LogFAQs > #965310873

DrPrimemaster posted...

Do you have an opinion on why a person might kill themselves vs. a violent outburst?
Anecdote,
There was a guy at my high school nicknamed "twist". I played on the same football team as him, but never really interacted with him. All I remember is that he was kind of a dick, but wasnt bullied. He was mostly just left alone.
He ended up shooting himself, so he obviously had mental health issues and access to a gun. So I wonder why he didnt attack the school. Would that change today?
Are a lot of these shooters today people that would have gone quietly 20 years ago.

Don't conflate mental illness in general with some sort of propensity for violence against others. People with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators, and those who struggle with a will to live... that isn't something that is typically externalized into violence against others. It almost always manifests in harm against the self in some way, for obvious reasons. There's a difference between depression and nihilism.

Violence against others is (usually) a behavioral/personality issue that is typically rooted in something learned. For example, there is a large intersection in the USA between gun violence and misogyny; 2 women are murdered in domestic violence situations every day on average in the USA. Misogyny is not ingrained in people; it is learned. People like to scapegoat mental illness to avoid admitting that many of these shooters were acting off of beliefs that many non-violent people share with them. These carefully constructed manifestos these murderers make are deliberately designed to incite more people to commit mass shootings. They aren't flipping some sort of "mental illness switch"; they're convincing people.

If you are looking for solutions that don't involve gun control (and I support a multi-faceted approach, including gun regulation), one thing that could be done would be to give generic, mandatory classes in public school on Cognitive behavior therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy, to make sure everyone has BASIC skills for managing emotional and behavior issues, as well as more heavily focusing on critique/critical analysis in basic education. It would result in people being less likely to fall for bullshit fearmongering and give them some standard tools for managing emotions and deconstructing harmful behaviors, which is something that EVERYONE, not just mentally ill people, can benefit from.