Health Is Vital

Health is taken for granted, until you can't any more. In this blog I hope to put down on paper some of the articles I come across and want to remember, about health. I will be personalizing these articles to apply to me. I am diabetic, over weight, have high blood pressure and tinnitus, so these are the things you will find here. I will include nutrition, exercise, and holistic health, and many other ideas. I work in the health profession, particularly mental health, and have an interest in suicide prevention; so these topics will also be covered in this blog. Please, if you are suffering reach out. Our county health and crisis line is 1-855-278-4204.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

**Mentally Ill and Violence

I came across an incident in the Deseret News today of a man, reportedly with mental illness, taking and ax to his mother and slitting her throat.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865603316/Ax-wielding-Kearns-man-attacked-his-mother-police-say.html
 Apparently they were having a family conflict.
Incidents like this give the impression that persons with mental illness are more prone to violence than others, however each person is an individual.
Use of drugs, especially if co-occurring with a mental illness can indeed lead to more violence, but it it does not follow that people who do drugs and have mental illness are always violent. 
This article gives some insight.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/
"Are the public at risk? Mental disorders are neither necessary nor sufficient causes of violence. Major determinants of violence continue to be socio-demographic and economic factors. Substance abuse is a major determinant of violence and this is true whether it occurs in the context of a concurrent mental illness or not."
It is important to for a mental health worker to access for violent risk; danger to self and others on a frequent basis.  However it is just as important not to assume that because someone has mental illness that they will be violent.

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