Livre d'Or

I wouldn't dream of trolling you, but it had occurred to me that you would likely have strong and well-informed views about this topic!

I completely agree with PEOPLE WITH VIOLENT MENTAL ILLNESSES ARE PEOPLE TOO AND WORTHY OF COMPASSION AND MEDICAL CARE AND SUPPORT. That's what I was trying to say with: there certainly are some mental illnesses that, untreated, can sometimes lead to violent outbursts. It's dangerous to ignore that, as much to the people who themselves live with major mental illness as to the general public and decent mental health provision is absolutely necessary, both for people with mental illnesses and for wider society... it's morally right that we take collective responsibility for treating the sick. I didn't declare it quite as forcefully as you do in this comment, because I'm still tentatively poking around at the edges of this political reality, but it was very much intended to be the conclusion of my post.

People with violent mental illnesses absolutely are worthy of compassion. That's why I'm very very chary about the direction that McClelland seems to be heading in, though I've certainly seen much worse examples, where the implication is that we absolutely have to deal with schizophrenia through forced treatment and institutionalization.

I do take your point about trying to win social acceptance for people with relatively privileged mental illnesses such as mood disorders should not be at the expense of people with disorders that have violent symptoms. I most certainly don't want to claim that people whose illnesses make them prone to violence don't exist or don't count. And I am willing to consider that I need to shout louder about this because the "don't stigmatize mental illness" crowd has a bigger megaphone at the moment. On the other hand, it seems to me like the "mentally ill people are morally deficient" view has the biggest megaphone of all, and it is important to me to speak up against that.

Regarding these two suspects: look, you've got a couple of young Black men, (sorry, but they're no more African or American than I am), from a bad area of London, thoroughly disenfranchized and socially excluded, in a context where there's very few legitimate avenues to win respect, particularly no available jobs. They've probably had a lot of experience of people in uniform and representatives of authority treating them like utter shit. If I'm going to go for wildly uninformed speculation about what led to them committing this atrocious act, my first guess would not be untreated schizophrenia or any other kind of psychotic break. My first guess would be that they found some crowd where your ticket to love and acceptance is simply your level of religious / nationalist fervour, and you're not automatic scum because of your skin colour, your accent, your lack of money and status-conferring possessions. Maybe a charismatic leader egged them on, more likely they got so hyped up on peer approval that they went too far. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're mentally ill or severely damaged by drug or alcohol dependence, but I also wouldn't necessarily assume it.

Really good point about simultaneously "not at fault"/"not morally continent", which is causes a double-bind. That feels like the core of this, thank you.