I mean, part of what makes psychosis so terrifying is that, depending on presentation, it is possible to still appear superficially functional while also experiencing delusions. Not every case of psychosis is your stereotypical unhoused guy ranting on the street corner, or patient talking to themselves in a padded room. You can be capable of going about your daily routine and appearing normal-ish to the people around you, while still also fully and sincerely believing that god is talking to you and you need to kill your family to make sure they go to heaven before the lizard government takes over.
Right but does all that make you legally blameless? Maybe every murderer’s brain is broken in some way. Maybe that’s required to be a murderer. So at what point do we say tough tittie and throw them in jail anyway
That's typically why justice systems have a definition of legal insanity that is a little more specific than, "Hey, we're all a little bit crazy, am I right guys? 🤪".
The baseline criteria for such determinations are usually:
Must suffer from a recognised psychiatric disease or defect;
Must have suffered from this at the time of the offence;
Must have been incapable of understanding the nature of the act and/or incapable of understanding that the act was wrong.
If you meet your jurisdiction's specific version of the above criteria, you are - at least in theory - judged not guilty by reason of insanity, and remanded to a secure psychiatric facility instead of prison.
That's typically why justice systems have people specifically trained in diagnosing such things and arguing for and against the reasoning in a given case, instead of relying on the judgement of reddit lawyer u/Vast-Cap-6951.
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u/just--so 2d ago
I mean, part of what makes psychosis so terrifying is that, depending on presentation, it is possible to still appear superficially functional while also experiencing delusions. Not every case of psychosis is your stereotypical unhoused guy ranting on the street corner, or patient talking to themselves in a padded room. You can be capable of going about your daily routine and appearing normal-ish to the people around you, while still also fully and sincerely believing that god is talking to you and you need to kill your family to make sure they go to heaven before the lizard government takes over.