Don't You Have To Be Insane to Kill?
A lot of things in our society and the world at large get blamed on mental illness. I have a mental illness, bipolar disorder, and I find this particularly disturbing. But the question I have is that if you go around killing people, does that automatically make you crazy?
Is every murderer mentally ill because the notion of murder itself is insane? I would argue that no, more sane people kill other people than mentally ill people. Murder is horrific, but it is not always a sign of mental illness. And even if the person suffers from anxiety or depression, that does not mean they were not in their right mind when they killed someone.
The question of the insanity plea is whether or not someone is in their right mind, or fully conscious of what they are doing when they commit a crime. I would argue that there is a difference between having emotional and mental issues and not knowing what you are doing.
Meaning that people who murder or rape, are generally very disturbed people, that is a fact. However, most of the time they do it intentionally and are fully aware of what they are doing. Mentally ill people are more likely to victims of crime than perpetrators.
The idea of being a sociopath is that you have no compassion for other people. A lot of murderers and rapists are categorized as sociopaths. This is, in fact, a mental illness. However, this is not enough of a diagnosis to prove that the person in question did not know what they are doing.
I would argue that people who are horrible enough to commit serious violent crimes are usually just really bad people. Whatever mental illness they may have has nothing to do with their deliberate actions that hurt other people.
So why is this important and why am I bringing this up? Because we often blame the mentally ill community for all the murders and violence in this country. That is not fair since most crimes are deliberately committed by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
Usually, it is true that these people suffer from some mental illness, but the mental illness is not the direct cause of their behavior. They are not suffering from a delusion or hallucination. They know exactly what they are doing. So they cannot claim insanity.
It is actually very rare that a murderer or rapist is suffering from a manic or schizophrenic episode when they commit a crime. A lot of people think we should focus on mental illness reform instead of putting more checks on guns. The reason that this theory is not valid is that most people who use guns against people are sane enough to know what they are doing.
I completely agree that we need reform for mental illness treatment in this country. But not because the mentally ill are going around committing violent crimes. We need reform because mentally ill people are not being treated properly for their diseases.
There are bad people and then there are insane people. It seems like a fine line between the two when someone commits a horrid violent act. However, it is most likely their horrible nature that causes them to commit the crime not their mental state.
Most mentally ill people are regular people with regular morals. It is the immoral people who are commiting most of the crimes. But what does it even mean to be 'moral'? What is morality? Is it based on religion?
I don't think it is based on anything but simple humanity. People who are violent toward others are not using compassion. Mentally ill people are not inherently violent or immoral.
So let's rethink how we categorize violent people. Most of them are doing terrible things because they can. They know exactly what they are doing to hurt another human being, and they do it anyways.
Sane people can be a lot scarier than mentally ill people. Remember that.
nina