Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article merited underlining simply because this link is still, after all this time, misunderstood over and over. I'm tired of seeing it, so here's the truth. There is, in fact, a link between mental illness and violence. But it's not what people think.
People with mental illness (which often includes autistic people) are far more likely to be the targets of violence. We are not the perpetrators. The perpetrators typically people without diagnosed disorders. To quote the article: "The large majority of the perpetrators of violent crimes do not have a diagnosable mental illness, and conversely, most people with psychiatric disorders are never violent," Dr. Swanson writes.
Popular culture and the news seem to desperately want to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with mental illness when some new violent horror pops up. Because people always want to know "how could this happen," but never want to consider that it might be because we've been strangling social services for decades, or because the US has so many more guns per person than other Western nations. They seem to want a nice, safe "it was something specifically wrong with this one person" answer so nothing has to change and we can all move on with our lives.
As any idiot could tell by paying attention, these quick, individualized theories have had no useful effect in ending violence in schools, churches, and against marginalized people. If it's not the police shooting a black woman in her bed (or any number of other murders), it's attacks against US citizens of Asian descent, or the painfully numerous school shootings (including three in 2021).
The suggestion that mental illness might have been involved with violent perpetrators' motives for their horrific actions is nothing more than victim-blaming misdirection. It's much like how some awful humans seem to think that wearing certain clothes is "inviting sexual assault," as if adult male humans are toddlers with no self control who can't possibly be expected to answer for their actions.
So the next time you see a news article on the latest school shooting or hate crime, and the author suggests mental illness might have been involved, please recognize it as the gaslighting, red herring bullshit that it is.
People with mental illnesses are the victims of violence, not its perpetrators. Blaming the victims solves nothing and helps no one.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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