Do you necessarily need to have mental health issues to kill someone?

[Eamar]

Without my medication, I'd either be dead or utterly unable to function as an independent adult.

Im sorry for being naive but how exactly is this the case. Im not disagreeing with you. Im just curious as to how not taking medication could lead to this

You dont have to answer just to satisfy my curiosity.

Because of the nature of untreated bipolar disorder. I've posted about what it's like before, so forgive me for not repeating all the detail, but basically your moods become increasingly extreme, changeable and out of control, to the point that you can become psychotic, meaning you lose touch with reality.

Just a few theoretical examples of how I might have ended up dead:

- In a manic state, I decide that I can fly, causing me to jump off a tall building.
- In a hypomanic state, I enjoy danger and taking risks so I run out into a busy road without looking.
- In a depressed state, I am plagued by mental images of suicide until finally I act them out for myself.
- In a normal or mixed state, I become so utterly tired and run down by my condition, so frightened of my hallucinations and out of control behaviour that I feel suicide is preferable to having to keep fighting.

As for the unable to function as an adult thing:

- Severe depression causes me to stay in bed for days at a time, unable to do even the simplest things.
- Mania makes me unstable, unreliable and irresponsible. Money, duties and obligations have no meaning.

etc, etc, etc.

Mood stabilisers... well... stabilise my mood, keeping me somewhere close to the normal range. If necessary, antidepressants and antipsychotics help to control extreme depression and mania, respectively.

Psychoactive medications are serious business and should not be taken lightly, that much is true. However, people like me take them because we need to. You don't just pop these pills for laughs.

 

[spartan231490]

Just to be clear, i'm not talking about self defense , accidentally killing someone or people that go to war ( soldiers).

Very often , when news of someone killing one or more people i see two frequent stances on the matter. We got the people, saying how disgusting and terrible the offender is and how he is the scum of humanity. Then we have the other side who assumes ( read: says ) the person has/had mental health issues, that lead him/her to commit such acts and probably needed help.

Now i'm not going to list any examples because i've been on the escapists long enough to know that if i do, the thread will be derailed into the stories i wrote. So i want to talk about the second part, mental issue. Here is the main question for this thread.

Do you think a person who kills another, necessarily has mental health issues?

Now i'm not as educated as most of you fine escapist, and i don't pretend to know anything about psychology and how the brain works. Despite that, i don't see why an average Joe cannot kill someone without having health problems. That isn't to mean, that i don't know why they wouldn't, killing is bad afterall. However if they wanted to , i think they could , no mental health issues required, they just don't.

Don't you think that wanting to kill someone in cold blood is a little insane? I mean, acts of passion aside, planning out and executing a plan to kill someone is pretty hard to do if you're 100% right in the head.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Don't you think that wanting to kill someone in cold blood is a little insane? I mean, acts of passion aside, planning out and executing a plan to kill someone is pretty hard to do if you're 100% right in the head.

But people manage to do that all the time. Usually for very different reasons, admittedly.

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

Genuine mental illness and someone having different moral values than the accepted societal norm is very different. Even excluding soldiers and self-defense as the OP said, there are numerous justifiable reasons to take a life. Or there are none. It depends on your moral standard. Morality is too subjective to be associated with mental illness, barring absolute extremes.
If someone finds reason x justification to take a life, but you don't, does not mean the person in question is sick. But this is crossing over into a different field of debate.
Simple answer is, mentally healthy people are completely capable of taking lives.

 

[Dragonbums]

While I'm pretty sure there are people who murder that have some sort of genuine sickness, those people tend to be the "kill everybody" kind of deal. In other cases where they go after specific people (women, men, children, black people, etc.) It will do a great disservice to just chalk it all up to simple "madness" There are some people who are very concise, logical, and (to them) reasonable for why they are doing the things they are doing.

The things that people overlook a lot is that it is much easier to kill people if you don't see them as people, but as objects. We can say that Hitler was insane all we want. But I don't buy that. The man was very concise, very rational, and very thorough. He wasn't insane. He honestly believed that Jewish people were not people. They were animals, sub humans, a pest to be eradicated. When you kill a mouse infesting your house do you feel remorse for killing them? You don't. And that's how some murderers view their victims. They view them as that mouse. Insignificant and nobody would care if gone. They aren't deluded. They aren't insane. They know that what they do will be unpopular in opinion. But they don't care.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The things that people overlook a lot is that it is much easier to kill people if you don't see them as people, but as objects. We can say that Hitler was insane all we want. But I don't buy that. The man was very concise, very rational, and very thorough. He wasn't insane. He honestly believed that Jewish people were not people. They were animals, sub humans, a pest to be eradicated. When you kill a mouse infesting your house do you feel remorse for killing them? You don't. And that's how some murderers view their victims. They view them as that mouse. Insignificant and nobody would care if gone. They aren't deluded. They aren't insane. They know that what they do will be unpopular in opinion. But they don't care.

Bit of a tangent, but there are some historians who argue that he didn't, he was just using anti-semitism to rise to power (which worked brilliantly).

But yeah, everyone who we don't agree with is either insane or stupid, because we are the yardstick that rational, intelligent behaviour is judged by. Hell, not wanting to kill people we want dead can get called those things as well.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

No, I don't think that is the case. There is enough evidence to support that too, since many killers over the years have been highly intelligent with no "mental health" issues. They weren't mad/crazy, they weren't depressed, they weren't unable to cope, etc, etc. I think the media/society at large paint killers as mentally disturbed since it makes it easier to understand in rational terms.

What you do have to be to be a killer tho, is a sociopath. Anyone with empathy for others, not driven by powerful, immediate emotions (jealousy, rage, greed, lust, etc) simply won't kill another person. Those of us with reasonable parents and okay upbringings are taught the value of human life, the rights and wrongs of theft, jealousy, lying, etc. Do unto others and all that. We wouldn't kill someone because it's unconscionable. To take a life, leave a family bereft is heinous.

But if someone simply didn't care about those things, such as a sociopath, we can say they're "morally bankrupt", but not "mentally ill". Mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia could lead people to do evil things, but the fact is that people can and do kill without such handicaps. Consider organised crime for example; Cosa Nostra and other mafias might racketeer, steal, kill and threaten and do so logically, intelligently and with consideration.

So my answer is no, people don't need to be mentally ill to take a life. Without the same morals as us, certainly, but no mental disorders to speak of.

 

[krazykidd]

Genuine mental illness and someone having different moral values than the accepted societal norm is very different. Even excluding soldiers and self-defense as the OP said, there are numerous justifiable reasons to take a life. Or there are none. It depends on your moral standard. Morality is too subjective to be associated with mental illness, barring absolute extremes.
If someone finds reason x justification to take a life, but you don't, does not mean the person in question is sick. But this is crossing over into a different field of debate.
Simple answer is, mentally healthy people are completely capable of taking lives.

I agree completely with you. It's one of the reasons i didn't mention morality in my original post, because i wanted someone else to point that out AND i was afraid the thread would delve into a morality debate. While an interesting debate, i'll let someone other than i start that one.

 

[Erttheking]

No, I really think you don't. I think that people like to think that as part of a defensive mechanism, categorize murderers into being separate from the rest of Humanity, because there's no way we could ever be like that.

 

[Dragonbums]

The things that people overlook a lot is that it is much easier to kill people if you don't see them as people, but as objects. We can say that Hitler was insane all we want. But I don't buy that. The man was very concise, very rational, and very thorough. He wasn't insane. He honestly believed that Jewish people were not people. They were animals, sub humans, a pest to be eradicated. When you kill a mouse infesting your house do you feel remorse for killing them? You don't. And that's how some murderers view their victims. They view them as that mouse. Insignificant and nobody would care if gone. They aren't deluded. They aren't insane. They know that what they do will be unpopular in opinion. But they don't care.

Bit of a tangent, but there are some historians who argue that he didn't, he was just using anti-semitism to rise to power (which worked brilliantly).

But yeah, everyone who we don't agree with is either insane or stupid, because we are the yardstick that rational, intelligent behaviour is judged by. Hell, not wanting to kill people we want dead can get called those things as well.

Which I feel is overlooked a lot in the recent shooting cases by media. The latest ones had manifestos detailing exactly why there doing the things they are doing. And in a very chilling sense "mentally ill" doesn't really come up in these cases. It might play a minor part fueling the cause, but it's never the cause in my opinion.

 

[DocMcCray]

Aren't those with mental issues less likely to commit a crime and far more likely to be the victim of a crime? I can't remember where I ay the statistic, but I'm pretty sure someone with mental health issues is 8 times more likely to be a victim then someone who is healthy.

It is possible to be both. A mentally ill person can be more likely to be a victim as well as be more likely to commit a crime.

The two values are not mutually exclusive.

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

Genuine mental illness and someone having different moral values than the accepted societal norm is very different. Even excluding soldiers and self-defense as the OP said, there are numerous justifiable reasons to take a life. Or there are none. It depends on your moral standard. Morality is too subjective to be associated with mental illness, barring absolute extremes.
If someone finds reason x justification to take a life, but you don't, does not mean the person in question is sick. But this is crossing over into a different field of debate.
Simple answer is, mentally healthy people are completely capable of taking lives.

I agree completely with you. It's one of the reasons i didn't mention morality in my original post, because i wanted someone else to point that out AND i was afraid the thread would delve into a morality debate. While an interesting debate, i'll let someone other than i start that one.

Aye, this thread could have gone up in flames if we had morality mixed in from the get go, I just hope I don't inadvertently derail it by mentioning this. However it is a rather crucial element of my argument, and this whole discussion.

 

[Shymer]

Do you think a person who kills another, necessarily has mental health issues?

Killing during the commission of a robbery, theft or other crime, gang-related killings, killing as a duty to a crime syndicate or family, honour killings, 'exposing' an unwanted child, killing out of racial hatred, homophobia or other belief, killings as part of a mob, homicide through willful neglect, withholding life-saving drugs, executing prisoners sentenced to death - even enabling euthanasia - I can think of dozens, if not hundreds of examples people killing another person, not in self-defence or because of mental illness.

In some cultures, that killing is sanctioned by the state and/or (mostly) accepted by society (soldiers, executioners, medical practitioners who enable euthanasia, police marksman) and so many people would categorise these killings as lawful and even beneficial to society.

So I think the answer to your question is simple.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The things that people overlook a lot is that it is much easier to kill people if you don't see them as people, but as objects. We can say that Hitler was insane all we want. But I don't buy that. The man was very concise, very rational, and very thorough. He wasn't insane. He honestly believed that Jewish people were not people. They were animals, sub humans, a pest to be eradicated. When you kill a mouse infesting your house do you feel remorse for killing them? You don't. And that's how some murderers view their victims. They view them as that mouse. Insignificant and nobody would care if gone. They aren't deluded. They aren't insane. They know that what they do will be unpopular in opinion. But they don't care.

Bit of a tangent, but there are some historians who argue that he didn't, he was just using anti-semitism to rise to power (which worked brilliantly).

But yeah, everyone who we don't agree with is either insane or stupid, because we are the yardstick that rational, intelligent behaviour is judged by. Hell, not wanting to kill people we want dead can get called those things as well.

Which I feel is overlooked a lot in the recent shooting cases by media. The latest ones had manifestos detailing exactly why there doing the things they are doing. And in a very chilling sense "mentally ill" doesn't really come up in these cases. It might play a minor part fueling the cause, but it's never the cause in my opinion.

Oh, certainly, the media consistently fails to deal with this sort of thing well. But this is because society as a whole has decided to.

I read a good article a while back, about a man whose wife had been raped and murdered, and how he was shocked to hear the guilty party talk like a normal human being, not like a rapist murderer monster. Because we like to tell ourselves that someone that does something monstrous is a monster, someone not like Us.

This is, of course, dangerous in that it leads to demonisation of people not like Us, and for people to be unprepared (in various ways) for when one of Us does something awful.

 

[Haukur Isleifsson]

Not unless you redefine mental illness to mean something different from what the medical community means by it. Sometimes it seems like a certain killer must be mentally ill because we can't understand why they killed. But that is essentially just an argument from ignorance. Me not understanding some behavior doesn't make it a sign of illness.

 

[Dragonbums]

Oh, certainly, the media consistently fails to deal with this sort of thing well. But this is because society as a whole has decided to.

I think- based on comments around the web- society does want this to be addressed but it won't. Media never fails to address anything. Behind the scenes they know the full story. It's all about the money and the NRA doesn't like to be threatened.

I read a good article a while back, about a man whose wife had been raped and murdered, and how he was shocked to hear the guilty party talk like a normal human being, not like a rapist murderer monster. Because we like to tell ourselves that someone that does something monstrous is a monster, someone not like Us.

That's interesting. Can you provide a link to the story? I'd like to read up on it when I have the chance.

This is, of course, dangerous in that it leads to demonisation of people not like Us, and for people to be unprepared (in various ways) for when one of Us does something awful.

The US keeps us under check by having a constant feed of "We are heroes" complex. That's why people joke about how we are the world police. If American and other world powers don't like it, then everyone else who does like it are bad and need to be "corrected"l

 

[michael87cn]

I think that sometimes people just don't get help. Everyone gets mad, depressed, basically negative emotional states. When nobody is around to comfort you or basically nobody loves you? I can see how it could be hard to get over those problems. I can see how a pretty screwed up world - lets be honest, it is pretty screwed up - can break someone that's already down.

I don't think you necessarily need to be crazy to kill people. But I think that people that do take that kind of terrible action have been in a messed up mental state for too long. They probably intend to kill themselves, so rationality doesn't come into anything. In their mind they don't have anything to lose, because they feel they've lost everything already. They don't have to pay for their actions, so they feel like they can do whatever they want. The idea that their time is running out might even give them a sense of reinforcement to do 'whatever' they want...

Of course... there's always several ways to perceive things... do we feel bad - really and truly bad - when we accidentally kill something? Okay, so it wasn't intelligent, but that beetle you crushed with your foot because you were too lazy to look where you were walking? How would you feel if that was how you died? Something much bigger than you simply didn't think you were important enough to take the time to look where it was going say like a careless driver perhaps. What I'm trying to get at is some people get pushed so far into jealously, hatred, rage, depression etc. that people to them, aren't important anymore. They feel nothing but negativity from people so they begin to hate and see them not as equals but as inferior.

This is just my opinion on the matter... I think that sometimes our civilization just doesn't work properly for everyone. Sometimes some people get pushed and pushed and pushed until they break.

I guess you could also simply just say some people are nuts.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Sorry if I'm coming on strong with this stuff. As a bipolar sufferer myself, I really want more people to understand mental illness.

That makes two of us! I often write about mental health issues because of my own problems with bipolar and misconceptions that others hold about mental health, which are often media-fueled. My condition even cost me my last job because my employer did nothing to protect me from an emotionally abusive coworker and I had too many meltdowns because I couldn't cope with it by myself (I was even written up for crying too much at my desk, and told to stop having reactions to what the other person did to me). That's happened twice in my life, and both were jobs I loved.

And that's just it - mental illness or no, everybody has a different baseline of reactivity to our environments. With the possible exception of antisocial personality disorder (and even that's a tricky topic) mental health problems have as much connection to violence as they do to the existence of Antarctica.

EDIT: I had to edit the post because it quoted the wrong one! Even when I tried it again, the wrong post came up. Very bizarre.

 

[shootthebandit]

snip

I remember you mentioned this on another thread. I just didnt realise how important the medication is. Is that something you have to take daily?

Again im sorry if I appear rude

 

[Eamar]

I remember you mentioned this on another thread. I just didnt realise how important the medication is. Is that something you have to take daily?

It is. At the moment I take Lithium twice a day and an antidepressant once a day. The antidepressant's just a temporary thing I'll come off in a few months, but the Lithium's for life. Try to think of bipolar and schizophrenia as being like diabetes or severe asthma - lifelong conditions that can be effectively controlled with the right medication, but it's really important to stick to your meds and take them properly. To me, taking my Lithium is no different to taking my asthma meds each day.

That makes two of us! I often write about mental health issues because of my own problems with bipolar and misconceptions that others hold about mental health, which are often media-fueled. My condition even cost me my last job because my employer did nothing to protect me from an emotionally abusive coworker and I had too many meltdowns because I couldn't cope with it by myself (I was even written up for crying too much at my desk, and told to stop having reactions to what the other person did to me). That's happened twice in my life, and both were jobs I loved.

*waves*

I also find myself jumping into discussions like these more and more often, and I've written about my condition before too. I think it's really important that as many people as possible (who are comfortable doing so, of course) speak out about their mental health problems. People really need to get a better idea of what mental illness is really like, not just make assumptions based on entertainment and sensationalist news reports. I hope it'll be like cancer awareness - even within the last couple of decades talking about cancer was kind of taboo and the whole thing was veiled in mystery and misinformation, but thanks to various campaigns and more people speaking out, it's no longer like that.

I'm really sorry to hear about your experiences. I've been fortunate in that authority figures have generally been sympathetic, but I know plenty of people who've experienced similar things, and I'm pretty nervous about getting a "proper" job when I finally finish university.

And that's just it - mental illness or no, everybody has a different baseline of reactivity to our environments. With the possible exception of antisocial personality disorder (and even that's a tricky topic) mental health problems have as much connection to violence as they do to the existence of Antarctica.

Exactly this.