- No Need To Be Scared
Yes, it’s true that some people with mental illnesses will act differently, and maybe even oddly at times, but that does not mean they are dangerous.
Harvard Health Publishing reported how public opinion surveys show that people think “mental illness and violence go hand in hand.”
One survey found that 60% of Americans thought that “people with schizophrenia were likely to act violently toward someone else, while 32% thought that people with major depression were likely to do so.”
It turns out that the mentally ill who are acting violently typically have a substance abuse factor that is contributing to the aggression.
When researchers of the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study looked into violence in an area of Pittsburgh, they found substance abuse to be the main contributing factor, with no difference in rates between the mentally ill and general population.
The non-sensical speech by a person with schizophrenia, the flat affect by a person with depression, or the impulsive behavior by a person with bipolar can be alarming, but they are not signs that you are in harm’s way.