Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil
Even psychopathy/sociopathy are widely debated as mental illness vs. "just evil/bad/morbid people". Antisocial disorders are in the DSM but some experts consider psychopathy/sociopathy to go way beyond antisocial traits. Many violent people (abusers, murderers, mass murderers, and serial killers) are dismissed as "just evil/bad/morbid people" who were conscious and cognizant rather than empathized as people whose behaviors were caused by a mental illness; and whose behaviors could have been reduced in likelihood with mental health services.
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I know this is kind of a tangent, but I recently used
an article related to the topic of psychopathy in an assignment for my students. (In fact, I'm grading them right now!) You might find the results interesting.
Primary psychopathy is related to a deficit in affective empathy with no change in cognitive empathy, which means that such individuals "retain their ability to read and assess others’ emotions, and subsequently utilise this sensitive information to formulate strategies with which they can acquire what they want, while their lack of affective empathy may lead them to overlook or ignore potential harm inflicted to others in the process".
Participants high in primary psychopathy "experienced positive affect towards sad emotions, thus showing affective desensitisation and discordance to such stimuli. Additionally, primary psychopaths experienced positive affect towards angry and fearful expressions"; they also were "associated with experiencing negative affect towards happy expressions". This is "consistent with neuroimaging studies that tend to show highly psychopathic individuals demonstrating dysregulation in the amygdala, which is known to play a role in coordinating emotional responses".
Lastly, "primary psychopathy demonstrated significant deficits in the accurate identification of all expressions except neutral".
I personally consider psychopathy to be a personality disorder. So far as treatment goes, one can treat the symptoms (aggression, impulsivity, etc.) medically. Therapy
can be effective but we've seen mixed results.
Even if serious, violent criminals can point the cause of their violence to a mental disorder such as psychopathy, I'd rather see them go to the mental ward of a prison then be placed in a "normal" psychiatric institution or released to the streets. They'll get the help they need, and are no longer a danger to the general populace.
Anyway, tangent over and back to grading for me.
