Jason Y writes:
I think the Keifer Sutherland character could be Robert, SD even more so (no doubt), and I’m starting to doubt my sanity.
We really need to get away from this notion that mentally ill = dangerous.
It’s quite tiresome. I work in mental health, so I ought to know about this sort of thing.
Mental illnesses do not necessarily increase the rate of violence. Some like the anxiety disorders seem to actually dramatically reduce the risk of violence. In fact, if you cure someone of an anxiety disorder, their potential for aggression, violence or dangerousness statistically might get a lot higher. And if a violent person somehow got an anxiety disorder, the anxiety disorder would probably dramatically reduce their aggression and violence. There is something about that phobic type of worried and often guilty fear that seems to act like a force that actually propels people in the opposite direction of aggression and violence.
I cannot speak for other mental disorders, but I would say OCD’ers are about the farthest away that a human could possibly get from being a serial killer. If there was an absolute antithesis of a serial killer, it would be an OCD’er. And this even applies to OCD’ers when they are about as insane as they can get. There is something about the illness that makes the person quite harmless, statistically speaking anyway.
People with OCD are the least likely of any humans to ever commit any irrational violent act. Any random person, male or female, walking down the street is much more likely to commit an irrational serious violent act or homicide than an OCD’er.
People with GAD like one of our commenters are very unlikely to commit violent acts. Same applies to Panic Disorder and any of the phobias. There is something anxiety disorders that not only does not cause aggression, violence or antisocial activity but actually seems to dramatically propel the person in the opposite direction. If there was an utter antithesis of a violent or dangerous person like a psychopath, sort of like if Psychopaths were +Violent/Dangerous, then the anxiety disorders would be -Violent/Dangerous. We can think of them as “Anti-Dangerous.”