[DanBC]

First about violence: You're wrong. Mental illness does not predict violent behaviour. Someone with a mental illness is not more likely to hurt you than someone without a mental illness. This is very clear from all the statistics we have. You not knowing this is a concrete example of your ignorance of mental illness.

The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime (and partly because they've been dehumanised by people calling them crazies) says more about you than it does about predicting violence.

> If I hear someone say "that's crazy", I assume they mean "that's weird and I disapprove". (I haven't quite nailed it down. There's a bit more nuance here, in that if someone says "that's crazy", and then someone else says "it's not crazy, it's evil", then you can imagine the first persona conceding the point... so clearly "crazy" sometimes implies a certain degree of helplessness in the bad-weirdness.)

But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".

I don't care what language you use. But you need to know, so that you can make an informed choice about the language that you use, that when you use words like "crazies" to describe groups of people it's the same to many people as someone who says things like "I got jewed on that deal", or "those uppity negros". You're on the wrong side of history, and it makes you sound like an ignorant bigot. If you don't care about that then go ahead, but if you do care what people think of you then you might want to use different language.

Another reason to stop: by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness. Since you want people with mental illness to get treatment it seems weird to create a culture that makes it harder for them to do so.

Another reason: Severe mental illness (bipolar, psychosis, borderline) affect about 5% of the population. This will include people you know, or their relatives. You're inadvertently insulting your friends. You probably don't want to accidentally offend people you know. One of the reasons they haven't told you that they (or their loved ones ) are medicated is because your views are stigmatising and discriminatory.

[jholman]

> First about violence: You're wrong

Wrong about what? What claim did I make that's wrong? Oh, wait, you're just assuming that I disagree with you, so that you can be mad. You assume that I assume that mental illness predicts mental behaviour, but I said nothing of the kind. I think? Right?

> Mental illness does not predict violent behaviour.

That's an interesting claim (interesting in the sense that I am interested, but not yet convinced). Two minutes of googling found mild disagreement with your claim, and was in general utterly consistent with my previous beliefs (e.g. [0]). Care to cite evidence in favour of your claim? If it turns out that you're correct about the facts, I'm interested in knowing more.

[0] http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/reports-stud...

Note, btw, that while the summary at that link makes it look like you're right, when you read the actual findings, it says the opposite of what you claimed.

So, unlike when I wrote the previous comment, now I have started to believe that mental illness _does_, to a small degree, predict slightly increased violent behaviour, though not nearly as much as being young or male or substance-abusing, all of which are about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning.

> The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime

This sentence is you being an asshole. Please stop. Obviously I meant "when I am assessing whether or not I should consider mentally ill people dangerous, what I am concerned with is whether or not I should not consider mentally ill people dangerous, as opposed to some other issue which is unrelated for the purposes of my security". Obviously I did not mean "In general I care about no one but myself" or some other farcical interpretation which no one would admit to in public.

> But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".

That is not a correct description of this thread. My comment was a reply to a comment that contained a link, which talked entirely about whether or not it was okay to call people and behaviour crazy. Did you follow the link and read the argument? Your description of "this thread" is a correct description of the original word used in the title of TFA, but the conversation is at this point broader than that. I dunno if I personally have ever called anyone "a crazy", but maybe I have.

> by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness

I'm not at all convinced that that's true. I think it promotes stigma against the behaviour characterized as "crazy". And I think it's pretty clear that that's what is happening in TFA's title: online harassment is being implicitly characterized as so inappropriate that it brings into question the health of the brain that committed it. I'm in favour of that implicit characterization.

> Another reason: ..... You're inadvertently insulting your friends

I don't agree that I'm insulting the friends, and family, and loved ones, and self, that I know, with mental illness. (You're so cute in your assumption that I'm in the privileged group.) If we're all getting along fine, maybe the problem is you. Or maybe you're right, and I misunderstand everything, and the problem is me. But just stating your implausible claim over and over again is frustratingly unpersuasive.

Thank you, by the way, for not getting distracted by the claim about violence, and after making your comment about it, moving on to the more interesting main point.

[DanBC]

Your link is from an advocacy group! But even that advocacy group suggests that people with a mental illness are not violent. If you're going to ignore their summary you probably need to have read the studies they link to. Being polite, you haven't had time to read the studies they link to. Some of those studies will include things that you find surprising, and that don't support your point about violence. For example, sometimes studies include self harm as an example of violent behaviour. Some of them include violence against objects. And some of them don't correct for multiple violent events committed by one person.

Here's one example of a well run meta analysis that includes self harm in the list of "violent behaviour": https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/depts/hspr/research/ciemh/mhn/pr...

(Note that the UK part of that paper is not talking about mental illness in the general population, but is restricting itself to a tiny subset of that population. Not just inpatients (about 8% of the people under specialist care) but people in a forensic unit. Those people are there because of a criminal justice involvement in their care. Even in this group of violent people we see a small group of people are responsible for most violent events.

This narrowing of focus - not all people with mental illness, but smaller and smaller sub-groups is why saying "crazy people are dangerous" is just dumb. You have to (using the link you provided) say "crazy people, with this particular diagnosis, when they're not getting treatment, are a little bit more dangerous than the general population, but less dangerous than parents, and less dangerous than poor men, and less dangerous than people with a substance addiction."

And even then you've failed to distinguish between "people who are violent because they have mental illness", and "people who are violent and co-incidentally have mental illness".

The group at most risk of homicide is children under one, and the people doing the killing are parents or step-parents. Why aren't you calling all parents dangerous?

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...

Focussing on mental illness and violence is sub-optimal because it focuses on a very small risk and it focuses on something which provides no predictive value. When you have someone in front of you and you want to know whether they're going to be violent or not knowing that they have a mental illness, even a severe and enduring illness, doesn't help you. Knowing that they are (various combinations of) male; poor; addicted; a (step)parent or (ex)partner; are all more useful to you.

But this ignorance about the minimal risks of violence from people with mental illness causes actual measurable harm. About half the people shot and killed by US police each year have a mental illness. (Although it's hard to get accurate numbers because the US doesn't collect this data).

http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuic...

Sorry for the long and complex report, but it's best quality evidence that the UK has about homicide by people with mental illness. Page 30 is homicide in England. Most homicide is committed by people without mental illness; most people with mental illness have no connection with violence. People with mental illness are not over-represented in the group of people convicted of homicide.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...

> I'm not at all convinced that that's true. I think it promotes stigma against the behaviour characterized as "crazy". And I think it's pretty clear that that's what is happening in TFA's title: online harassment is being implicitly characterized as so inappropriate that it brings into question the health of the brain that committed it. I'm in favour of that implicit characterization.

Well, this feels like a contradiction. You start by saying it's not promoting stigma; you end by saying crazy people do hateful things. Why use the word "crazy", why not use the word "asshole"? There are so many other words you could use it seems a shame to marginalise an already marginalised group.

(Also, it's against HN rules to call other people assholes. Your ignorant first post is you being an asshole, but I didn't call you an asshole. You should probably stop doing that.)