he environment. (Dincin 102)Schizophrenia can be a devastating disease if not treated or ignored. Many times if a mentally ill person has intentions of becoming violent, red flags exist to alert those around them of any danger. According to Torrey, three primary predictors exist. The most important being a history of violence. In trying to predict future violence, the person's history is the single most important piece of information. The second predictor is drug and/or alcohol abuse. A growing number of studies indicate a significant link between schizophrenia, substance abuse, and violence. The third predictor is the failure to take medication. According to Torrey, those who do not take their prescribed medication are more likely to commit violent acts. Torrey says that the strongest predictors of violence in the mentally ill are the feelings that others are out to harm them and feeling that their mind “is dominated by forces beyond their control or that thoughts are being put into their head”. (Torrey 250-252)Several accounts of run-ins with violent schizophrenics have happened in the United States and around the world over the years. In September of 1997, a father who was a paranoid schizophrenic murdered his six-year-old daughter and mother in a Toronto suburb. He believed he was the Messiah and believed his daughter was Satan. He’d sworn off medication and was, according to his doctor, “almost functioning on auto-pilot”. The schizophrenic man did not really believe his daughter and mother were dead. (Stanford 1)Another man killed two US Capitol police officers in 1998, because he believed he was cloned at birth, had invented a machine to turn back time, that the CIA had been spying on him with satellites, and that President Clinton had planned the Kennedy assassination out of jealousy for Marilyn Monroe. (Mohandie 9)In Portland, another woman bludgeoned her mother to death with a 23-poun...
