While some mass shootings are committed by people with diagnosed mental illnesses, a life crisis is a better predictor of violence, researchers say.

By Shaila Dewan @ NYTimes.com, Aug. 22

[....] Blaming mass murder on mental illness is a time-honored impulse, used by law enforcement and politicians alike.[....] Such explanations satisfy a deep longing to understand the incomprehensible. And they appeal to common sense — how could a person who kills indiscriminately be in their right mind?

Yet America’s mass killers fit no single profile and certainly no pattern of insanity — many, if not most, had never been diagnosed with a serious psychiatric disorder. Background checks can prevent someone with a diagnosis of mental illness from acquiring a gun, but psychologists say there is a wide divide between a clinical diagnosis and the type of emotional disturbance that precedes many mass killings.

The real problem, those experts say, is that mental illness is not a useful means to predict violence. About half of all Americans will experience mental health issues at some point in their lives, and the vast majority of people with mental illness do not kill.

“Do you or do you not have a mental health diagnosis?” said Jillian Peterson, a co-founder of the Violence Project, a research center that has compiled a database of mass shootings from 1966 on and studied perpetrators in depth. “In many cases, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not the main driver.”[....]

By Manuel Roig-Franzia @WashingtonPost.com, July 28, 2022

[...] he is Marc Hilliard Fogel on his well-worn passports, abundantly stamped from his many years of teaching International Baccalaureate history courses at schools attended by the children of U.S. diplomats and the global elite in Colombia, Venezuela, Oman, Malaysia and, for the past 10 years, in Russia.

Fogel’s charmed life has turned dark at the age of 60. He never sought notoriety. But he and his family slowly have come to the realization that telling the world his name could be his salvation.

For the past 11 months, Fogel has languished in Russian detention centers following his August 2021 arrest for trying to enter the country with about half an ounce of medical marijuana he’d been prescribed in the United States for chronic pain after numerous injuries and surgeries. First he endlessly awaited trial, often in crowded, smoke-choked cells. More recently, he has been serving the first weeks of an incomprehensible 14-year sentence handed down by a Russian judge in June.

[....] On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia to secure the release of Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year Russian sentence on spy charges he has denied. On Thursday, a Kremlin spokesman said a deal has yet to be finalized.

Marc Fogel’s wife, Jane Fogel, said in a Wednesday interview with The Washington Post after Blinken’s announcement that she’s still hoping her husband can be included in a swap. But those hopes are fading, she said, speaking publicly for the first time about her husband’s case [....]

AND for Rich and Famous get their PPP loans forgiven SEE FIRST COMMENT on thread.

Difference between public and private opinions. Survey of 3,334 American adults, conducted May 23 to June 8, 2022

Previous news thread HERE, "CONSERVATISM ISN'T ALWAYS CONSERVATIVE ANYMORE" covering July 23 thru August 17