When substance abuse is included this is no longer true, and I imagine that users of specific substances (certainly not all) whether diagnosed or not are generally more violent than the rest of the population.
From PhysOrg.com reporting on a paper from JAMA:
The new study, presented in the May 20 issue of the scientific journal JAMA, is the largest in this field to date. In it, researchers compared the rate of violent crime in over 8,000 people diagnosed with schizophrenia between 1973 and 2006, and a control group of 80,000 people from the general population of Sweden.
Twenty-eight per cent of those with schizophrenia and co-occurring substance abuse were convicted of violent crime, compared to eight per cent of those with schizophrenia and no substance abuse, and five per cent of the general population.
“Hence, the idea that people with schizophrenia are generally more violent than those without is not true,” says Dr Niklas Lľngström, one of the researchers behind the study. “People with schizophrenia but no co-occurring substance abuse are insignificantly more violent than people in general.”
Dr Lľngström hopes that the results could help alleviate fears about mental illness.
“The stigmatisation of the mentally ill increases their alienation and makes people less likely to seek the help they need from mental health services”, he says. “Our results demonstrate once again the importance of preventing, discovering and treating substance misuse in efforts to reduce violent crime.”
As Philip as Furious Season pointed out, this is bad news for the likes of Fuller Torrey and those who would have anyone with a diagnosis medicated against our wills for life.
I wonder whether the study takes into account, that quite a few “schizophrenics” get convicted with assault and battery when they defend themselves against staff, who are trying to restrain, force treat or otherwise attack them. Here in Denmark it doesn’t need more than a single push at a staff, and you risk to get charged and convicted with assault and battery. One more reason not to seek the help you don’t need…
Whatever, I guess Fuller Torrey&Co. will continue to tell their lies about “the dangerous mentally ill”. Just as everybody keeps on telling people, that ECT is completely without risks, in spite of the Sackeim-study, and that antidepressants work, in spite of all the evidence pointing in the opposite direction. If nothing else, “schizophrenics” in Sweden for some obscure reason must certainly be less dangerous than those in the rest of the world…
It’s nice to see that Pharma Money hasn’t bought Everyone doing research. This particular factoid has been researched before, with the same conclusions.
Those who’ve been labeled are actually more likely to be Victims than perpetrators of violent crime, …. but hell, ….. why let a little thing like Truth interfere with $40.3 Billion in Psychiatric Drug Sales last year alone?
The task at hand is to Identify Psychiatric Drugs/Poisons in the public mind for what they are: perception and judgment Impairing Substance Abuse, which lead to the Violence the uniformed (meaning the as yet Undiagnosed, & Unaddicted for life Drug Customers) underpin their stigmatizations on.