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Ugh, the Norway shooting has really brought out the bigots that think the mentally ill...

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Odin2005 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-24-11 04:52 PM
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Ugh, the Norway shooting has really brought out the bigots that think the mentally ill...
...are all conservative nuts. :grr:
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Tobin S. Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-24-11 07:13 PM
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1. We don't even know if the Norway shooter IS mentally ill.
I've run across the notion here of some people who think that you have to be mentally ill to kill someone. I don't know the stats, but I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who are convicted of murder were found to be sane by mental health professionals when they committed the crime. The insanity defense is probably rarely successful.

But, yeah, there are all sorts of assumptions running around here when we actually have very little information to go on at this point. We just know that 80 kids were murdered and a young Norwegian man is in custody. Everything else is flimsy at best: reporting about a book that he allegedly wrote that doesn't seem to have a valid source; a facebook account that appears to be bogus; a fundamentalist Christian conservative which a lot people here seem to think indicates mental illness and therefore violent behavior.

My fiance just told me that the death toll has risen to 94 and may include more people and that the young man in custody has admitted to the crimes but has told the authorities that he's not guilty. I'm not sure what that means.

Anyway, it's possible to be extremely angry and not be insane. Mentally ill people are much more likely to be a danger to themselves than other people. I saw a statistic linked here the other day where it showed that people who have a mental illness are only slightly more likely (like 1%) to commit a violent crime than sane people. In contrast, 10% of people who have a serious mental illness commit suicide.
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HereSince1628 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-24-11 08:53 PM
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2. An English study of homicide by the mentally ill is available for the years 2007 and 2008
Edited on Sun Jul-24-11 08:55 PM by HereSince1628
http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/mentalhealth/research/suicide/prevention/nci/inquiryannualreports/Annual_Report_July_2011.pdf

It's a pdf that I don't know how to cut... It's known as the National Confidential Inquiry (NCI for short) into Suicide and Homicide.

It includes a statement on page number 26 that 10% of the homicides were committed by people who were considered in an abnormal mental state.
A page or so earlier it states that about 6% of the homicides were committed by persons who were deemed psychotic at the time of the crime...in otherwords, 95% of people committing a homicide were NOT psychotic, and 90% were NOT in an abnormal state of mind.

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Tobin S. Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-24-11 09:29 PM
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3. Thanks, HS
I appreciate the stats and the back-up. :thumbsup:
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Forkboy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jul-24-11 09:53 PM
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4. These things always do.
I would strongly consider the source on one of those threads. If the OP said he liked Coke and you replied with Pepsi he'd call you an unstable Freeper. That one isn't going to be giving Plato a run for his money in the thinking department anytime soon. Hell, he barely gives Palin a run for her money.
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Fire Walk With Me Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Sep-01-11 04:36 PM
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5. I don't know about mentally ill, but he IS a conservative right-wing christian provocateur.
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