The far-right, anti-Islam Breivik has already confessed to committing Norway's worst mass murder in a bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people last July. Whether or not Breivik is sane is at the crux of his ongoing trial and will determine how he is sentenced.
"Everyone's first assumption is that Breivik must be insane because he's done such terrible things," said Dr. Simon Wessely, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. "But it doesn't automatically follow that he must be mad just because what he has done is inexplicable."
In a commentary published Friday in the British medical journal Lancet, Wessely writes that explanation is too simplistic.
For the 33-year-old Norwegian to be schizophrenic — as some psychiatrists have suggested — his actions would have to be the result of delusions, or based on beliefs not shared by others.
"As ghastly as his views are, there are other people in society who believe countries are being destroyed by multiculturalism and Islam," Wessely said.
Breivik's extraordinarily well-organized and methodical massacre also undermines the idea that he was suffering from a serious mental illness.
"It doesn't tally with the kinds of disorganized crimes usually committed by people with mental health problems," Wessely said. » | AP | Friday, April 27, 2012
Related »
