Mental illness or correctable evil?

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Michael19682

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I’v been a member for a couple of years now. I’ve read and participated in several topical threads. A recent thread that I visited and debated in brings up indirectly the question of mental illness vs. correctable evils. I mean, if a man committs a terrible violent act, we call it a crime and send him to prison for, among other reasons, “corrections”. But when I (or society) can identify a mental illness, they seem to treat the person with medicines and therapy and also look at the person as less evil than the repeated violent felon, who presumably wants to be incorrigible. If the argument in favor of softer treatment extends down the list to those who committ acts that are sinful only, like out of wed lock sexual relations, but not criminal; shouldn;t we see these people as mentally ill and therefore in deserving of pity rather than explicit censure?

Then many say that anyone who is a repeated felon IS mentally ill, so the question is moot. If a person is mentally ill, ok. He needs treatment. But where do we draw the line of moral demarcation between sin and mental illness for that set of people who would not normally be called mentally ill? e.g. the habitually rude and obnxious of any age, sex, or belief?
 
I think most criminals would probably be mentally ill , perhaps due to drugs or alcohol. Some criminals are also already being treated for mental illness.

I think they should establish why the criminals do these things especially murderers and rapists. But I suppose they go to criminal asylums or correction facilities.
 
I believe the thread you were referring to was a question about if someone was mentally ill
(and that wasn’t defined) and they committed mortal sin (mostly murder) would that be mortal sin. It really is a bad premise and connection. People throw around the term “mental illness” and mental illness is a hugh range of issues. Mental illnesses are defined in the Manual by the Psychiatric association in now DMS V (there are earlier versions).This is the diagnostic tool that Psychologist, Psychiatrists as well as Masters in Social workers use to help those (and there are a lot of them) in treatment. Mental illness ranges from anxiety and depression to personality disorders and then the more serious psychosis and breaks with reality. The most common is depression and anxiety and the most serious “crime” issue would be suicide. It is extremely rare and almost impossible to prove in a court of law innocence by reason of insanity. Just because someone has “mental illness” is for the most part not an excuse in getting out of crime. I think the last major case where it succeeded was Ronald Reagan’s attempted killer, and even he was locked away still. However people bat this term around with little meaning. Someone like Hitler or Stalin which came up in the other post were called mentally ill but they were more immoral despots. Likewise other try to say religious people of faith should be considered mentally ill. So the words are used against anyone we don’t like or understand. The best thing is to read what real mental illness is, understand that it is meant a diagnosis tool to help people not hurt them or label them in condescending ways or an excuse to get out of crime.
 
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robwar said:
I believe the thread you were referring to was a question about if someone was mentally ill
(and that wasn’t defined) and they committed mortal sin (mostly murder) would that be mortal sin. It really is a bad premise and connection. People throw around the term “mental illness” and mental illness is a hugh range of issues. Mental illnesses are defined in the Manual by the Psychiatric association in now DMS V (there are earlier versions).This is the diagnostic tool that Psychologist, Psychiatrists as well as Masters in Social workers use to help those (and there are a lot of them) in treatment. Mental illness ranges from anxiety and depression to personality disorders and then the more serious psychosis and breaks with reality. The most common is depression and anxiety and the most serious “crime” issue would be suicide. It is extremely rare and almost impossible to prove in a court of law innocence by reason of insanity. Just because someone has “mental illness” is for the most part not an excuse in getting out of crime. I think the last major case where it succeeded was Ronald Reagan’s attempted killer, and even he was locked away still. However people bat this term around with little meaning. Someone like Hitler or Stalin which came up in the other post were called mentally ill but they were more immoral despots. Likewise other try to say religious people of faith should be considered mentally ill. So the words are used against anyone we don’t like or understand. The best thing is to read what real mental illness is, understand that it is meant a diagnosis tool to help people not hurt them or label them in condescending ways or an excuse to get out of crime.
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Your post brings to mind two other questions:
  1. can a person with “real mental illness” commit a sin or does the illness absolve moral culpability as say, angst absolves culpability of some adolescent sins?
  2. What of a person who is mentally ill in a certain facet of his thinking, but for whom there is no medicine or diagnosis. The forensic psych. therefore says at trial, “This person is not mentally ill and deserves to pay for his crimes.” Maybe so, but should we truly apply the word sin, or call is illness…'cause if so, then there is really no such thing anymore. Sin is gone, and all becomes evil correctable by psychological means.
 
I did a lot of work on this in my Undergrad during classes on Psychopathology and in some Law Courses I took. Now, from the start I don’t think we can equate law as defined by man with the law of God but perhaps it can give us some insight. Here I go!

“Guilt as a Matter of Capacity” was a paper I wrote a long time ago. And it focused on whether or not a (clinically) psychotic individual could held criminally responsible for his or her actions. We don’t have the ‘insanity plea’ in Canada, but we do have “Not Criminally Responsible, NCR”. Now I’ve only studied the Federal Canadian Judicial system and the Ontario Provincial Judiciary system as well as administrative law. I was originally training to become a psychiatrist and becoming a barrister was a sort of Plan B for me.

Crime and Guilt are two different things. For a man to be criminally responsible he must must possess* Mens rea* in addition to the Actus reus. He cannot be criminally responsible if only one of these aspects is proven. Mens rea is “A guilty mind” and Actus reus is “The guilty act”. If a person is not able to have a guilty mind then even if he committed the guilty act he cannot be held criminally responsible. This is one of the reasons getting a judgement of NCR is very hard to do.

Let’s use a few examples:
Ex. 1
A severely mentally retarded man in his 40’s is temporarily left alone with a small child who begins crying. The man then shakes the child in an attempt to get the baby to stop but accidentally causes the death of the child through closed head injury. The man is proven to have performed the guilty act but he is not mentally capable of understanding that shaking children is bad or that it could lead to injury or death, he is not capable of comprehending death even and his intentions were to stop the baby from crying, not to kill it. Because this man lacks the Mental Capacity for guilt he cannot be judged criminally responsible. He is responsible for the death of the child, but he is not criminally responsible because Mens rea was not satisfied.

Ex. 2
A delusional, paranoid schizophrenic experiences hallucinations and delusions in which aliens come down in their space ship and tell him that he must kill his family, wrap up their bodies in sheets, and put them in the trunk of his care so that the evil aliens who the first aliens told him were coming, would not be able to hurt his family, whom he loves.

This man suffered from delusions (false beliefs) and hallucinations (false sensory (name removed by moderator)ut). When hallucinations are experienced without delusions there is usually no psychological distress, thus why some people find the use of hallucinogens pleasurable for recreational use. But when one experiences hallucinations all of their senses are telling them that what they are seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, etc, are real and the rational mind (which these people DO possess) has no reason to believe their reality is not real, unless they are capable of knowing that what they are seeing is not real. If they are deluded, they have absolutely no way to distinguish what is real and what is not, any more than you can determine (FOR SURE) that looking at this screen and reading these words on a thing called a computer (or phone I guess) in whatever place you are in is real or not. For all you know, all of this is a hallucination and because you are delusional you will defend to the end that it is real. For people that are both hallucinating and delusional their altered reality is just as real as ‘the real one’ and because they are still rational, they act accordingly to their environment.

So for this man, he reacted accordingly to what the aliens told him and our of deep love and concern for his family he killed them, wrapped them in sheets and hid them in the trunk of his car so that they would not be harmed by the bad aliens that were coming. He had no external or internal ques to suggest to him that he should doubt his reality. He might have actually doubted it when the aliens told him that he should kill his family to protect them as this didn’t make rational sense to him, but because of his delusions and his hallucinations his mind will have produced some sort of evidence to pacify his questions and it will fully satisfy any doubt he had.

This man is guilt of multiple homicide, but he is not criminally responsible because he acted accordingly to his perceived reality.

cont’d
 
Ex. 3
You and you’re Wife/Husband are sleeping in bed together and in you’re dream you are fighting this attacker that has grabbed you from behind and you pull back your elbow and hit them squarely in the face, breaking their nose. You are woken up by the screams of your Wife/Husband only to discover that they have embraced you in their sleep and you elbow-clocked them in the nose and broke it and that wet blood you felt on your face from your attacker was actually hers/his. You performed the guilty act, but you did not intend to hurt you wife/husband, and you were acting inaccordance with your perceived reality at the time (what was in your dream). You can’t be held criminally responsible for the assault you just committed.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say, is that if a person does not possess the mental capacity for guilt (mens rea) they’re actions could be attributed to mental illness (even momentary like dreaming and assaulting your wife or husband), but if someone has the capacity for guilt then maybe they cannot attribute their actions to mental illness.

There is a great deal of research in Forensic Psychiatry about criminals and one should exercise caution when referring to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR. 2000) since it is very easy to satisfy criteria for many of the disorders within and etiologies for the disorders are usually missing. You can access full copies of the DSM-IV-TR online and in the reference sections of most libraries.

When applying the authority of the DSM to religious issues, I advise great prudence. Homosexuality was contained in the DSM-III but due to activism and political pressure was removed in 2000 when the DSM-IV came out. The DSM-V has not yet been released and has been pushed back multiple times. One of the topics under great consideration for removal from the DSM for the DSM-V is transgender disorders. If you look at earlier versions of the DSM or even the original work it was stolen from written by Dr. Emil Kraepelin 1896 there are many behaviours that are considered to be pathological that today we would laugh at and say they surely are not.

Don’t know if this helped. :confused:

Regards,
  • Mharren
 
On a personal note, I’d like to add that since I’ve suffered from affective disorders like severe panic disorder, during an acute episode I certainly feel it’s evil, I feel like evil is tormenting me. I presented with severe panic disorder at the age of seven and after a few episodes of those panic attacks I tried to kill myself just to make it stop. I wasn’t properly diagnosed until I was thirteen and placed on SSRI medication which has been very successful (so long as I stay on it) and give benzodiazepine’s for acute anxiety which I still use today. As a kid and long into adolescence and even sometimes now (though it’s extremely rare for me to have an episode I’d constitute as an actual panic attack) I feel like the Devil is very much at play in my mind.

No amount of my understanding of neurology and pharmacotherapy and psychiatry really helps me not to entertain beliefs during those times that I’m being punished and I am actually standing on the border to what the suffering in Hell must be like. I remember being so frightened of going to Hell because I thought that was why I was having those attacks and that Hell would be like those attacks that when I was child I used to actually pray that I would die before I grew up because I had been told all children go to heaven.

But my struggles with these horrible experiences and my knowledge that they could and likely will happen again has been perhaps the biggest factor in the development and maintenance of my faith in God.

That may not be what you meant by ‘evil’, but I certainly would say if there is evil that can be experienced here on earth, it’s that kind of suffering.

If you look at the case of Anneliese Michel (the girl on whom the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose was based) you could also see how viewing mental disorders as manifestations of evil can be just as dangerous as viewing evil as mental illness.

Regards,
  • Mharren
 
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