> But could you not plausibly define anyone who commits major crimes to be mentally ill? Mental illness could also be defined by a person's ability to function in their community and social constructs.
A converse is the way public/media perception will use mental health itself as the reason or motivator for major crime.
For example, with the just-happened knife attacker in Bondi Australia : the resulting public discourse urgently searches for a cause - "why did this person do this? was it terrorism? revenge? drugs?". But no, soon enough the media latches on to Mental Health, and everyone sighs in relief that the reason is now found. "Ahh!", the mainstream can reassure themselves, "It was a Mental Health Person that did this! Of course!".
I'm not sure I follow? If you rule out any other motive, someone stabbing someone else in broad daylight, unprovoked may be attributed to mental health issues.
But everyone has mental health. If you have a mind, then it's in some form of health. An extremely broad, arguably meaningless, classification. All it does in this context is reinforce the public stigma towards the millions of perfectly good people in the community dealing with hugely diverse situations from depression to autism and far beyond.
A converse is the way public/media perception will use mental health itself as the reason or motivator for major crime.
For example, with the just-happened knife attacker in Bondi Australia : the resulting public discourse urgently searches for a cause - "why did this person do this? was it terrorism? revenge? drugs?". But no, soon enough the media latches on to Mental Health, and everyone sighs in relief that the reason is now found. "Ahh!", the mainstream can reassure themselves, "It was a Mental Health Person that did this! Of course!".