Understanding Hate May Help Cure It

In light of recent shootings in Charleston, a New York psychiatrist said that through lots of interventions and many efforts, a person who hates another group can potentially be derailed from committing harmful acts.

In time and through a series of interventions from a person’s friends, a person can change, said Tina Walch, MD, medical director of South Oaks Hospital in Amityville. “Interventions include getting the perpetrator to see the targeted group as a collection of individuals, having positive experiences with the target group or in certain individuals treating the frank paranoia that surrounds their interactions with the target group.”

With vocal and consistent rejections of hateful behaviors, there is hope that things can change, Dr. Walch says. It is also important that people understand hate and how it works in regards to a group of people.

“For the perpetrator, the hate crime [stands to] not only impact the victim or victims, it has the insidious capacity to spread a general sense of vulnerability to other members of the targeted group,” Dr. Walch said. “These types of crimes fan the fire of divide as the perpetrator -- for reasons unfathomable by the victim group -- generalizes characteristics, real or imagined, to an entire group and psychologically de-individualizes members of that group to a single unit that the perpetrator feels justified in an escalating series of inappropriate hostile acts: from ridiculing to taunting to harming or, as in this case, killing.”

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