Posted by hello321 on October 5, 2015, at 14:56:12
In reply to Re: Shooters and Psychiatry, posted by Tomatheus on October 5, 2015, at 12:40:28
Some have a problem with pointing a finger at the chemicals used to treat mental illnesses as one factor behind violent crimes. Others are outraged by mentally folks being singled out. While others disapprove of the inanimate objects used to commit the crimes being blamed. I guess you can't make everyone happy.
Then others demand only knowledge gained from well designed studies be used to decide what action should be taken. While others are upset and claim discrimination if these numbers single out a certain group.
I suppose we can only expect progress to be very slow and meet many roadblocks along the way, if progress is ever even achieved.
It is true that fewer violent crimes are being committed by folks diagnosed and treated for depression. And that's great. But that's like pointing out that fewer crimes are being committed by African Americans in a city consisting of 80% Caucasians, if a higher percentage of African Americans have committed violent crimes in this city. Of course it is no good to judge anyone before you know them. And if a non-violent person is being singled out by anyone as a factor in the crime rate, that helps no one.
As I've said, my thoughts are that the brain altering prescriptions being prescribed to depressed people are, in some cases, causing or worsening their negative thought processes and making them more likely to become violent. The study I posted in my last post showed that a modest but still significantly higher percentage of people diagnosed and being treated for depression by a psychiatrist have been convicted of violent crimes. It talked about some shortcomings in the study that should be addressed by future studies. Though one good thing about the study was that it compared the time before the people studied sought psychiatric treatment (the unmedicated version of themselves) to the time when they were being treated with psychiatric medications. It appears to be a well done study that came up with numbers that could be helpful when deciding what steps should be taken to decrease the amount of violence occurring.
poster:hello321
thread:1083163
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150929/msgs/1083239.html