Violence Is Not A Product Of Mental Illness. Violence Is A Product of Anger

This article is important because I think it does a much needed justice to the mentally ill. There’s this misconception that mental illness and violence go hand in hand, moreover, that the former causes the latter. To be honest, years ago, when I first stepped into a psychiatric hospital, I was a bit scared and kind of expected to hear stories about how “the voices” told the patients to commit horrific acts of violence. To my surprise and embarrassment, I discovered that such violent acts were isolated incidents, not the norm like the large population tends to believe, and that, in most cases, the patients told stories about anger and how they failed to control it.

The above are also the points that the author makes: 

"Violence is not a product of mental illness. Nor is violence generally the action of ordinary, stable individuals who suddenly 'break' and commit crimes of passion. Violent crimes are committed by violent people, those who do not have the skills to manage their anger. Most homicides are committed by people with a history of violence. Murderers are rarely ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and they are also rarely mentally ill. Violence is a product of compromised anger management skills."

Now, the implications of linking mental illness to violence as a cause are many and quite dangerous. To name just a few, gun lobbying can increase, and the public ends up demonizing mentally ill patients, “while virtually no effort is being made to address the much broader cultural problem of anger management”.

Anger management, the author concludes, can and should be taught starting from school, given that a few methods - mindfulness, dialectical behavior therapy - have proven successful.