Yes, it is my educated opinion that this person, for the reasons I outlined at a pretty high level, has mental illness.
No, I do not think that the other person’s statement was totally cool. I agree with you that it was insensitive and dismissive. I want to make it very clear that I’m not trying to invalidate the reaction that kind of comment inspires.
What I am saying is that we do not do the fields of medicine, mental health, or criminal justice reform any favors if we try to take the stance that mental illness has no role to play in these kinds of incidents.
Look, I’m a researcher. One of my primary areas of research is studying how susceptibility to contagious ideas like these cluster in social networks and how they’re exploited by the viral contagion between individuals as pushed by their peers and mass/social media. I can get all into sigmoid transfer functions from opinions to behavior and how they’re left-shifted by predispositions.
But my main, ethical point is that this is a medical problem, and we need to treat it like one. None of that casts aspersions or makes any assumptions whatsoever about the vast spectrum that constitutes what we broadly and often erroneously term “mental health.” It just means that people need psychological and medical interventions rather than life in prison or the electric chair.
Yes, it is my educated opinion that this person, for the reasons I outlined at a pretty high level, has mental illness.
No, I do not think that the other person’s statement was totally cool. I agree with you that it was insensitive and dismissive. I want to make it very clear that I’m not trying to invalidate the reaction that kind of comment inspires.
What I am saying is that we do not do the fields of medicine, mental health, or criminal justice reform any favors if we try to take the stance that mental illness has no role to play in these kinds of incidents.
Look, I’m a researcher. One of my primary areas of research is studying how susceptibility to contagious ideas like these cluster in social networks and how they’re exploited by the viral contagion between individuals as pushed by their peers and mass/social media. I can get all into sigmoid transfer functions from opinions to behavior and how they’re left-shifted by predispositions.
But my main, ethical point is that this is a medical problem, and we need to treat it like one. None of that casts aspersions or makes any assumptions whatsoever about the vast spectrum that constitutes what we broadly and often erroneously term “mental health.” It just means that people need psychological and medical interventions rather than life in prison or the electric chair.
Thank you for making this point. I agree; we must view behavior like this as needing help.