Taking Psychology with You

Mental Disorder and Personal Responsibility

Romance writer Janet Dailey was once caught having plagiarized whole passages from another writer's work, and in self-defense she said she was suffering from “a psychological problem that I never even suspected I had.” We wonder if it was in the DSM—but would it matter if it were? What “psychological problem” would absolve a person of responsibility for cheating?

This photo of Jared Lee Loughner was taken by the sheriff’s office on the day he was arrested. In 2012, he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

One of the great questions generated by all diagnoses of mental disorder concerns personal responsibility, a topic that requires us to ask the right questions, examine the best evidence, and sometimes live with uncertainty. In law and in everyday life, many people reach for a psychological reason to exonerate themselves of responsibility for their actions. Many people—as an excuse for some habit that is immoral, illegal, or fattening—claim they are addicted to the behavior, whether it is having sex, shoplifting, or eating chocolate. Is their behavior really an “addiction” in the same way that drug addiction is? What about the behavior of a student who spends hours on end on the Internet? Some psychologists would call this an addiction if the student constantly goes online as a way of coping with depression, anxiety, or another emotional problem. But others believe that the student is probably no different from those in previous generations, who also found plenty of ways to avoid the common problems facing students everywhere: insecurity, worry about grades, a disappointing social life. This is not a mental disorder, they say, it's a normal problem, called Learning To Pass Courses and Figure Out Life.

In criminal cases, where a defendant with a severe mental disorder has committed murder, debates about appropriate penalties continue. (The insanity defense is used in less than 1 percent of all criminal cases, and in those, 9 out of 10 defendants end up in mental hospitals, usually for far longer than they would have served with a criminal conviction.) In January 2011, Jared Lee Loughner went to a mall in Tucson, where he killed six people and wounded 14 more, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. His Internet postings were full of incoherent, hostile themes, including paranoid distrust of the government and his college. His friends, classmates, and own writings revealed that he had been undergoing a slow downward spiral in the preceding 2 years. Loughner's trial was suspended while he underwent psychiatric treatment for schizophrenia, and in the ensuing year, the courts struggled to decide whether he should be forcibly medicated with antipsychotics, which would make him seem “normal” in the courtroom, or whether he had the right to refuse.

Or consider Andrea Yates, a Texas woman who killed her five young children. Yates had suffered from clinical depression and psychotic episodes for years, and had tried to kill herself twice. Yates was overwhelmed by raising and homeschooling all of her children by herself, with no help from her reportedly domineering husband, who permitted her 2 hours a week of personal time. Although she suffered a postpartum psychotic episode after the birth of their fourth child and a clinical psychologist warned against her having another baby, her husband refused to consider birth control, although not for religious reasons. Yates was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. On appeal 4 years later, another jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity and she was sent to a mental institution.

Do Jared Loughner and Andrea Yates deserve our pity, along with our condemnation for their horrible acts of murder? Interestingly, many observers feel angrier and less sympathetic toward people whose mental illnesses conform to gender stereotypes: men, like Jared Loughner, who are schizophrenic or alcoholic, and women, like Andrea Yates, who are depressed. They are more sympathetic to people whose illnesses do not conform to the stereotype: alcoholic or schizophrenic women and depressed men (Wirth & Bodenhausen, 2009). Apparently, many people think that gender-typical mental disorders are less likely to be “real.”

What about murderers who understand right from wrong, who are not legally insane but cannot control themselves? If we learn that their behavior might be a result of brain damage, should that affect the punishment they receive? In some jurisdictions, a defendant may claim to have diminished responsibility for a crime. This claim does not exonerate the defendant, but it may result in reduced charges, perhaps from premeditated first-degree murder to manslaughter, or a milder sentence if the defendant is found guilty. A diminished-capacity defense holds that the defendant lacked the mental capacity to form a calculated and malicious plan but instead was impaired by mental illness or the great provocation of the situation.

When thinking about the relationship of mental disorder to personal responsibility, we face a dilemma, one that requires us to tolerate uncertainty. The law recognizes, rightly, that people who are mentally incompetent, delusional, or disturbed should not be judged by the same standards as mentally healthy individuals. At the same time, society has an obligation to protect its citizens from harm and to reject easy excuses for violations of the law. To balance these two positions, we need to find ways to ensure that people who commit crimes or behave reprehensibly face the consequences of their behavior, and also that people who are suffering from psychological problems have the compassionate support of society in their search for help. After all, psychological problems of one kind or another are challenges that all of us will face at some time in our lives.