However, while all psychiatrists, by definition, have studied mental illness, most have not specialized in studying the causes, consequences, prediction, and prevention of violence, considered as a problem in public health and preventive medicine. Nor have most studied the principles on which the assessment of current and future dangerousness is based, regardless of whether or not any particular individual is mentally ill, and regardless of what diagnosis or diagnoses, if any, he may or may not merit according to the criteria outlined in DSM-V.
That is why it is so important and so appropriate for those few of us who have done so, whether by investigating the psychology of Nazi doctors and Japanese terrorists, as Robert Lifton has done, or by studying sexual violence (rape, incest, etc.), as Judith Herman has done, or by examining murderers and rapists in prisons and jails throughout the world (including those who have committed “war crimes”), as I have done, while working with the World Health Organization’s Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention on the epidemiology and prevention of violence -- to warn the potential victims, in the interests of public health, when we have recognized and identified signs and symptoms that indicate that someone is dangerous to the public health.
