Psychiatrists warn against stigmatizing mental illness after teacher’s crime sparks misconceptions < Hospital < Article

The medical community expressed concerns about the misconceptions that have been spread after an elementary school teacher recently killed a student at her school in Daejeon because she was on leave for mental illness.

Experts said mental illness, including depression, should not be linked to the crime, and people should not blame mental health professionals who treated the killer for the murder.

On Friday, the Korean Association of Psychiatrists (KAP) issued a statement expressing its condolences to the victim and correcting misconceptions surrounding the perpetrator’s mental illness.

“First, people should not take issue with the fact that the perpetrator had been treated for depression,” it said. “A history of treatment does not reflect the severity (of symptoms), and people should not be discouraged from seeking treatment despite prejudice.”

Nor should crimes be blamed on mental illness, it said. The association called this “an affront to patients who steadily continue to live their lives.”

The association also said that individual psychiatrists who treated the perpetrator should not be held criminally responsible.

“In reviewing the eligibility of public officials for leave of absence, reinstatement, or licensing, requiring doctors to “clearly diagnose” mental illness-related problems and forcing them to write a diagnosis that extends beyond their ability to do so distorts the nature of medicine,” it said. “Above all, mental illnesses are difficult to ‘cure’ due to the nature of the disease.”

Therefore, relevant regulations should be revised, and a reasonable evaluation procedure should be established.

“An independent evaluation organization or committee should objectively examine public officials’ ability to perform public duties,” the statement said. “The health of teachers should be comprehensively assessed under public responsibility. A more systematic and fair system should address the issue of teachers’ leaves of absence and reinstatement, which has come to light in recent years.”

The association hopes to see improvements in mental health screening in schools that will benefit staff mental health.

“We want to see a system in place that makes it easier for faculty and students to access care when they need it,” the association said. “We must ensure that tragedies like this do not happen again.”

The Korean Medical Association (KMA) also issued a statement, saying, “The claims that the perpetrator’s depression contributed to the crime and that the specialist neglected the crime by writing a poor (reinstatement) report are unfounded.”

“We cannot simply assume that because a depressed patient committed a crime, depression was the cause. This logic negatively stigmatizes people with depression and undermines their treatment,” the nation’s largest doctors group said. “Similarly, just because the perpetrator is depressed, we should not assume that the crime was caused by poor care by the professionals who treated them.”

It continued, “The perpetrator’s motives and medical history are unclear. The media should stop speculating about the motives and medical history of the perpetrator under investigation.”