An Inconvenient Truth About Violence Against Women
And why we’re not talking about it.
On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner. Yet, even though we’ve had high profile awareness campaigns and new funding from the Federal Government to stop these killings, the statistics are still showing a very grim reality for Australian women. It seems there is a piece of the puzzle we’re all ignoring, with tragic consequences.
In almost all of the high- profile murders of young women in Australia in recent years, the perpetrator had a mental illness. Due to concerns about stigmatising the mentally ill, journalists adhere to a strict code when reporting on mental illness — this is essential to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and creating stigma towards mentally ill people. Consequently, when a murderer has a mental illness, there is usually no mention of it.
But, could mental illness in fact be a major contributing factor in the escalation of violence against women? Could it be that this violence is perpetrated by people in the grips of untreated or undiagnosed mental illness? Mental illness is never an excuse for violence and in itself is not a cause, but it can explain why and if understood properly, more resources can be directed to treatment and prevention.
Unless you have seen someone close to you during a psychotic episode, you can’t begin to imagine the affect it has on a person’s personality and behaviour. I know this from experience. My brother was the gentlest soul I have ever known. He was compassionate and kind and lived simply. He had an inner peace and spiritual way of looking at the world.
In his early adult years he fell prey to an acute and sudden episode of psychosis. He had never abused drugs or alcohol in his life: his predisposition to mental illness appears to have been due to a mixture of environmental and biological factors. His illness was initially well -managed with a prescribed drug. After about 10 years his psychiatrist decided to change the drug he was on to a newer one with less side-effects. This decision had catastrophic consequences — my brother plunged into psychosis almost immediately.
This kind, gentle person became erratic, aggressive and quite frankly, dangerous. There was a period of time when I feared for my parents’ lives, with whom he was living at the time. It could have quite easily been one of my parents, a friend, neighbour, or a stranger in the street in danger, instead of what ultimately happened, which was that my brother took his own life. Such was his disorientation, paranoia and extreme fear due to his psychosis, anything could have happened in that period of time up until his death.
What I learned during this tragic time for my family is that mental health is severely under-funded, and the services fragmented. Despite being an informed, educated family, there was very little support. My brother was turned away from a major Melbourne hospital emergency department when I presented him there during one of his psychotic episodes. There was nowhere for him to go to get urgent medical treatment — no hospital beds available for mental health patients and access only to a CAT (crisis assessment team) who deemed his mental state “behavioural” and refused to admit him to hospital.
We were desperate in our quest to get help for him.
An unpalatable truth is that a person who is gentle and kind can metamorphose into an unrecognisable, terrifying individual, capable of inflicting great harm to themselves or others during a psychotic episode. Speaking this truth potentially undermines the work of mental health organisations that have worked hard to de-stigmatise mental illness, such as SANE Australia; but the stakes are too high if we don’t address it.
According to Mindframe, 3% of Australians have a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia. Mindframe also points out that “Many violent people have no history of mental disorder and most people with mental illness (90%) have no history of violence.” However, a scientific study published by PLOS Medicine, concluded that “…people suffering from psychosis — with or without co-morbid substance abuse- are nearly 20 times more likely to kill another person than would be expected in the general population.” Whilst a person with a mental illness is statistically more likely to be the victim of violence rather than the perpetrator, we cannot ignore the fact that psychosis can make a person become dangerous to themselves and the community.
At the same time as violence against women has escalated, mental health funding and services have been in steady decline. This has had a deleterious effect on any family living with a person who has a chronic mental illness. Funding cuts to mental health services by successive governments has left a depleted and inadequate system.
The latest Productivity Commission report commissioned by the Federal Government revealed that mental illness and suicide are costing the country $500 million per day, or $180 billion per year. The report identified long-term problems in the system including “under-investment in prevention programs… and difficulties in accessing support.” It recommended “substantial reform of Australia’s mental health system…” including “more beds for mental health patients both in hospitals and within community care.” Not only are there significant economic costs incurred by the failures in our mental health system, but there are serious costs to our society.
It is easy for political parties to have bipartisanship on the issue of violence against women because it’s easy for everyone to agree that it needs to stop. Mental health however, is harder to discuss openly and honestly. An inconvenient truth in combatting violence against women is addressing mental health — urgently — for all of our sakes.
References:
1. SANE Australia “There is a slightly higher likelihood of violent behaviour among people with psychotic illness, but analysis of many studies suggests that this may be more the result of abusing drugs or alcohol, not receiving proper treatment or having a history of violent behaviour which is independent of the illness.”
https://www.sane.org/information-stories/facts-and-guides/fvm-mental-illness-and-violence
2. According to Mindframe, 3% of Australians have a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia. Mindframe also points out that “Many violent people have no history of mental disorder and most people with mental illness (90%) have no history of violence.”
https://mindframe.org.au/mental-health/data-statistics
3. “Anger due to delusions is a key factor that explains the relationship between violence and acute psychosis…Delusions are considered by many clinicians to be important causative factors for violent behaviour during acute states of psychosis and are frequently given as explanations for violence by patients.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1660586
4. “…people suffering from psychosis — with or without comorbid substance abuse- were nearly 20 times more likely to kill another person than would be expected in the general population.”
https://theconversation.com/the-link-between-psychosis-and-violence-is-not-clear-cut-66875
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000120
5. Productivity Commission report