Evil Deeds

A Forensic Psychologist on Anger, Madness and Destructive Behavior

Dr. Stephen Diamond is a clinical and forensic psychologist in LA and the author of Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity. See full bio

April 4, 2008, Law and Crime

Comments on "Dangerous States of Mind"

Dangerous States of Mind

By Dr. Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. on April 4, 2008 in Evil Deeds

Last Saturday night, forty-one-year-old Mark Castillo drowned his three children, ages 2, 4 and 6, in the bathtub of a Baltimore hotel room.

Can this be stopped?

Submitted by Judy Gregerson on April 5, 2008 - 7:06am.

I tackle just that question in my book BAD GIRLS CLUB, a story about a mentally ill mother who attempts to kill her children. There are always people on the outside who see "something". They are usually people involved who know that something is very, very wrong, but the cloak of silence in families like this is amazing. Denial is a very strong force and, sadly, it blinds people.

Three children die a day at the hands of their mothers in this country. It's hard to believe that nothing can be done to stop this. These poor children are like throw-aways that no one cares for, even if they are deeply loved by someone.

Hell ends with depression

Submitted by David Petropoulos on April 8, 2008 - 5:36am.

There is nothing more urgent for scientist then to lessen or cure depression.Antidepressants are amazing but often the mentally ill reject these medicines.Depressives of all sorts are the real terrorists,and many more will replace the ones we help or incarcerate.So life will go on as usual,with much destruction done by depressives,in one form or another.

Antidepressants, however,

Submitted by babyfacemagee on June 12, 2008 - 9:17pm.

Antidepressants, however, don't cure anything. All they due is "dull" the individual, during a particularly bad period so that they can get into therapy and figure out just what long standing problems have existed in their lives to drive them to a point where they have 'given up'...hence depressed. To think that antidepressants are the answer unto themselves is a very dangerous and unwise thought. They are not. People that stay on antidepressants for long periods, that are not hard at work figuring out their problems are doing nothing but using them as a 'crutch' and wasting valuable months or years of their lives not moving forward 'through' their problems. Finally..when they do eventually get off the antidepressants and realize how much time has gone by and that they have not accomplished anything more and were really just 'addicted' to the medication....this is when real rage can set in and the drugs will actually have set up a situation where they have HARMED the person taking them...by wasting valuable years of his life. Antidepressants should only be used for short periods of time...only enough to get someone into really good, introspective, hard, consistent and dedicated therapy...then they should be taken off. They should never be allowed to rely on the antidepressant as the 'answer' to anything. What I have stated here unfortunately is not followed and all too many people are hurt by antidepressants and then the doctors who prescribed or provided them are clueless when a rage builds up after they are taken off. They then think that MORE drugs are the answer....when that will further exacerbate the problem. So don't fool yourself into thinking antidepressants are the 'answer' for anything. They aren't. They are simply a crutch.

Cooky but not crazy

Submitted by Anonymous on April 8, 2008 - 11:33am.

I think part of the difficulty in premeditating dangerous intent involves public perception. The someone who knows "something", pointed out by Gregerson, usually suspects that the threat of danger is an attention-seeking action rather than an expression of intent. Freedoms are prized in America; even the freedom to be not-so-subtly "eccentric," in other words: insane. In fact, in some cultures this insanity is downplayed or celebrated. Consider, for instance, the Desperate Housewives phenomena that postulates suburban housewives are understandably a bit wild after being slaves to home and family life, and therefore their actions are excusable and entertaining.

To get to the root of this problem of missing the signs, we have to first educate the public as to baseline anger and beyond the limit destructive anger. Then laws need to be put in place that provide safety while not targeting the extinction of our inalienable rights. (More astringent restraining orders and more effective court systems to maintain them, for one.)

On a personal level, never underestimating the power of someone we know's illness could be key to preventing ignorance and improving self-care. If a person has been dangerous enough to warrant a restraining order, that person is still too dangerous to have an unsupervised visit with our children.

And we're all victims of believing that "John's just not that type of person. John would never do that."

Cycles of Destruction

Submitted by BeckyC on April 14, 2008 - 7:09am.

I believe in the insanity defense; that some people become so detached from reality, even if temporarily, that they cannot be held fully accountable for thier actions. The insanity defense, however, often turns the killer into the victim and takes away from the brutality experienced by the truly innocent victims. If a person is deemed "insane" then thier hospitalization should be carefully studied and patterns of behavior tracked. Just because prison wasn't given as a sentence doesn't mean these people will ever be rehabilitated or ready to come back out into society. I agree that there are always those who see the signs and yet everytime something as horrific as parents murdering thier children occurs, we gasp and simply cannot believe a sane person or any person could do such a thing. Evil exists and we can't ignore it. A crazy person commits no less an evil act then the one who knows what they are doing. Whether an insane person is as humanly evil as a plotting sociopath is debatable, but a hollow debate when it comes to justifying the deadly outcome.

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Could this be prevented?

Submitted by Raymond Low on May 28, 2008 - 12:43am.

One way is to train health care staff to identify potential psychopath ,assess their anger level , provide good advice and provide medication.(especially to those patients who show excessive anger, hostility and has children. This is important.)

Health care personnel need to gear themselves up to see the important of helping more mental patient to fully recover and so do it. Every tragic and failing reveals that the cost is potentially high for society as a whole.