The Problem with Labeling Evil as Mental Illness
The stigma surrounding mental health is the reason for the societal confusion between mental illness and real evil. (PAOLOBARZMAN VIA FLICKR)
June 9, 2018
When you couple the digital age with the modern progressive culture, you gain exposure to valuable news and information. Unfortunately, this can also shed light on troubling aspects of our modern American culture. If you remember a few months ago, authorities in California discovered 13 children living in filthy and abusive conditions. The other day, I came across a similar story about a couple that was abusing its ten kids in the same manner, depriving them of food in a home where they were constantly physically abused. Finally, I also read a story not too long ago about a mother that stabbed her young daughter more than 50 times.
Mental health has been a topic of concern for Americans, whereby we’re quick to label acts that aren’t normally observed as mental illnesses. However, in the stories I mentioned, oftentimes in the comment sections or on platforms such as Twitter, I see readers calling the parents in abuse cases mentally ill, but they aren’t.
Mental illness is something one suffers and deals with in their own life; it does not inherently bring others down. The mentally ill person can be a mother who battles severe depression while packing lunch for her kids or a father that struggles with bipolar disorder and seeks help through his psychiatrist. It’s something one person struggles with, not something that a person projects onto others, especially in instances where adults harm children.
Let’s call those instances what they are: evil, not mental illness. We need to be careful to not confuse evil acts with mental illness because that is not fair to the millions of Americans struggling to better themselves. One can be evil without being mentally ill, and giving evil people the excuse of mental illness may only be helping to justify their actions, not only in their own troubled minds but also in our legal system.
It is troubling to see stories of child abuse daily, but the next time you see one, do not rush to think of mental illness. Instead, call it evil because these disgusting acts should warrant sympathy from no one. When you struggle with mental illness, you are a normal citizen who has a personal fight to overcome. When you hurt children for your own satisfaction, you are the lowest of the low.
The abuse of children has not only come at the hands of parents, but unfortunately at the hands of other children, as we’ve seen in light of recent school shootings. Whether it’s the tragic shooting in Parkland, Fla., or the more recent tragedies at Sante Fe High School, student gunmen have been labeled as mentally ill.
Typically we hear that gunmen were victims of bullying or had mental illnesses that caused them to commit their acts. Although bullying is a concern across schools around the country, committing heinous actions is far from a normal reaction to it. Children across the country are bullied daily but find other means of resolving their situations that don’t include taking the lives of others. Seeking constructive and peaceful ways to solve dilemmas needs to be our first inclination. We must separate the notion of mental illness from the instances where there are clearly evil intentions involved. In this way, the topic of mental illness will receive the attention it deserves in the aim of helping all those who suffer and seek genuine help.
Sunflower • Apr 6, 2024 at 11:58 am
I think the mental health experts would disagree. Psychopaths and narcissists are forms of mental illness, for example, that result in harming others. Not all mental illness results in violence, abuse or harm to others. In fact most people with mental illness are not harmful to others. But we have to separate the violent mentally ill from those who are not harmful to others. Would you say Hitler was not mentally ill? Mental illness and violence have been with us since the beginning of time.
Debbie • Mar 28, 2023 at 8:26 pm
I agree mental evil not mentally ill there’s a difference.
Lauren • Aug 17, 2022 at 7:15 pm
I disagree. What most consider to be evil acts are very often behavior fueled by mental illness. This article uses the example of a mother struggling with severe depression while packing their child’s lunch, but it can just as easily present as a mother struggling with severe depression and neglecting her child because she can’t get out of bed. I’m not in anyway trying to say that mental illness leads to evil acts because the vast majority of the time it doesn’t, but to say that it never does is, in my opinion, disingenuous. In a way, it downplays the extremely negative effects mental illness can have on people and those around them, especially when it’s not being successfully treated.
People who do these kinds of terrible acts are often labeled narcissists, sociopaths, etc. as if they are synonymous with evil when they are, in fact, mental illnesses. Being mentally ill doesn’t excuse these people’s actions, but it can provide somewhat of an explanation which, in turn, can be used to work toward prevention in the future. Labeling them as evil and separating them in our minds from us “good” folks is unhelpful and makes the assumption that it’s something innate in that person and can’t be changed or prevented.
In the example of child abuse, most abusers were abused themselves. At what point do we stop having empathy for the victim and how they were affected by their trauma and go to labeling them as a monster when they perpetuate the cycle? Is there not room for both having empathy and holding them responsible?
I highly, *HIGHLY* recommend a TEDx Talk by Amy Herdy called Have You Ever Met a Monster. You can find it on YouTube.
Chris • Apr 7, 2024 at 10:59 am
RE: “People who do these kinds of terrible acts are often labeled narcissists, sociopaths, etc. as if they are synonymous with evil when they are, in fact, mental illnesses. … Labeling them as evil and separating them in our minds from us “good” folks is unhelpful and makes the assumption that it’s something innate in that person and can’t be changed or prevented.”
Sociopaths or psychopaths ARE evil and they have a different physical brain so they’re above and beyond the label “mental illness.” This is well documented and, in fact, psychopaths rule the world, it’s in part why the world is crazy — read the essay The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment Of The Covid “Phenomenon”
Mental illness is nearly always the result of someone having been traumatized in the past and/or a oppressive socio-economic environment. Yet relatively very few people with such traumas ever act responsible as adults and seek out help. The crap keeps getting past on instead…
SH • May 25, 2022 at 12:48 pm
This is really well written. I fell into the “mental illness” excuse to explain why such evil acts are done but now that I think of it, mental illness causes people to be sad, isolated, and not wanting to put others through what they are going through. If I was abused as a child, I will not put my children through what I went through because I know what its like. A person of pure evil on the other hand will continue this cycle onto their children/others for personal sick gratification. How does mental illness lead someone to shoot up a school? It doesn’t. Evil does that.
Evil and mental illness are two separate things that should not get confused as one and this article explains the difference very well. Thank you.
KK • Oct 28, 2021 at 12:12 pm
@Nora sage sage – I am so sorry this happened to you. My mother was also abusive, though not to the extent of yours, but I have also had therapists claim she must’ve been abused and/or mentally ill. And that is just not the case at all. I was very close with my grandparents (her parents) and I can guarantee she did not suffer from anything like that. She was raised by warm, loving parents. Sometimes people are just bad. Evil people exist and should be held accountable for their actions.
Maxine Findlow • Aug 17, 2020 at 2:20 pm
mental illness when you go to prison you are shocked at the way they are treated and by each other. Then in time you know longer see the abuse soon it becomes normal. That’s what happens to kids in homes of abuse. Soon its normal to harm someone thats not a reason for their behavior its why it happens. Is there evil in the world yes but it controls them that are abused much easyer then someone that not been abused. Getting them young and helpping them feel again stops the cycle of abuse.
Ron Harden • Jun 29, 2020 at 11:46 am
While it is true that labeling someone who evil has mental illness is common, They can be help by someone like a Child Psychiatrist for treatment.
Ron Harden
https://www.cnscenteraz.com/
nora sage sage • Apr 17, 2020 at 12:48 am
I am 68. Daily my mother abused all 5 of her kids. She had kids to trap men into marrying her. None of the men stayed.
When I was 3, she sold me to a man who raped me. I left my body and watched from a corner of the room. He told her that I wouldn’t remember because 3 year old’s didn’t remember. This continued.
I was torn and still have scars in my privates. I have never been able to enjoy sex because when I begin to enjoy it, I space out. My next
I was the oldest. My second oldest sister was not sexually abused, but was physically abused almost daily. She was beaten, burned, cut.
Needless to say, there is no sexual or physical abuse with out emotional abuse. She knew what she was doing. She was sane, but mean.
During my experience with talk therapy, I was told that she was mentally ill. No she wasn’t, she was sane but evil.
It seems that no matter what a person does. How sadistic a person, they were mentally ill so that explanation gives them an excuse. I don’t agree.
I do believe there are some who have mental illness. But I know there are others who are just evil.
Simplyred • May 15, 2022 at 1:38 pm
I agree some are very much aware of what they are doing. They are selfish and have a sense of entitlement. When they make poor decisions or things don’t turn out the way in which they think things should. They attack others rather than hold themselves accountable for the role they have played in where they are in a particular situation or out come. Let’s be care when we evaluate a particular situation, example: a person who is abused such as a child or the mass shootings like in Buffalo New York, are not responsible for the abuse they encountered by their abusers.