Violence

Common mental illness stereotypes: violent, unpredictable, unreliable, incompetent, weak character

Inaccurate & Damaging Mental Illness Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a way that we store knowledge about social categories. When a category is considered by society to be deviant, such as the group of people who are mentally ill, members of that category tend to be viewed as a homogeneous group that is accurately represented by stereotypes. There may be a grain of …

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Psychotic Does NOT Mean Violent

One of the most common and damaging stereotypes about mental illness is that mentally ill people are chronically dangerous and violence-prone (Corrigan & Watson, 2002). This stereotype is especially strongly linked to people with psychosis. Like many stereotypes, it’s not true in the vast majority of cases, but the general public may not realize that. …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… the Psychology of War Atrocities

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the psychology of war atrocities. This post won’t go into any details of the atrocities themselves; rather, the focus is on what contributes to people becoming perpetrators. This post is based on a comprehensive paper on the …

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Kyle Rittenhouse as Christian Right Hero?

Two men get killed. Some members of the Christian right are calling the man who killed them a hero and a patriot sent by God. Something isn’t adding up here. On August 25, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse grabbed his AR-15 style rifle and left his home in Antioch, IL, to head over to Kenosha, WI. He …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Victim Blaming

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is victim blaming. Victim blaming involves placing the responsibility for a violent or otherwise harmful act either entirely or partially on the victim of that act. It arises from distorted beliefs regarding victims, perpetrators, and the harmful acts …

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The emerging blogger series on Mental Health @ Home

Bipolar Stigma (Guest Post)

In this emerging blogger post, HealthComesFirst!!! Blogger writes about the stigma around bipolar disorder. I have often felt that the stigma associated with bipolar illness is as big if not bigger (twice as big) than dealing with the illness itself.  Every time there is a school shooting or a gun incident or a drug cartel …

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