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Should Psychopathy Be Treated as a Mental Illness? Survey

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Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.

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https://http://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-7LL5PJLH/

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This survey, titled "Should Psychopathy Be Treated as a Mental Illness?", asked questions in regards to severe mental illnesses. The first few questions focused on demographics so I could compare age groups and genders and see if there was a correlation between age or gender and sympathy for mentally ill people. This analysis is based on the first 25 completed surveys.

The survey showed that post traumatic stress disorder was the most commonly known mental illness. Also, most of the respondents know somebody with a mental illness. The last two questions were about the death penalty. Most of the respondents said that death penalty doesn't deter crime. A few of those people said that mentally ill criminals should not be able to receive death penalty, while about 30% said yes.

The purpose of this survey was to see if prior knowledge of mental illness would affect the opinion on it. At the beginning of my research, I believed that not knowing the effects of mental illness on the brain would cause one to believe people suffering from it should not be treated differently. However, this survey proved that my original thesis was incorrect and that there is no distinct correlation between the two.

While most people might be sympathetic towards people with mental illness, the court system often treats these people as equal to those without. Over 300,000 people in federal prisons have been diagnosed with a mental illness (Fiack, Mental Illness and Criminal Behavior). However, they often don't qualify for the insanity plea and are fully charged with the responsibility of their crimes. Rather than treating criminals for depression, schizophrenia, ASPD, and a wide range of other mental illnesses, the court condemns them for things they are unable to control.

Mental health treatment and care should be easily available to prisoners or people in need. When mentally ill people commit violent crimes, such as murder or assault, they are only treated after the incident occurs. Sheffer argues in her The Death Penalty article that "we owe it to the victims' families to do better". Healthcare should be available to severely mentally ill people before crimes are committed so no lives are lost.