Oh, THIS article again. I've had arguments on Facebook before about THIS article LOL.
(What I wrote here is kind of sarcastic...but it's not directed at you, it's directed at whoever wrote this article)
First of all, again, there's a difference between "insane" and "mentally ill," as I said.
So mass murderers have 20x the rate of psychosis of the general population...but there isn't a link between mental illness and violence. Sure.
So they're really out here trying to say that 20% of these shooters have psychosis and...the rest of them are perfectly mentally healthy. None of these shooters have depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, or any of the other mental illnesses out there. Right.
Ok, that's psychiatric
history. Not every person with a mental illness gets diagnosed. In fact a lot of them don't. And my guess is a lot of these mass shooters were not getting proper treatment, or else, well, they probably wouldn't have gone out and killed people.
Also even going by psychiatric history, that's about 2.5x the rate of mental illness compared to the general population. But sure, there's no link between mental illness and violence.
And then as the cherry on top of the "who cares about facts when you've got an agenda" sundae, they actually cited Dylann Roof as an example of a mass killer with no mental illness, when it is well known that he acted as his own lawyer specifically to prevent his mental health records from being released because he didn't agree with whatever he was diagnosed with.
EDIT: Same with Stephen Paddock:
Investigators believe Las Vegas gunman had severe undiagnosed mental illness: Sources and Christopher Harper-Mercer:
Oregon shooter: New details emerge about Chris Harper-Mercer - oregonlive.com Two other shooters that this hard-hitting piece of journalism cited as having no mental illnesses.
But if you don't agree with my analysis here's a challenge...look at the accounts of mass shooters in the media and see what percentage of them you can find that had clear symptoms of a mental illness.
I'm sort of amazed this article ever got published, but I guess it is the NYTimes, can't expect much.