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I've seen a couple of articles from this person before but I don't know much about her other than she has a PhD in epidemiology and biostatistics.
This, however, is one of the better articles I've seen discussing mental illness as it relates to mass shootings.
This, however, is one of the better articles I've seen discussing mental illness as it relates to mass shootings.
It’s hard to explain (and fix) evil
Mass shootings and mental illness
yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com
What is mental illness?
Mental illnesses are discrete and treatable health conditions involving distress or functional impairment related to thinking, emotion, or behavior. Examples include anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia.
There are also negative, antisocial thoughts, feelings, and actions associated with typical human functioning, such as anger, aggression, hate, envy, grievance, impulsivity, and reactivity. These human experiences, while in many cases undesirable and problematic for individuals, families, and communities, are unfortunately typical in a human life. While a range of strategies can be employed to counteract these problematic patterns – parenting, education, faith practices, some types of psychotherapy, policing, and the justice system – these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not illnesses, or even necessarily indicative of an illness. Antisocial behavior, for example, is not on its own sufficient to warrant diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, which involves an ingrained pattern of predatory behavior and lack of conscience that is very difficult in most cases to treat successfully, but which does constitute an illness.