How often is 'mental health' used as an excuse by criminals and hoodwinked do-gooders?

Question

nassim: You look so life-like yourself. I personally don't think in-offensive questions merit rude replies, but then I'm educated.

Nassim: most do sometimes. Respect your reply

Answer 1

All too often. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to tell the difference between genuine cases, and accomplished fraudsters.

Answer 2

It depends on what you mean by "mental health" and "excuse." Many criminals actually are also mentally ill, however, mental illness does not = criminal insanity (removing moral culpability for criminal behavior). Although it appears to happen with some frequency the actual incidence of insanity pleas is quite low in felony cases (about 1-2%) and the "success rate" of those pleas is equally low. The reason it "feels like" they "happen all the time" is because when they DO happen, it is usually in quite sensational crimes that make the news regardless of jurisdiction, locale, etc and we can "remember or recall" the incident well. This is called the availability heuristic. (The tendency to overestimate the occurrence of something based on how easily we can recall an incidence of it happening.)

Answer 3

Probably a bit more often then a dude dressing his profile up in goggles and claiming to be Spartacus, but yet still I judge the asker.
I know Sparky, you´re right. I heard something that I didn´t like and I said something immature. But I admit that. Who else here does???

Answer 4

Every minit lol we are going down the drain fast.

Answer 5

Lots of times. Any excuse will do.

Answer 6

I would think quite often

Answer 7

with regularity