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

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Mar 3 14:28:55 PST 2000


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



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