Psychopathic disorders continue to perplex medicine, law and ethics

Ted Bundy

Almost every day there is a murder in the United States; and when there is a mass killer some mental health issue is often found in the backgrounds of many of these people.  Some of them are described as psychopaths, a mental health problem where people seem to lack conscience.  The behavior of these people confuses people and in many ways also confounds the experts.

Psychopathic disorder, as it is more formally categorized, is a form of mental health problem that sometimes accompanies other mental health problems, that include schizophrenia, depression and a host of other issues.  It is the lacking of social conscience, however, that makes the difference in how the condition is viewed by the public and that makes it more difficult to treat.

Psychiatrists and other mental health experts are often reluctant to take these people for treatment, because the prognosis for control, or a cure with medication, is far less than it is for other psychological problems.  The depressed individual, for example, can be treated with combinations of psychotherapy and medication; and both short-range and long-range outcomes are considered to be reasonably good, depending upon the type of depression and other factors in the patient's life.

And as serious mental health problems confound the medical experts, they further perplex practitioners of the law, as attorneys hope to provide their clients' limitations should offer amelioration of the punishment and understanding the nature of the crimes they commit.

While people complain about terrible crimes, the treatment concerns continue to be of great consequence, while the potential outcomes for treatment of those with serious pathology often means a long term sojourn in mental health facilities or prison without the possibility of re-entry into community life.  And the expense of treatment for uncertain factors related to what is more commonly called "the criminally insane," makes it even more difficult to resolve the problems involved.  It is that balance, however, between the need to maintain control of behavior and to understand it vs. the need for citizens to have safety in their neighborhoods and homes that experts strive to determine, that involves the merger of ethics, medicine and the law.