Hate is not a Symptom of Mental Illness. Hate crimes are driven by ideology, not pathology.
Bescherelle
Hate Is Not a Symptom of Mental Illness
Hate crimes are driven by ideology, not pathology.
When disturbing events, such as violent outbursts, occur, it is tempting to attribute them to individual characteristics of the actors rather than situational factors. In social psychology, the tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal factors (but our own to situational factors) is known as the “fundamental attribution error.” What explains this tendency? People are inclined to employ short-cuts such as the fundamental attribution error because they provide comfort that certain events result from individual failings, rather than systemic processes or injustices.
When violence is motivated by prejudice toward a specific group, it is known as a “hate crime.” The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminaloffense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” while the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks bias crime in the United States, defines a “hate group” as an organization that “vilifies others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.” At the heart of the ideologies that undergird hate crimes and hate groups is the idea that members of specific groups are inherently inferior, evil or cursed. Ideology provides the justification for violent action by allowing that universal moral prohibitions against violence do not apply.
Hatred of another group can be facilitated by a number of factors, but dehumanization seems to be the common thread. One of the most horrific recent instances of hate crime on a mass scale occurred in the African nation of Rwanda in the early 1990’s, when members of the Hutu group slaughtered hundreds of thousands of members of another group, the Tutsis (some scholars consider these groups to be ethnicities, while others note that they emerged out of historic social class divisions). Hutu leaders urged ordinary people to commit atrocities by comparing Tutsis to “cockroaches.” In trying to understand how ordinary people can become involved in the perpetration of such horrors, social psychologists such as Phil Zimbardo have emphasized the need to understand the situational and systemic precipitants such as dehumanization that can lead “good people” to “turn evil.”
This brings us to the widely-publicized hate crimes that have occurred in the United States, including the murder of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue and the murder of 9 people in a Charleston, SC church. While news reports have appropriately focused on the role of hateful ideology in impelling these crimes, there has also been a tendency for news outlets and members of the public to speculate about the role of “mental illness” (diagnosed or undiagnosed) in these actions.
I will here note why this is problematic on three accounts. First, it is likely that mental health concerns can be identified for almost anyone if one tries to find them. Epidemiologic studies (which survey a representative sample of general population members to estimate how common certain syndromes are) find that the “lifetime” prevalence of any diagnosable (though not necessarily diagnosed) mental disorder in the United States is roughly 50% (current prevalence is roughly 25%); thus, one out of any two people will be found to have some evidence of mental health concerns in their history if one cares to look. Second, hatred (much less hatred of any particular group) is not a symptom of any mental disorder. Some disorders include symptoms that may be associated with diminished impulse controlwhich could plausibly be related to reactive violent outbursts (e.g., “snapping” when someone makes a disparaging comment), but this does not plausibly relate to highly planned actions such as hate crimes. Other disorders include symptoms which can lead one to believe that one is the target of a plot or conspiracy, but this does not apply to widely-held conspiracy theories such as the ones that hate groups endorse. As I have previously noted, research has determined that when people diagnosed with mental illnesses do commit crimes, symptoms only plausibly relate to the actions in 10-15% of cases. Therefore, just noting that someone has a history of mental health concerns likely does not provide any useful information about what motivated a given criminal action.
Finally, focusing on the relationship between psychiatric status and hate crime perpetration obscures the fact that people diagnosed with mental illnesses are themselves victims of hate crimes, advanced by the ideology (which Nazi Germany endorsed) that such individuals are “unworthy of life.” In a recent report, The Southern Poverty Law Center detailed cases of horrific crimes committed against people with psychiatric histories that were found to be motivated by hatred, such the torture and murder of Jennifer Daugherty in Pennsylvania. An ideology of hatred toward psychiatrically disabled people also motivated the largest mass killing in Japanese history in 2016, when Satoshi Uematsu killed 19 people at a residential setting after espousing a mission to “rid the world of disabled people.”
Hate crimes may be perpetrated by individuals, but they are driven by ideologies that dehumanize others and are advanced by groups with a specific agenda. Attempting to explain them on the basis of individual pathology distracts from the need to address the all-too-common belief in these dehumanizing ideologies.
ImStillMags Mags
Navy
Minister Rebel
Pittalum
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 12:11:59 PM UTC-4, Navy wrote:
Sorry bitchy...but to do what these's people are doing takes a really fucked up mental state.
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 9:59:45 AM UTC-6, Bescherelle wrote:
Hate Is Not a Symptom of Mental Illness
Hate crimes are driven by ideology, not pathology.
...
Navy
Bescherelle
Navy
Bescherelle
Navy
Bescherelle
Navy
I-think4me
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McConnell has donors to work for.
There I fixed it for you.
BTW 80-90% of the country want sensible gun control.
Navy
PirateLT
Lobo
Lobo
PirateLT
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 2:19:48 PM UTC-6, Susiejoe wrote:
Believing rather than knowing is one of your biggest problems Beschy.US mass murders are not off the charts when properly compared. First and foremost, all the comparisons ignore the size of populations they are comparing.Pirate posted a Scientific American article on another thread. In it, the author compares the rates of the US to Germany, and then other countries. Major flaw is that he fails to adjust for the populations of the countries. Germany has 80 million people compared to the US' population of 250 million. Like duh, the US has more.Pirate's author does however point out there is a problem in what is classed as a mass murder. While he fails to adjust any numbers so the comparisons are to similar calculations, he does at least admit there are apples mixed in with the oranges in some numbers while not in others.The biggest flaw however is in comparing simply gun deaths as opposed to all violent crime. Libbies love to compare the low rates of murders by guns in countries that have very strict gun laws or forbid them completely. What they ignore purposely is the total rates of all violent murders and crimes. In those countries that have lower rates of deaths by guns, you get HIGHER rates of death by other instruments. You also get higher rates of other crimes such as rape, assaults, and bulgeries.
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 11:26:40 AM UTC-5, Bescherelle wrote:
I do not believe the US has more people with mental illness than other countries but the mass murders here are off the chart compared to other countries. That kind of makes the issue guns, not the mentally ill. Mental illness is stigmatized enough without making it the sole cause of gun violence. Oh, and #MoscowMitch should stop blocking sensible gun laws.
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 11:20:13 AM UTC-5, Pittalum wrote:
I will agree with you that a screwed up mental state is a precondition for the typical mass murderer, such aLs the type we are talking about. But don't you think the presence of support groups and like-minded echo chambers go a long way towards focusing the mind and hardening the will of such types?
PirateLT
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 2:32:35 PM UTC-6, Susiejoe wrote:
All the countries of Europe do not have the same gun laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
PirateLT
On Monday, August 5, 2019 at 3:27:12 PM UTC-6, Susiejoe wrote:
Your article along with its author need to be thrown in the trash.I will take just the first paragraph to demonstrate why the guy is full of shit. It is guys like him that made psychology a joke to many people. It is guys like him who obstruct us from constructive conversations and actions regarding 'mentally ill' people, who in fact, are simply physically ill people. The only psychologists worth reading or wasting your time with are the cognitive psychologists. Remember that. It is valuable advice you are getting for free.Did you watch the videos of the shooting in Dayton? If so, you saw immediately when the gunshots started, people ran away, cops ran to the shooter. What you saw was a reaction known as Fight or Flight. It is an innate (biological) instinctive physiological reaction within vertabrates. The reaction starts with your adrenal gland releasing particular hormones. There is a chain reaction, the liver for example gets triggered to release glygogen so to elevate blood sugar levels for greater energy needed to fight or flight. Adrenaline and cortisol are released. It is much more complicated - you can read more starting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_responseThis Harvard article gets into explaining that your Fight or Flight reaction can dysfunction. Anyone who has lived or had close association with a diabetic on insulin knows how they can suddenly (in a matter of seconds) go crazy or violent. You would be surprised how many male diabetics have been deemed as spousal abusers because they had a hypoglycemic attack where their blood sugars dropped too low and that Fight or Flight reaction was suddenly triggered and may well continue if along the chemical pathways, the body does not get blood sugar levels back up. That is to say, the body gets bombarded with those fight hormones while the brain has insufficient glucose to kept them sane. The trend now for some of them is constant blood sugar monitoring. A person who has violent outbursts has a physical medical problem, not a problem in thinking. Those around him who sense a physical component are not in error. They are durn perceptive and right. That psychologist is a moronic idiot. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
