Coming from the other perspective; shouldn’t black and brown people be treated properly for their own mental illness and/or taught coping methods to deal with serious disorders and neurodivergence, not just dumped to the kerb? If we’re going for equality we should be lifting the disadvantaged up not dragging the advantaged down, at least not where said advantage is renewable.

Sorry?

That makes sense. I’m not sure if it counters or agrees with what I was saying before, but I definitely agree with the rephrasing. *Accurate and detailed* diagnoses along with beneficial treatment and coping methods are helpful – obviously, misdiagnoses are usually not.

Indeed. And even in those cases the knowledge that you had such a disorder would usually make it your (or your doctors’) responsibility to take steps to manage the condition sociologically speaking, even if criminal acts aren’t prosecuted as a result. For example employing a carer to justify and guide decisions.

I agree completely with your assessment of the legalities … but, I wasn’t trying to argue that Mens Rea impairment didn’t happen, or wasn’t worthy as a defence.

My original posts were in regard to an individual responsibility to self-regulate as best as possible when achievable, rather than the assignment of blame and responsibility when independent self-regulation is unachievable. I was discussing the social and ethical responsibility of someone with a mental health condition that negatively impacts on others around them to attempt management and seek treatment within the bounds of their honest ability.

I’ve known plenty of people living with particular mental health issues who make a point to learn, practice and seek out new coping methods and adjust their behaviour to compensate for whatever difficulties their conditions impose. And sadly, many who struggle to receive the help they need and seek, or to work out what’s needed in the first place, and who aren’t coping, through no fault of their own. But I also know a few people with nearly identical mental health issues to these others who simply use their diagnoses as excuse to knowingly and uncaringly perpetuate unpleasant behaviour. It’s become a particular bugbear for me when I see someone who takes their diagnosis as carte blanche to never have to actually work on or improve any of the issues that diagnosis comes with, never seeks out help or potential coping methods, and knowingly dumps the fallout from their unmanaged problems on the people around them.

I’m not trying here to demonise or criticise those who despite their best efforts have been tricked by their own illness or inability into temporarily abandoning the management strategies they’d previously been working on. Nor those whose best efforts haven’t yet provided positive change. Understanding and tolerance are definitely required when someone’s condition gives rise to negative consequences for them or others despite their best efforts, but those efforts (even the despondent or delusional abandonment of those efforts, if caused by the condition itself) are what’s important here. I believe it to be socially unethical to refuse to make any effort to manage one’s diagnosed condition at all, when capable of doing so, and instead to knowingly place the burden of it on other unwilling people. This is the difference between not receiving proper treatment or not being able to successfully employ coping methods, and, wilfully refusing treatment and deciding not to bother with mediating harmful behaviour to begin with.

There are obvious exceptions of course, for example your scenario above where disability or illness is so major as to render the person incapable of independent management at all, but the nature of those scenarios also removes them as valid aspects within this discussion. I wouldn’t expect someone currently incapable of accepting treatment due to severely poor mental health or disability to actively seek out ways in which to manage that incapability! At that point it’s the responsibility of the patient’s caregivers, responsible guardians and/or medical professionals involved to provide treatment and manage said condition for the patient, permanently or until such time as the patient can once again manage themselves.

Oh, yes, certainly. None of this is a clear-cut scenario or even something that can be discussed in something as comparatively short as a Disqus comment box.

Once again though, I feel I need to restate that I’m not passing judgement on anyone for not engaging with treatment, not benefitting from treatment, or even not seeking treatment for any perceived or actually beneficient rationale. Specifically I take issue with people causing others harm, knowingly, either intentionally or having been told after the fact; and rather than apologising or seeking to improve whatever element of their personality is responsible for said problem, instead insist that other people will just have to deal with it.

I think perhaps I need to give examples of what I mean by intentionally using a condition as a crutch as opposed to being in any way well-intentioned about things. Basically, anything in the form of invalidating other people’s valid experiences in order to escape critique – “I’m a dick but it’s because I have X, so you’re not allowed to get offended if I’m rude to you” – or even aggression and offence reversal based on it – “How could you get upset because I hit you! I can’t help lashing out, you’re being so cruel to me by acting hurt about it!” This is extremely different from someone opting to cease a particular treatment regime for decent and grounded reasons (or even for unsound reasons which seem decent to them at the time). Your arguments are predicated on the action being ethically or medically appropriate – the behaviour I’m calling out is based on selfishness and parasitic comfort. It’s closer to the abusive patterns discussed elsewhere than to victimhood.

If you’re interested in discussing the more complex and murky waters you were raising in response to my efforts another time, though, please do! I feel it’s likely the matter will come back up in this story arc and I’d be happy to debate the minutae with you again sometime. Just didn’t want to be misinterpreted in this instance since the subject is so raw.

The only reason I said “violent” is because we’ve been discussing mens rea, criminal culpability in the case of serious injury or death, and also specifically people who will cause harm and hazard to those around them if they’re not self-regulating properly (whether that be direct, subtle, abusive, emotional). It’s obviously not intended to describe the condition in tota. I know a couple of extremely awesome schizophrenics myself and have never seen what struggles they have had turn outward.

You’re missing an important point here. There has been a tendency by the Press and by apologists to whitewash the evil White people do by medicalizing it. When Black or Brown people do terrible things it’s immediately painted as their responsibility.

When White people do terrible things there’s a rush to bring their putative mental illness, rough upbringing, or substance abuse to the fore. Since we hold that the mentally ill have diminished capacity to understand the difference between right and wrong any discussion of their crimes is immediately framed as a mental health issue absolving them of culpability and responsibility. It’s an insidious form of White privilege.

Thank you! Nicely categorised. Obviously the first two aren’t appropriate and frankly are offensive to those of us in the disabled community. I’d also argue that 3) could be broken down into 3a) and 3b), ie. people whose disability was a factor in their criminality who either a) could have taken steps to address the behaviour regardless and did not yet are using their condition as a cloak and b) those who actually had no control over the outcome or who couldn’t exert effort for similar reasons. 3b) should be acknowledged and taken into account in every situation, 3a) perhaps not so much.