[beatgammit]

Exactly, which is why I'm a little concerned about the knee jerk reaction to promote mental health as a solution to problems we have in society (mass shootings, CP, suicide, etc).

As you said, you need the patient to want to change in order for progress to be made, and mixing punishment and therapy makes that nearly impossible.

What we need is a fundamental shift in how we view mental illness and discipline. Instead of just punishing people for doing something wrong, we should be looking at why the mistake was made and try to work with the individual to fix that and use punishment only if more effective methods don't work.

Maybe we need psychologists to work with parents/communities so parents know how to approach deviant behavior in a constructive way. I firmly believe that if parenting is done well, people will be better equipped to deal with problems later in life.