number of people with mental illness, even if people with mental illness committed violent crimes at a rate twice that of the general population, we would still expect to see about 5 times fewer mentally ill people incarcerated for violent crime.Most of the people who are incarcerated for violent crimes have never been diagnosed with a mental illness.
You are partially correct. Based on the information in the link I provided, two things do seem to be true....now who is to say that their mental illness had anything to due with their violent crime?.....it seems to me that their abuse of alcohol or drugs would play a FAR greater factor in their tendency to be violent than their mental illness would.
you also need to keep in mind that 20% of the population suffers from mental illness....so statistically, 20% of those that commit crimes are going to have mental illness right off the bat.....and chances are that 20% number is significantly higher due to people not being diagnosed/ seeking treatment.
You're in luck. I posted a link in the post that you responded to with just such information.
now who is to say that their mental illness had anything to due with their violent crime?.....it seems to me that their abuse of alcohol or drugs would play a FAR greater factor in their tendency to be violent than their mental illness would.
It may be should be pointed out that people with certain mental illnesses have troubles with properly medicating themselves.
There are very few reliable statistics regarding the mentally ill and their likelihood to commit gun violence but in many cases it is my belief that they really are far LESS likely to do so.
2-6 times more likely to commit violence against others
5-15% of violence committed is by the mentally ill
Commit 10-20% of the homicides
Multiple victim homicides in public locations, about 50% are committed by the mentally ill.
Perhaps if you had taken the time to read it you would have found the numerous references to substance abuse and related issues.Not much there on substance abuse.
• A meta-analysis of 204 studies of psychosis as a risk factor for violence reported that “compared with individuals with no mental disorders, people with psychosis seem to be at a substantially elevated risk for violence.” Psychosis “was significantly associated with a 49%–68% increase in the odds of violence.”
Douglas KS, Guy LS, Hart SD. Psychosis as a risk factor for violence to others: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 2009;135:679–706.
• A review of 22 studies published between 1990 and 2004 “concluded that major mental disorders, per se, especially schizophrenia, even without alcohol or drug abuse, are indeed associated with higher risks for interpersonal violence.” Major mental disorders were said to account for between 5 and 15 percent of community violence.
Joyal CC, Dubreucq J-L, Gendron C et al. Major mental disorders and violence: a critical update. Current Psychiatry Reviews 2007;3:33–50.
• Among 3,743 individuals with bipolar disorder, 8.4 percent committed violent crimes compared to 3.5 percent of the general population in Sweden.
Fazel S, Lichtenstein P, Grann M et al. Bipolar disorder and violent crime. Archives of General Psychiatry 2010;67:931–938.
• Of 8,003 individuals with schizophrenia, 13.2 percent committed at least one violent crime compared with 5.3 percent of the general population in a study in Sweden. Concurrent abuse of alcohol or drugs accounted for much of the increased rate.
Fazel S, Langstrom N, Hjern A et al. Schizophrenia, substance abuse, and violent crime. Journal of the American Medical Association 2009;301:2016–2023.
• A study of 961 young adults in New Zealand reported that individuals with schizophrenia and associated disorders were two-and-one-half times more likely than controls to have been violent in the past year. If the person was also a substance abuser, the incidence of violent behavior was even higher.
Arseneault L, Moffitt TE, Caspi A et. al. Mental disorders and violence in a total birth cohort. Archives of General Psychiatry 2000;57:979–986.
• A 10-year follow-up of 1,056 severely mentally ill patients discharged from mental hospitals in Sweden in 1986 reported that "of those who were 40 years old or younger at the time of discharge, nearly 40 percent had a criminal record as compared to less than 10 percent of the general public." Furthermore, "the most frequently occurring crimes are violent crimes."
Belfrage H. A ten-year follow-up of criminality in Stockholm mental patients. British Journal of Criminology 1998;38:145–155.
• In a study in Finland, an unselected birth cohort of 11,017 individuals was followed for 26 years. Men with schizophrenia without alcoholism were 3.6 times more likely to commit a violent crime than men without a psychiatric diagnosis. Men with both schizophrenia and alcoholism were 25.2 times more likely to commit a violent crime.
Rasanen P, Tiihonen J, Isohanni M et.al. Schizophrenia, alcohol abuse, and violent behavior: a 26-year follow-up study of an unselected birth cohort. 1998;Schizophrenia Bulletin 24:437–441.
• The Epidemiological Catchment Area (ECA) surveys carried out 1980–1983 reported much higher rates of violent behavior among individuals with severe mental illness living in the community compared to other community residents. For example, individuals with schizophrenia were 21 times more likely to have used a weapon in a fight.
Swanson JW, Hozer CD, Ganju VK et. al. Violence and psychiatric disorder in the community: evidence from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area surveys. Hospital and Community Psychiatry 1990;41:761–770.
• In a more recent study in Indiana, researchers examined the records of 518 individuals in prison who had been convicted of homicide between 1990 and 2002. Among the 518, 53 (or 10.2 percent) had been diagnosed with schizophrenia (n=27), bipolar disorder (n=12), or other psychotic disorders not associated with drug abuse (n=14). An additional 42 individuals had been diagnosed with mania or major depressive disorder.
It should be emphasized that the study included only those who had been sentenced to prison and did not include those individuals who had committed homicides and were subsequently found to be incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity and therefore sent to a psychiatric facility instead of prison.
Thus, the 10.2 percent is probably an undercount. The authors themselves did not conclude that individuals with serious mental illnesses were responsible for 10 percent of the homicides, but given the data, that seems a reasonable conclusion. The authors also noted that 80 percent of the mentally ill individuals who committed homicides had received past psychiatric treatment but that “many of the offenders were not receiving treatment” at the time of the homicide.
Matejkowski JC, Cullen SW, Solomon PL. Characteristics of persons with severe mental illness who have been incarcerated for murder. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 2008;36:74–86.
Studies from other countries are consistent with the 5–10 percent figure.
(I had to cut the above list short.)
The study found that 31% of people who had both a substance abuse disorder and a psychiatric disorder (a “dual diagnosis”) committed at least one act of violence in a year, compared with 18% of people with a psychiatric disorder alone.
(Later in the article is says this:...)
Rates of violence (convicted of at least 1 violent crime over a 30+ yr period)
General population = 4.25%
Schizophrenia without substance abusive disorder = 8.5%
Schizophrenia without substance abusive disorder = 27.6%
Bipolar without substance abuse = 4.9%
Bipolar with substance abuse = 21.3%
For those with a major mental disorder, the population attributable risk was 4.3%, indicating that violence in the community could be reduced by less than five percent if major mental disorders could be eliminated. The population attributable risk for those with a substance abuse disorder was 34%, and for those with a comorbid mental illness and substance abuse disorder it was 5%. Therefore, by these estimates, violence in the community might be reduced by only 10% if both major mental disorders and comorbid disorders were eliminated. However, violence could be reduced by over a third if substance abuse disorders were eliminated.
Using a similar approach, a Canadian study asked what proportion of violent crimes involving a police arrest and detention could be attributed to people with a mental disorder. They surveyed 1,151 newly detained criminal offenders representing all individuals incarcerated in a geographically defined area. Three percent of the violent crimes accruing to this sample were attributable to people with major mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or depression. An additional seven percent were attributable to offenders with primary substance abuse disorders. Therefore, if major mental illness and substance disorder could be eliminated from this population, the proportion of violent crime would drop by about 10% .
People with serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, do have a slightly higher risk of committing violence than members of the general population. Yet most violence is not attributable to mental illness. Can you walk us through the numbers?
People with serious mental illness are 3 to 4 times more likely to be violent than those who aren't. But the vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent and never will be.
Most violence in society is caused by other things.
Even if we had a perfect mental health care system, that is not going to solve our gun violence problem. If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about 4 percent.
danez71,
It is a pleasure to read your posts as you seem to have experience with criminals with mental disorders.
With that said the problem I have with the research data you are posting ignores other important risk factors that play a role in past and predicting future criminal behavior. Factors such as criminal history, education, finances, family/martial, accommodation, use of leisure time/recreation, companions, alcohol/drug problems, emotional/personal history and issues, attitudes and orientation should be included for a accurate survey.
As you may know Level of Services Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) is one such validated risk/need assessment tool which identifies problem areas in a offenders.life and predicts his/her risk of recidivism.
I realize it's a long article, but seriously, if you can't muster the motivation to actually read through it then why would you waste your time and everyone else's by speculating about a topic that's not important enough to you to warrant spending 15 minutes of your time to inform yourself about it.
Simply.put there are too many factors that are not understood to draw firm conclusions about mental disorders and criminal behavior.
The article was updated about 4 years ago and many of the cites are from articles published in that timeframe relating to research completed a year or two before that. Sorry, but it just appears that you're coming up with lots of excuses to dismiss it without spending any time actually addressing, or even carefully examining the content.A lot of very old research...
Actually that's addressed multiple times--here's a sampling from the article....very little emphasis on the correlation between violence rates of the mentally ill who weren't drug and alcohol abusers segregated from the mentally ill who were.