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Relationship between violence and mental illness
Theories on mental health and violence
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On December 14th, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty children, six staff members, and his own mother; this occurred because Adam Lanza was a man with a psychiatric illness with possession of many guns. If Adam Lanza did not have possession of this gun, twenty seven lives could have been saved. There are criminal background checks that take place in order to own a gun, however the government is missing one crucial aspect to it, and that is the medical background check. Even though there are laws against people with mental illnesses having guns, but the government has no way of checking if they have an illness because they do not conduct medical background checks to do so. Mass shootings by people with mental illness are a growing reoccurrence in the United States that needs to be prevented in order to save the lives of American citizens. People with psychiatric history should not be allowed to own guns because there is an increased risk of violence, people with psychiatric illness are not mentally stable, and the United States does not do proper screening and background checks for gun permits.
A mental illness is a medical condition that affects a person’s mood, thinking, feeling, and decision making that is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. There are many different types of mental illnesses, but the two that are correlated with violence the most are Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that causes a person to not think clearly, to hear voices, not to relay emotions to certain events, and they cannot decipher whether they are in reality or not. Bipolar Disorder is a mental illness that causes a person to have severe mood swings from extremely depressed to a s...
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... the chemicals in their brain are being manipulated from the illness. Since the chemicals in their brain are being constantly manipulated, they are never in their right mind. People who are not mentally stable are unable to make the correct decisions because of the chemical imbalance in their brain; this is why guns need to stay out of the hands of the mentally ill. The government needs to take the initiative and put into law that when a person is trying to acquire a gun, the applicant needs to go through a criminal background check and a medical background check as well. People with mental illnesses should not have possession of guns because there is an increased risk of violence, people with mental illnesses are not mentally stable, and the United States Government does not do the correct screening and background checks that are needed in order to own a gun.
have shown the firearm homicide and suicide rates in the US are several times higher than that of any other industrialized country” (Towers 2). The automatic reaction people have to mass shooting is talking about gun control and mental illness policies. Every time a mass shooting occurs both the people and the government go crazy trying to find a solution yet there is no solution. The United States needs to set up mental illness awareness programs to decrease the number of mass shootings.
The answer to the inquiry questions will be answered via extensive review and analysis of literature. It is hypothesized that looser gun laws will predict a higher rate of occurrence of public mass shootings involving adult males ages 18-35 with untreated mental illness. Meanwhile, the untreated mental illness of males ages 18-35 will predict a higher rate of public mass shootings compared to that of other adult males who are not afflicted with mental
There are many types of mental illnesses that can affect a person’s ability to function on a level fit for society. Those illnesses affect people differently and to different extremes. Diagnosable mental disorders are changes in thinking, moods, or behaviors that can cause a rise in the risk of death and may cause distress, pain, or disability. More severe mental illnesses include three major illnesses: Schizophrenia, major depression, and manic depression. Schizophrenia is a brain ailment that causes a loss in the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. Many people who suffer from schizophrenia often hear voices that tell them to do different things. In some cases, the voices tell them to hurt themselves or other people. Other symptoms ma...
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but only in cases of self-defense and hunting for food. However, the use of guns has drastically changed since 1791 when the amendment was implemented. Today, guns are not solely used in their intended ways. Since 2010, over eighty-seven school shootings have occurred within American grade schools, high schools, and universities, resulting in approximately 107 injuries and 109 murders of innocent students. The two most deadly shootings in the world occurred in the United States: the Virginia Tech University Massacre which left thirty-two dead and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which left twenty-eight dead. Each new shooting prompts a debate about gun control laws and leaves citizens wondering about the accessibility of guns; any United States citizen over the age of twenty-one that does not have any previous felonies is able to easily receive a gun license. Forty-nine out of the sixty-one school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 legally obtained firearms. The statistics become even more outstanding: seventy nine percent of all shooters have been diagnosed with a mental illness or disability, including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. Cho and Lanza were diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities, depression and autism, respectively. Even so, they were still able to acquire the guns they needed because extensive mental health background checks did not and still do not exist; Cho purchased his own weapon and Lanza stole his mother’s guns. Although the case studies of Lanza and Cho are only two out of the many school shootings, they should be considered prime examples to illustrate the necessity to add stri...
People with mental issues or not mentally stable should not be able to own any kind of firearms.People that want to be eligible to own a firearm should be checked mentally and physically.There were many cases where a person that was not
Mental health is huge problem in the United States, especially when it allows certain individuals to have access to firearms. Politicians should aim to work more on keeping guns out of the hands of those who seek to harm others, not the law abiding citizens. But this is no easy task. In the CNN article, The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA, the author, Mel Robbins, points how the mental health problem is to blame , not the gun. Robbins states "Next time there 's a mass shooting, don 't jump to blame the National Rifle Association and lax gun laws. Look first at the shooter and the mental health services he did or didn 't get, and the commitment laws in the state where the shooting took place." (Robbins) Like the first article, the author uses the ethical approach. How can we just sit by and let this keep happening? Many people seek help for mental illness and do not get the proper help that they deserve. If the proper steps were taken, some of these tragedies could have been prevented. The background check system should be a little tougher than it currently is. This is something that many law abiding gun owners agree on. Especially when it comes to the mental health part. Giving a mental health screening to somebody before getting a firearm would almost certainly help. However, no system is perfect. It would have its flaws. Not only is mental
In his Wall Street Journal article, “Mass Shootings and a Mental-Health Disgrace,” Tim Murphy, a United States representative from Pennsylvania and a psychologist in the Navy Reserve Medical Service Corps, analyzes the correlation between mentally ill individuals and the mass shootings that have been making headlines recently. Murphy has come up with the idea of a new bill: the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. He says this bill will help those individuals who have mental disabilities get the help that they need before their disabilities get any worse. In today’s world, people with a mental illness get sent to prison if they do something wrong instead of getting sent to a psychiatric hospital where they belong. I think this
Welton, Nathan. “Mentally Ill Are More Likely To Be The Victims Of Violence.” The Tribune [California] 19 Mar. 2006: n. pag. NewsBank Special Reports. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
They suggested that not only mental illness but other factors such as social relationships, firearm access during emotional moments etc also lead to gun violence. However, they failed to cite this with strong facts, numbers etc. Reports suggest that up to 60% of executioners of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes[4,5]. In another article “Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 1988–1997”[6], the authors emphasized on the “association between rates of household firearm ownership and homicide across the United States, by age group”. In this analysis, they failed to take gender, mental health and other factors into consideration which helps more to analyze that which type of people (mentally ill) and/ or which gender are doing these cruel
At the beginning of this post, Sam Harris explains four different types of violent people and their possible motives. The first type of people are “those who are suffering from some form of mental illness that causes them to think and act irrationally,” (No Ordinary) which is not their fault at all, but it is likely for an unstable person to obtain weapons of this caliber. He explains that because of their illness, not everything they do or say will make sense, and if they are allowed access to guns or explosives, the result may be deadly.
Markowitz, F. E. (2011). Mental illness, crime, and violence: Risk, context, and social control. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 36-44.
“Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior” (Mayo Clinic). Mental disorders can happen many times through one’s life, but mental illness is classified as an ongoing problem with the symptoms that can affect the ability to perform normal day to day tasks (Mayo Clinic). Many people look at those afflicted with mental disorders as being crazy or clinically insane, while the reality is a problem many people live with on a daily basis with help from medications, psychologist visits, family, friends, help groups, and many other support systems. The lack of support available to mentally ill patients, the more that will refuse treatment and refuse to find help for their disorders. Many people who were born with mental disorders grow up knowing they have a problem, but people who develop them later in age don’t understand how to cope with it.
Imagine it’s a bright and sunny day outside. Later that day, you’re going to visit your 7 year old daughter at her elementary school. You’re even taking off the day at work too. As you’re driving to the school, you see police cars and vans zooming past you, and you wonder what’s going on. You arrive closer to the school, and realize there’s been a shooting. You rush in to check if your daughter is safe. When all the commotion ends, you see her. Lying on the ground and covered in blood. You can see her with a bullet wound in her chest, and all you can do is just sit there, all helpless. People with mental illness should not have guns. And this was an example of why.
Literature Analysis and Research Proposal of the Correlation between Mental Illness and Violence and Crime Over the past few decades, many researches have strived to test and explain the correlation between violence and crime and mental illness. Moore and Hiday (2006) assert that up 22% of inmates has a mental illness, sometimes containing more mental illness patients than many psychiatric units. Due to these statistics it is evident how important it is to understand the causes of the correlations between crime and violence and mental disorders. This proposal wishes to explain and understand the possible correlation and the reasons for such correlation between mental health illnesses and violence and crime. Further research to test these theories of crime and mental disorders will also be presented.
Glied, S., & Frank, R. G. (2014). Mental Illness and Violence: Lessons From the Evidence.