(February 12, 2018 at 6:34 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(February 12, 2018 at 6:32 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: As I said in my post, the bolded portion was in reference to her latter statement, not to her statement that it wasn't an excuse.
The 2 go together though. If you say a person raped and killed someone because they are simply mentally ill but not a bad person, you are using mental illness as an excuse for the atrocity they commited.
I haven't looked up the science for what I'm about to say, but it seems intuitive at least that one would have to be mentally ill to, at least in many/most cases, do such atrocious things as to rape or murder. When I think "evil" with reference to people, a lot of the times, I'm thinking "fucked in the head". I think it's rare that someone could be evil and yet be quite sane.
And as others have said, it doesn't mean we're using mental illness as an excuse. Rather, it's important to acknowledge that mental illness can play a contributing factor in leading to "evil" behaviour. We shouldn't ignore this possibility just because it doesn't make some people feel good about it.
