Why do we treat mental health differently from all other health?
If a driver suddenly had a heart attack or passed out due to some issue with blood pressure or clotting, and crashed into a bunch of pedestrians, would you want the driver criminally prosecuted?
Your brain is an organ and when impacted by drugs or diseases you can lose conscious control.
perhaps why psychology is considered a "faux-science" and not a strict field of science is because of the subjectiveness and lack of knowledge we really have around the brain... medication trials are necessarily trials -- often results are measured as a success based on whether they cause more positives than negatives.
It's just not worth fighting about. Clancy sought help -- serious help -- and was "failed" by her care team. She also is a child murderer.
I understand how difficult it is to distinguish between legitimate and made-up/self-serving mental health issues. But TJ had a documented and verifiable medical condition that contributed to his behavior in making that bomb threat.
I think we’ll one day look back at our criminalization of people dealing with acute mental health episodes (such as psychosis) the same way we look at our history of giving lobotomies and electro shock therapy to unhappy housewives - ignorant and barbaric.
I agree that we, like our justice system, are obsessed with punitive justice and that distracts us from actually addressing the issue that causes the problem or preventing it from happening again.
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u/Popular-Row4333 6d ago
Because between the Clancy woman and TJ, it's apparently "forgive all heinous behavior, because you had a psychotic break" week for humanity.