Are mentally ill more violent? Here's the definitive answer.

The stats on violence are clear when you look at the totality of violence studies, versus any single study. Studies are also often intentionally skewed and misrepresented. Here is the truth:

• If you are talking about the 40-50% of Americans some say have a "diagnosable mental disorder", then 'no', the mentally ill are not more violent than others.
• If you are talking about the 5% of Americans with the most serious mental illnesses--primarily schizophrenia and treatment-resistant bipolar disorder, then 'no', the mentally ill are not more violent than others.
• If you are talking about members of the 5% group who go are psychotic, delusional, hallucinating or off treatment that has previously prevented them from being psychotic, hospitalized, or violent, then 'yes' people with mental illness are more violent than others. This higher than normal rate of violence increases even more when these groups abuse substances. When people ask, "Are the mentally ill more violent", they are usually asking about this group of obviously severely ill individuals, and not about their friends on Zoloft, Prozac, etc. 
• By defining mental illness as incorporating 50% of population, it is possible to claim that people with mental illness are not more violent. When you look at the most ill, who do not get treatment that claim goes away. Likewise, the claim that people with serious mental illness are more often the victims of crime than perpetrators is true for everyone, and largely irrelevant.

Violence is almost always associated with going off treatment and becoming delusional or psychotic.  There are many reasons people with serious mental illness go off treatment. Some reasons are not unique to mental illness while others are.

• Costs: Some refuse treatment because of costs
• Side Effects: Some refuse treatment because of the side effects of treatment
• Behavior Regulation Compromised: The ability to regulate behavior is compromised because the brain is the organ affected.  
• Anosognosia: Up to 50% of people with schizophrenia and many with bipolar lack insight: i.e, they are so sick they don't know they are sick. Anosognosia is a dysfunction in the brain that can be seen in brain imagery.  
• Civil Liberties: A misunderstanding of civil liberties, the nature of mental illness, combined with misinformation prevents mandating violence preventing treatments.
• Reaction to hallucinations and delusions. Some people with schizophrenia experience hallucinations and delusions. These may cause them to refuse treatment, ex. think the medication is poisoned. 
• "Peer Support" Many government funded high functioning people who may have had mental illness at some point, are encouraging people to go off medications, convincing them that mental illness doesn't exist, and that medications are necessarily bad. 
• Misplaced Funding: Most money spent goes to mental 'health' not mental "illness". People with serious mental illness are usually sent to the end of the line, rather than the front. The ability to get services is inversely related to need, therefore people with serious mental illness find it difficult to get services. Mental health providers often discriminate against highly symptomatic people with serious mental illnesses.
• Stigma: Some say that people refuse treatment due to the stigma of mental illness.  

 You can see our proposed solutions at National Review  or Huffington Post or visit Mental Illness Policy  Org,