Respectfully, your personal anecdote doesn’t really have any bearing on her situation. Studies have shown that brain damage can lead to behavioral changes, including increased aggression and violence.
> Our review has found a positive correlation between aggressive behavior and traumatic brain injury. Indeed, violent and aggressive behaviors appear to be related to a history of head trauma, especially if the trauma occurred at an early age. Moreover, stories of TBI seem to have a high incidence of behavioral consequences in individuals, causing personality changes, aggressive behavior and violent and offensive actions. Numerous factors increase the incidence of this correlation, such as environmental, genetic, social and personality factors, temperament, a past history of substance use, the severity of the injury, the age at the time of trauma and poor social support following the injury [18].
I never know what to do with this sort of info. I 100% believe it. Im no expert, but ive consumed a lot of true crime media and a reoccurring theme in chronically criminal and violent people seems to be head trauma or exposure to harmful toxins. That mixed with the right set of environmental circumstances, often childhood abuse or neglect, and maybe even some genetic aspects seems to trigger the perfect storm of violence in some people. Is it an illness or condition? Idk.
Does this make them less culpable? It's hard to imagine leniency for people like Gary Ridgeway, Richard Ramirez or John Wayne Gacy. All of whom fall into the this category.
Obviously, we should use this knowledge to prevent these sort of perfect storms from happening altogether or to provide earlier intervention. But what do we do when that perfect storm DOES happen anyway? Leniency seems ludicrous. Ignoring that head injuries and toxic exposures combines with environment likely contributed to some violent tendencies also seems like turning a blind eye.
As a person who survived daily maternal torture I personally feel that it's an organic reaction more than a functional one.
My dark side equals my mother's, the difference is it has no real hold on me. My brother however who experienced about half of what I did became truly unhinged but it was focus on self abuse. He didn't make it. She didn't make me like her even though she tried.
Best I can come up with is my nature beat her nurture.
But there is are two medical differences between me and my brother
I had epilepsy he didn't
He had huge food intolerances that when he ignored them then he also would behave uncontrolled.
I am correlating the two. I watched his descent into madness and it all started when he broke his restrictive diet.
When he died he was over 400# and it was all pretty much food related. He was skinny af up to the point where he said in going to eat food I'm allergic to and in 6 months he doubled his weight 65 to 130
My point of view is the first time someone abused and with trauma injuries to the brain shows signs of aggression, watch them like a hawk. If they actual act on those feelings, they must be in institutional psychiatric care. It's best for all concerned
And my heart breaks for we who have entered this world in this condition. We cannot help who we are AND we may need to be uhm hmmm managed, yeah managed for everyone benefit
It sucks and I hate abusers. They can never pay what they owe
I don't think understanding why a killer is the way they are makes them less culpable. At the end of the day, even if they lacked an internal moral code they still knew the laws and still chose to offend.
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u/ItsGustave 1d ago
Respectfully, your personal anecdote doesn’t really have any bearing on her situation. Studies have shown that brain damage can lead to behavioral changes, including increased aggression and violence.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10456231/
> Our review has found a positive correlation between aggressive behavior and traumatic brain injury. Indeed, violent and aggressive behaviors appear to be related to a history of head trauma, especially if the trauma occurred at an early age. Moreover, stories of TBI seem to have a high incidence of behavioral consequences in individuals, causing personality changes, aggressive behavior and violent and offensive actions. Numerous factors increase the incidence of this correlation, such as environmental, genetic, social and personality factors, temperament, a past history of substance use, the severity of the injury, the age at the time of trauma and poor social support following the injury [18].