When an event occurs that shakes at the fabric of our society (like gun violence) we look to fault and blame, calling out acts as evil. Often we look for a reason, something tangible that we can use to pivot our feelings around. Mental health becomes a disproportionately easy scapegoat during these times, largely because of how we represent mental health through media, as an indicator of violent crime, but beneath that lies a deeper truth – society doesn’t readily understand the broad spectrum of mental health, the difference between behavioral health and mental health, and its correlation to social psychology.

Approximately 1 in 5 (U.S.) adults will experience a mental health issue in a given year, with 1 in 25 experiencing a substantial enough impact on their daily living that their condition is considered serious — and with suicide being a leading cause of death is the U.S. (1 in 92 chance in a lifetime), an estimated +90% of those people taking their lives display mental health symptoms.

Compare those suicide statistics to a 1 in 315 chance of being killed by a gun (in a lifetime), and 1 in 11,125 lifetime chance of being killed in a mass shooting.

So how have we come to rely on the correlation of mental health with mass-shootings (and violent crime) when we also know that a person with a mental illness is over ten times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime, and that individuals who have serious mental health issues only account for around 3–5% of violent crime?

What of the other risk factors toward violent crime?

Compare those statistics to an astonishing average that 20 people are physically harmed by domestic violence (DV) every minute, with the risk of DV leading to homicide increasing by 500% when a gun is present in the home.

72% of murder suicides are relate to DV, with 94% of those victims being women — DV accounts for approximately 15% of violent crime.

Overall, violent crime is simply not attributable to mental health, and gross-acts (such as mass shootings) leaves us with about 40% of perpetrators that do not display the required traits for a mental health diagnosis — the larger proportion of overall violent perpetrators (who are mostly men)also receive public and pejorative labels (the worst of which is evil) that serve no purpose in deterrent, or in understanding the motivation for committing a crime.

We are collectively shaped by the language we use and we are reflected within our lexicon. Often we are recipients of labels rather than empowered arbiters of personhood and identity. Key movements exist to reclaim and reframe labels (in fields of race, sexuality, ability etc), but in times of anguish and fear — as with violent crime — we adopt a reductionist perspective that limits our ability to understand the etiology of deviantbehavior.

The manner in which we approach mental health, oft labeled as ‘mental illness’, informs us of how we view an approximate 18.5% of the population who experience a spectrum of concerns. We are comfortable with mental health being manageable, we like it to be quietly dealt with, we prefer functionality not pervasiveness. We feel threatened by mental illness that isn’t ‘well contained’.

Statistically less than half of the adults with mental health issues seek treatment in the U.S., with thematic issues of access to healthcare, poverty and stigma preventing amelioration. The consequence of enduring an untreated mental health condition is a reduction in wellbeing, an increase in risk of self-harm or suicide, and a negative systemic impact on family and one’s social environment — we are interdependent creatures in that we contribute toward or detract from the wellbeing of all.

Mental health is largely manageable, it can transition into remission and does not have to define the person that experiences it — unless that person is frightening to us, then that person is ‘mentally ill’, then they are a psycho. Nutter, wack job, lunatic, sicko — there is a long available list of slights and slurs to throw against fellow humans who experience mental health issues, the toxicity of these labels lies within the dehumanizing of the individual.

We do not like to experience discordant members of society, we do not like to look that deeply into our social mirror. Mental health can be frightening, it can be debilitating and it can be very difficult to deal with. Approximately 70% of the youth in juvenile detention centers have a mental health diagnosis, and at least 20% of those children are deemed seriously mentally ill — by our current standards. Many of those children are labeled ‘evil’ or ‘lost causes’ for their actions.

The odd thing about serious mental illness is that we still do not know enough about it. Collectively we have found specific medications that reduce symptoms, and we have developed evidence based psychotherapy interventions, we are even attempting to predict the emergence of mental health disorders before they manifest — yet we know very little about it in the subjective sense. Each individual that experiences mental health issues is the absolute expert of their condition, and no two conditions are the same. The etiology of a mental health issue is vast and complex, yet we can treat them and we can help people to ameliorate themselves. That is a wonderful reality in treating mental health, that we professionals facilitate the healing of ‘self’ in others. They become ‘better’. We can do this with adequate funding, research, facilities, mental health professionals, and with public (and political) support.

We do not like things that shake us, we do not like that social mirror, we do not like collective responsibility or accountability — we do not like to consider that we contribute to the development of mental health issues in others. Better that they are sick, that something is ‘wrong’ with them. Better that they get better, and do so with little fuss please. Now, we ‘say’ that we want more mental health treatment, but do we want the responsibility of sustaining a mentally healthy society? That cost is more than finding ‘others’ to treat ‘others’, that cost is social and emotional change.

We can use science to locate specific areas of the brain that indicate or elicit mental health issues, we can view the neurobiological etiology there. We can label functional impairments with diagnosis and we can use that information to learn more about how mental health issues become mental health disorders, and potentially serious mental illness. We cannot, however, use this information to predict how each person will react to their condition, and we certainly cannot foresee how society will respond or manage the deviation from a functional norm, that is a greater responsibility that we all must share.

We are able to correlate specific information about brain activity, genetic markers, and psychological data to inform psychiatric labels — to see who is in need of help, and we are able to advocate for that help to be provided, but in order for that provision to be successful, we require a social shift in our approach toward mental and behavioral health. We need a maturing of our attitude toward phenomena that frightens us.

We would like to think that thought, action and behavior are wholly explainable, that we can simply apply a label to them — that we can effectively categorize them, and that we can code in a clause of evil when faced with a core-shaking crime.

We cannot scan for evil though, that doesn’t objectively exist, we cannot find it, nor can we effectively reason for it. We can only find regions of the brain that are damaged or enlarged, or affected by malaise. We can only explore thoughts, actions and behaviors that have complex and nuanced etiology.

The fallacy of ‘evil’ is that it’s just another label for mental, behavioral and socio-political issues that we choose to ignore — and the scapegoating of mental health is a barrier to more effectively exploring and understanding how we (collectively) give rise to many of these issues in the first place.