Assist With Writing Project

Objective: The main goal of this project is to compare scientific knowledge. All articles will be provided via separate correspondence and must be used to address the questions listed below. Format: 1 inch margins; 7 pages; Times New Roman font; font size 12 point; Title page and Tables and Figures and references do NOT count as part of the page requirement. Topic: How Bipolar disorder casually influences violent behavior with public beliefs and perceptions of how mental illness influences violence. Instructions: The questions and information in part 1-3 below pertain to the first aspect of this comparison—scientific information. Part 4 relates to the latter element—public perceptions. 1. Is mental illness one cause of violent behavior? See part 2 below: o We will NOT deal with this question/hypothesis at the vague, untestable level of mental illness in general. You will pick one specific type of mental illness. You will only have to read about and report on this one mental illness. o The central hypothesis tested in the study you will read is: people with Bipolar Disorder show more violent behavior than people without Bipolar Disorder. 2. How strongly does having Bipolar Disorder affect violent behavior compared to other causes of violence? Each of the three articles you will choose from compares how strongly that particular mental illness increases violence to other factors that increase violence, such as substance abuse, being young or being male. So you don’t have to find the other causes. They are already in the articles I will give you. I will explain the results to you so you can write about this question. o Note: this is not a case where we are trying to rule out other causes like substance abuse. Violence is a complex behavior that has many causes. So we are just comparing the strength of some of the key causal factors that affect violent behavior. 3. For people with or without Bipolar Disorder, what are the actual rates of violent behavior? >scientific conclusion about a specific mental illness – right about the scientific evidence Note: in answering questions 1-3, you will focus on just one study. This paper does not focus on the need for converging evidence across multiple studies. However, as you will see, the studies you will be writing about have a LARGE number of participants. >find articles that reflect the general public attitude – present public opinion The first 3 questions above have to do with the scientific answer (from just one study) to the question of mental illness and violence. Questions 4-5 have to do with non-scientists beliefs about this question. 4. What are public perceptions (beliefs) about the extent to which having a mental illness causally influences violence? For example, do people know that different mental illnesses may have stronger or weaker causal influence on violence? Do people know how strongly having a mental illness influences violence compared with other causes of violence? o One example of a public perception would be a news article or opinion piece or a website post that is reporting or giving opinions about a single violent incident. This article might state that a good way to reduce this kind of violent act in the future is to better treat mental illness, which suggests that Bipolar Disorder is a strong cause of this type of violence. o Another example that gets at public perceptions of violence are research studies (usually involving questionnaires) that get at the beliefs of large number of people about the types of questions in part 4. In part 5, you summarize and compare the scientific information about how Bipolar Disorder causes violence with public perceptions 5. Conclusion