Most recent focus on which the mentally ill offend and reoffend ignore realities that the mentally ill, like other disabled, are victimized quietly and often. This North Carolina research is a welcome addition to understanding the plight of the victimized mentally ill. To date, most of the available research has looked at the vulnerability to domestic abuse. What occurs outside the home? 331 previously hospitalized individuals over age 18 with conditions serious enough to earn outpatient commitment were directly questioned about their previous experiences, their perceptions about their own vulnerability, their living conditions, and other demographics. Results demonstrated that non-violent criminal victimization (22.4 percent vs. 21.1 percent) involved the psychiatrically ill population as frequently as it did the general population. But the rate of violent criminal victimization was 8.2 percent for four months— two and a half times as frequent as the annual rate for the general population. Risk factors for violent victimization were further delineated as urban residence, alcohol or drug use, personality disorder diagnosis, and transient living conditions such as homelessness before hospitalization. No other clinical variable was a significant predictor of victimization. Fear of victimization was surprisingly uncommon, identified in only 16.3 percent of the sample, and was more frequently found in those more educated or with a diagnosis along the schizophrenia spectrum.

While these results amplify the vulnerability of the severely ill, they do not distinguish between risks that may necessarily be part of homelessness, drug abuse, and other psychosocial factors that bring people, sick or not, into the gritty world where predators roam. Still, the researchers concede that more probing interviews might have elicited a greater frequency of victimization. The fact that subjects were recruited means that homicide victims were not included. Research such as this, nevertheless, reorients us to recognizing that much of the public safety fuss about the non-drug abusing mentally ill amounts to blaming the victim.

Hiday, V.A., Swartz, M.S., Swanson, J.W, Borum, R., & Wagner, H.R. (1999). Criminal Victimization of Persons With Severe Mental Illness. Psychiatric Services, vol. 50, no.1, pp. 62-68.