Media Sell the Mentally Ill as Violent Criminals. Truth Is; They’re Not. Video Lecture | Big Thinkers on Mental Health - Health & Fitness

the general public I think it's at the
mercy but they read in the papers and
there so they often and and some of the
crimes committed by mentally ill people
are very dramatic and unusual for
instance some years ago must be about
maybe more than twenty years ago there
was a fellow Juan Gonzales on the Staten
Island Ferry that took a sword of some
sort and killed two people and that of
course was very dramatic and it was very
much publicized so that it's things of
that sort that and the public not
knowing the full statistical picture are
going to get the impression oh my god
mentally ill people you really better
steer clear of them if you knew who they
were because there hardly had risk to do
something terrible in dramatic and
violent so it gives the public the
worried oh my god the the people who
were mentally ill are doing these things
all the time and the people that do them
must be mentally ill because it's crazy
to commit murder but the fact the matter
is from a standpoint of actual
diagnoseable psychosis by qualified
psychiatrists the number of violent
crimes that are committed by mentally
ill or psychotic people is relatively
small maybe five or six or seven percent
if you're schizophrenic the risk of
you're doing a violent crime is four to
six times higher than it would be in the
general population that means that 94 or
96 percent of people who are diagnosed
schizophrenic are not committing a
violent crime however within the group
who aren't just to focus for the moment
on schizophrenia who commit a violent
crime it depends on a number of other
variables for example if the person is
alcoholic and has abused alcohol then
the rate goes up maybe the risk is like
the 30% or 38% risk and that in the next
year they're going to do something
violent oftentimes when a violent crime
is committed by somebody who seems to be
mentally ill the police have a sense
that this guy is not operating with a
full deck that's a word they they have
their own little expressions about that
they will have the person incarcerated
maybe New York City it could be at
Rikers or wherever in some local jail
and then heaven evaluated by two
psychiatrists or two psychologists who
were able to do an adequate evaluation
of the person's mental state if those
two people conclude that the person is
if we don't say insane we say not guilty
by reason of mental disease or defect
then they will be relegated to a
forensic hospital rather than a prison
they're the exception would be if the
crime itself is such high profile that
the citizenry would be outraged at the
idea of the person being put in the soft
birth of a hospital such as Andrea Yates
who drowned her five children she was
grossly psychotic she was hallucinating
she was way out but the nature of the
crime was such that in specially in
Texas that she didn't get a break she
went to the prison now it was a second
trial and she young and ended up finally
where she should have been in the first
place in a forensic
but the public doesn't know is a lot of
times a person and the forensic hospital
was going to be incarcerated there in
admittedly more soft environment than a
prison but for way longer than the
person would have been if he had gone
through the ordinary prison system in
other words if you rape somebody and you
go to and it's the first rape and you're
young you go to prison well give him ten
years with three off for good behavior
whereas if a person did a rape of a
violent sort and it was psychotic at the
time and adjudicated as mentally ill and
so on he will go to a forensic setting
and perhaps be kept there for many many
years because there may be a violent
record that preceded the major violent
episode so that the person is considered
a pretty dangerous person until there's
much older and so that the public is
actually often in a safer situation with
a person and a forensic setting with
every whenever they come up for their
two-year evaluation is the person okay
to be released now the psychiatrist say
no he's not ready yet and I've seen
serial killers for example in the
forensic setting who are kept for life
whereas the same person having killed
one or two people and then they couldn't
prove that the person had also killed
some other people besides would have
gone to compare to be life sentence in a
prison but ended up justly so separated
from society forever in the forensic
hospital
you