Here’s something to think about: On Nov. 6, 2006, the New England Journal of Medicineran an article entitled “Violence and Mental Illness – How Strong Is the Link?” Richard A. Friedman, M.D., addressed the “controversial question about the potential danger posed by people with mental illness.” His conclusion: while the evidence indicates that persons with a serious mental illness present a greater risk of violence over a lifetime than people without a disorder – 16 percent to 7 percent, according to the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study by the National Institute of Mental Health – persons treated at a mental health facility and then released “showed no difference in the risk of violence” from people in the community without a disorder.
Dr. Friedman concluded that the symptoms, not the disorder, present the risk. People treated and relieved of their “acute psychotic symptoms” – paranoia, hallucinations – “may be,” he says, consistent with the evidence, “no more likely to be violent than people without a mental disorder.”
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