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Mental illness is being blamed for the recent massacres lately, how do you feel about this?
Mental illness is being blamed for the recent massacres lately, how do you feel about this?
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Healthy, mentally sound people rarely open fire into crowds of people.
Mental illness definitely plays a part in it, but I think the problem is a lot more complicated than that
I said in another post that the US is like a school shooter factory in that the stigma against getting mental help, the access to guns, and the growing prevalence of extremism is the perfect storm for creating these mass shooter types
Probably true, I don’t think a mentally sound person would do that
I take it a step further. Most of these people are not genetically defective or afflicted with some sort of unfortunate illness. They are created. They are products of their upbringing. We need to do a MUCH better job here…and everywhere…of parenting.
if you follow the backgrounds of these killers, they usually come from fkd up upbringing so there’s a lot of truth to it.
Mental illness is a reason but not an excuse, simple as that
Sure mental illness is to blame, but the question still stands. What is causing the mental illness? Economics? Society?
That’d mean there’s no mental illness outside the US
Well it isn’t mentally healthy people doing it
It’s only part of the problem.
Scapegoat.
People are willing to blame whatever reason they can think of so society as a whole doesn’t have to take responsibility for how fucked up we are.
It’s better than blaming ghosts and ghoulies like half the Western population still do.
We can argue all day about what angle would best prevent a crazy person from going on a rampage or limiting the damage when they do, but I don’t think anyone on any side of the debate would argue that going on a rampage is a sane and normal thing to do.
It’s part of the problem. When someone says “mental illness” is not about being a specific thing like a sociopath, bipolar, or schizophrenic. It could just mean that something has caused a person to fall into an unhealthy state of depression and/or anger. Why are so many people angry and depressed? Finding out that answer would be helpful, though on the surface it seems pretty simple in a country were your whole life can be ruined by an unexpected medical diagnosis, wages are stagnant, cost of housing is ridiculous, infrastructure is a joke, schools often do little against bullying, etc.
It definitely plays a big part in it as most of shooters went through trauma of some sort but it’s not the only reason for it
It’s a whole lot easier than saying the people who do it are mentally sound. That would mean looking inwards (gross)
Yes but no? I feel like people are absolving the shooters of the responsibility for their own actions by doing this. Like the KS shooter in Boulder is hiding behind an insanity defense to avoid accountability. No sane person does a mass shooting the mental illness argument is pretty redundant in my eyes.
Putting the question of whether mental illness is the primary cause of mass killings aside for a moment, I don’t care for the implied solutions regardless.
Putting more resources into voluntary mental healthcare is good, but not everyone who should opt in will, and I do not support the idea of compulsory healthcare.
Running background checks that more strictly screen for mental illness is bad, because it falls into the same kind of problem as “if owning guns is criminal then only criminals will have guns.” That is, if only people without a history of mental healthcare can obtain guns, then it’s going to be the people who are undiagnosed and untreated obtaining guns. Plus, if the purpose of allowing your citizenry to own firearms is so that they can protect themselves, then I do not like the idea that having a mental illness means you do not deserve personal protection.
Circling back to whether it’s the cause. I think it’s probably fair to say that someone who commits a mass murder is “not in their right mind,” but there are ways that someone can not be in their right mind without having a chronic, clinical mental illness. Radicalization for example can happen quickly and to otherwise mentally healthy people and they usually won’t fall under the umbrella of conventional mental health initiatives
I’m mentally ill and…
man this is hard but whatever here i go,
I don’t really want to be here anymore and i just don’t fucking care. I’m always blaming myself for everything that goes wrong and i hate myself, this makes me angry almost 24/7. (i don’t live in the US) if i snap people could get hurt, and this has happened before.
I go to therapy and stuff and it helps but at my absolute lowest point i was angry with the world and wanted to end my life, but the anger in me told me to act towards other people first and then end it.
I’m 100% sure that if i could’ve bought a gun, i would have ended bad REALLY bad.
it sounds fucked and I’m not proud of it but i can see why sometimes, not saying its good just that i see where some people may be coming from
It’s just a scapegoat.
“He was just mentally ill, it has nothing to do with guns or politics or race”
“Okay, so if it’s a mental health problem, can we start providing free healthcare to help prevent them from happening?”
“Well… no.”
Makes more sense than blaming an inanimate object.
It may be necessary but is obviously insufficient to explain it. Other countries also have mentally ill people and yet they don’t suffer mass shootings as often. It’s not rocket science, but the ideologically motivated don’t want to acknowledge that reality.
Mental illness can come about rather quickly in some individuals so there really is no way to prevent it from taking hold and leading to things like massacres in all cases that involve them. Some cases manifest over years and years so they can be managed only if help is sought. In my opinion there simply are too many variables with mental illness to say that it is causing the problem alone and therefore should not be the only solution.
Truth is mental illness will always be around, its not something we can fix for everyone. We need to ask ourselves, since mental illness is and always will be present in any society should society make it harder to obtain guns used for warfare with simple background checks? I would say yes. You are not going to stop every mass shooting but you will stop some.
I think in all murders/massacres, the perpetrator is very mentally ill. It makes sense, but it’s frustrating that it’s okay a scapegoat for Caucasians. Suicide bombers are mentally ill, too, you know?
I think it adds a stigma to mental illness, though, for sure.
Well it’s not good mental health to shoot lots of people outside of a war. What the rest of the world doesn’t understand why they are allowed to buy the guns ?
I think it’s a combo of mental illness and bullying
I don’t think anyone would go on a massacre if they were completely mentally healthy. It’s definitely at least a factor.
Cautiously optimistic that mental illness is finally being discussed…realistically pessimistic that it’s clearly going to be seen an excuse for bad behavior or a moral failing
Spend billions, BILLIONS on mental health services to save these damn lives, cause no mentally sane person will just open fire onto 20 people
You expect that someone of perfectly sound mind would willingly commit such a crime?
saying that someone shot up a school because of mental illness is as correct as saying someone died from undiagnosed/untreated cancer.
the disease isn’t the problem here, the lack of treatment is.
Not the free access to guns then?
Whilst I accept massacres have occurred in western countries with gun control the frequency and death toll is far higher in those that don’t, by those I mean America.
Nobody i know , nobody is truly happy. I think blaming it entirely on mental health is obsurd and not being honest with yourself, we are all a bit mentally ill. I wake up everyday wondering how im gonna afford life , no days off , inflation , wife of 20 years would rather stare at her phone than talk to me, bad news on tv it always feels like the walls are caving in . I cant imagine ever deciding that walking into a school with a gun and going on a shooting spree is the solution. I reckon i could use some therapy but a school shooter (or insert mass shooting) needed therapy years ago before they ever picked up a gun. I dont think taking guns away works either (i dont own nor plan on owning a gun) i think we just take them away from the honest people, people that commit gun violence are gonna use / have a gun if its legal or not. So whats the answer? Higher wages , more time off , free Healthcare, just a better feeling of actually making it in life wothout feeling like one wrong move and im ruined.
None of this is due to one factor. Yes, mental illness almost certainly plays a part; a healthy person of mental soundness would not singlehandedly massacre innocent people. However, these events are due to a number of reasons, many of which–including mental health–can be addressed. While I personally believe that removing access to guns is a huge part of the answer, I acknowledge that a) it’s not particularly doable in America and will likely never happen, and b) it won’t 100% fix the problem.
That said, it seems *pretty easy* to prevent massacres in contrast to, say, a single murder. Some weapons are particularly well suited for murdering dozens of people in an incredibly short period of time.
It’s a republican scapegoat. They point at an invisible villian, one that they haven’t done (nor are trying to do) anything about. They cut funding for social benefits that would help mentally ill people.
They obviously don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves and their gun lobby money. Let the school children die. Let the crazy people become violent and homeless. Fuck women’s rights. Fuck LGBTQAI rights. Fuck everyone that doesn’t look like a straight white rich old man.
Total cop out. Mental illness is real and always has been. What’s changed is that mentally ill people now have easy access to weapons of war in the US without much resistance. The mental illness line has been used by the guns rights crowd for as long as I can remember after a mass shooting. All while they are same people who cut access to help for the mentally ill. They gum up the works for any reform until the next big shooting and then rinse and repeat. The only way to change it is to vote out the politicians who constantly tow this line.
FYI….I am not against responsible gun ownership. That is not what this is about. It’s about keeping guns out of the hands of people that are a danger to themselves or/or society as a whole.
That’s the first step.
Now the cause has been identified what is the solution?
Mental health check for gun owners and universal healthcare including mental health treatment?
Have you seen American infrastructure and city’s? No wonder you all are depressed and anxious.
There’s just cars and the same single family homes copy and pasted in places where you can walk/ bike to nowhere.
This is a really good article that helps explain why this continues to happen.
[https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762)
This piece is what stood out to me the most and it’s damn scary! What’s even scarier is that nothing much is being done about it. Please take care of your children people. Love them as much as possible!
*I don’t think most people realize that these are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed.*
It’s absolutely true
‘Let’s abolish and remove places where people who need help, create a stigma and shun those same people for needing it.’
Also
‘Why are there so many people with mental illness? Why aren’t they being diagnosed?’
There can be more than 1 contributing factor. I think mental illness must be a factor and the rest are contributing.
I would argue that gun fetishism is, in fact, a mental illness.
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