Yes, we need to abandon 'psychopath' and 'sociopath' because they have set-in-concrete meaning for laypeple, which can only lead to misunderstanding.
Separate to that, having had a background in neurology and mental health and a degree in psychology, in my opinion you will never understand mental health disorders unless you have one, live with or are very close to someone who has one, or study it specifically.
But I guess what I'm getting at is that to someone with no knowledge of mental health issues, things aren't going to make sense ("Why would they do that?") because, well, mental illness is frequently highly irrational to begin with. The love affair the public media has with the 'psychopath' label does not help in the slightest. It just contributes to the 'us vs them' mentality.
To make things worse, most of the time when I hear the term "psychopath" or "psycho" in colloquial speech, the speaker actually means "psychotic" or even something as general as "crazy".
Separate to that, having had a background in neurology and mental health and a degree in psychology, in my opinion you will never understand mental health disorders unless you have one, live with or are very close to someone who has one, or study it specifically.
But I guess what I'm getting at is that to someone with no knowledge of mental health issues, things aren't going to make sense ("Why would they do that?") because, well, mental illness is frequently highly irrational to begin with. The love affair the public media has with the 'psychopath' label does not help in the slightest. It just contributes to the 'us vs them' mentality.