Re “In Gun Debate, a Misguided Focus on Mental Illness†(Mind, Dec. 18): Dr. Richard A. Friedman adds most indispensable clarity to a open discuss stirred by a horrific Newtown shooting. Dr. Friedman cites a vast National Institute of Mental Health investigate that found that “7 percent of a people but any mental disorder†have a lifetime superiority toward violence. This statistic alone — while reduce than a 16 percent with critical mental disorders who have such tendencies — should prompt a National Rifle Association to rethink a tradition of hostile any and all gun regulation.
Marcus Wiesner
Montclair, N.J.
To a Editor:
Dr. Friedman omits discuss of eremitic celebrity disorder, before personal as “constitutional psychopathic state†or “psychopathic personality.†As compared with people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who possibly find diagnosis on their possess or are compelled by their families or by institutional psychiatry and a law, eremitic people do not find diagnosis and evade society’s reserve nets and detection. Antisocial people bay tip reactions of fury and revenge, that they justify with a assistance of ideologies of hatred, and are detected usually after their iniquitous crimes have taken their fee on society.
Henry (Zvi) Lothane, M.D.
New York
The author is a clinical highbrow of psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine.