Stigma and the Associations between Mental Illness and Violence in the Media
On February 12th, Amy Bishop walked into a meeting of the Biology department at The University of Alabama, where she had recently been denied tenure, and murdered three colleagues. On February 18th, Joseph Stack flew a stolen plane into a building that housed, among other workplaces, a number of FBI offices in Austin, Texas. He, too, killed several people. Both are tragic events. Both were acts committed by clearly violent individuals and are possibly related to emotional or psychological problems. While Bishop had a history of violence, most...
