Mono-Causal Explanations (was Re: Accused Killer of 3 Is Linked toRacist Writing (fwd))

[Carrol Cox]

Tossing around such terms as "madness," "nut cases," et cetera
IN THE SAME CONTEXT as the use of technical or semi-
technical terms for mental illness (e.g., paranoid schizophrenic)
is simply not acceptable in any company in which I should
care to be caught. Just recently in Bloomington IL a man was
given a 5 year prison sentence for attemted suicide. Not
exactly, but that is what it amounted to. He shot himself with
a rifle and then threw the rifle away -- and for carelessness
with a rifle (making it potentially available to children, etc)
was given the prison sentence. He had a prior criminal
record, hence it was a felony for him to possess a weapon --
even for the purposes of suicide.

About 90% of all suicide attempts are accounted for by
depression, manic depression, or schizophrenia. In this
case apparently the "convict" suffers from depression. It
was made an additional offense that he had not been
taking his medication (no mention being made that, even
from a rigorous psychopharmacological perspective no
one claims that more than 70% of depressed patients are
helped by medication).

Wojtek also seems woefully  innocent in respect to the
content of the mental illness of any one person. Let us
assume purely physiological causes of mental illness (that
is doubtful, but it will be of use to make the assumption
here). But *one* depressed person will brood about
his failure 50 years back to send out thank-you notes;
another will brood about having been rude at a party;
another will brood about her academic record, another
will think his/her spouse is ignoring him/her. And so on
and so forth. Ken M and Doug would explain this
content of the mental illness in religious (i.e. psychological)
terms, but it does have to be explained in non-neurological
terms -- I would say social or historical. Wojtek's
flippant (and to me personally offensive) throwing around
of terms of mental illness cannot explain them at all.

Mental illness simply fails to explain *any* social act
whatsoever. Wojtek is simply babbling.

Carrol