Myth Busting
Myth #1 : Mental illness is caused by drug use.
Truth: Mental illnesses have no relation to drug use.
Explanation: There is no research that has found that drug use to be the cause of the development of a mental illness. There is a misconception that because someone has ingested a substance and then experiences perceptual changes, that they are experiencing a mental illness. This is not the case. Per the American Psychiatric Association a mental illness is defined as, “….health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these).” While certain substances may cause behavioral changes and perceptual changes that seem similar to severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, it is important to know the difference.
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that is diagnosed by a trained medical professional with careful consideration of symptoms and history as well as other personal factors. Schizophrenia, like other mental illnesses, does not simply “wear off” or “disappear” after a brief period of time, such as when a substance wears off. Alternatively, someone may experience a brief episode of psychotic symptoms for a variety of reasons, including as a result of ingesting a substance, that passes once the substance has left the body. Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that requires mental health treatment and often times medication. Individuals are never at fault for having schizophrenia as there is nothing you can do to bring it upon yourself.
So where do schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses come from?
While researchers are still working to find out more answers, there have been strong correlations found between genetic predisposition (meaning you carry the gene for it) and trauma, especially childhood trauma. Health professionals use a variety of tools to measure childhood trauma including measuring someone’s ‘ACE score.’ ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. Each adverse experience an individual survived during their youth counts as one point, the higher someone’s total points, the higher their chance is of developing a mental illness, especially a severe mental illness, as well as increasing their chance of becoming homelessness, and developing a substance use disorder.
Why does childhood trauma increase someone’s likelihood of developing a mental illness, experiencing homelessness, and/or developing a substance use disorder?
We cannot discuss this topic without discussing intersectionality. Please click here to read more about intersectionality. Thanks to determined medical professionals and researchers we are able to visualize some of the changes to the brain that happen as a result of trauma. Some of the changes that have been found in the brains of those who have experienced childhood trauma have also been found to correlate with a later diagnosis of a mental illness, including substance use disorders. These two factors are further correlated with an increased chance of experiencing homelessness. It is important we understand people as a whole with many intersecting identities and experiences, not as individual identities that society would like to assign them.
Myth #2: people who have a mental illness are dangerous
Fact: people with a mental illness are not anymore violent than the average person
Explanation: This is one of the most harmful stigmas attached to mental illness, especially when the individual is part of another marginalized group. In fact, research has found that individuals with a mental illness, especially a severe mental illness, are much more likely to be a victim of violence than they are to be violent themselves.
So why do people think this?
Not unlike today, people in the past who were considered “different” by society were unfairly associated with negative behaviors or factually incorrect beliefs. In some cases this was a result of intentional discrimination, in others it was a result of a lack of knowledge as science had not yet advanced enough to provide us with solid answers. For example, there was a belief for a large portion of time that individuals who had a mental illness were under the possession of an evil spirit. These individuals, who were actually mentally ill, would at times be subjected to torture or sent away from the family to die. These beliefs while long debunked, have still have left a lingering cloud over those who are mentally ill. Until the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960’s, the mentally ill were still been sent away to hospitals where they were subjected to all sorts of medical experiments. What kind of a message did this send the public?
What does the research say about mental illness and violence?
There is quite a bit of research on violence and mental illness and the results have been fairly stable overtime in finding that those who have a mental illness are no more violent than the average person without a mental illness. Whenever reading research on violence and mental illness (or any research) it is very important to read about any “confounding variables” in the study. A confounding variable is something that could influence what the research is trying to measure between two variables. For example: if a study wanted to measure if two similarly-built athletes ran faster in one brand of shoes vs. another, if one athlete had an extra large coffee and one did not, the coffee could be a confounding variable. Similarly in research regarding mental illness and violence it is important that you investigate for confounding variables. A few examples:
What was the context of the violence? Defending themselves from an attack is “counted” as violence in some studies, remember those who are mentally ill are much more likely to be a victim of violence so it is to be expected that they would also experience more situations where they would need to engage in defensive actions than someone who is not experiencing a mental illness.