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Showing posts with the label major mental illness

Violence and Mental Illness

Today I pray, along with so many others for the victims of the Arizona shooting yesterday: six dead, at least 12 others injured, including Congresswoman Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The man in custody for this violence is now being held on multiple counts of murder, and his background searched for clues to his destructiveness. The county sheriff says the young man has mental issues. I say No Kidding. Most of us who suffer from issues of behavior, emotion and thinking have what are called mental disorders. In other words, we as individuals have problems. Problems we know as something a part of ourselves but distinct from ourselves as a people. Those who suffer mental illness are people whose disorders have them. Major mental illness (MMI) like schizophrenia or psychosis so distorts the mind, mood, perception and behavior that we have commonly called these people "out of their mind." They behave as if they don't have two normal thoughts to rub together. Often, they don't.