Sanity is the ability of a person to be aware of their actions, and to lead them. If a person is insane, he does not even bear criminal responsibility, he is sent for treatment to a psychiatric clinic.
What is sanity?
The fact that attitudes towards mentally healthy people and people who are insane are different has been known for a long time. At all times there have been fools and feeble-minded people. However, in different cultures the criteria for sanity may change: for example, in some Indian tribes hallucinations are common, and no one would think of calling a person crazy if he saw something “otherworldly”. Or, if we take the attitude towards homosexuality: once it was considered a crime and a mental disorder, but now in some countries marriage of same-sex couples is allowed. By what signs can you determine that a person is mentally healthy, or simply sane?
Sanity helps a person to be adequate and successfully adapt to a constantly changing external environment. A sane person is aware of his "I", is capable of self-criticism. His mental reactions correspond to the force of the circumstances. A person is able to manage his behavior in accordance with social norms and rules, as well as change behavior if necessary. With mental health, a person can also cope with stress, make plans for the future and implement them.
By the way, stress can negatively affect mental health and performance. It was found that people who work hard, after taking courses to strengthen stress resistance, increase labor productivity.
Limited sanity
As psychologists say, there are no people who are one hundred percent mentally healthy. In criminal law, there is the concept of limited sanity, this is a kind of borderline state when a person cannot be called completely mentally healthy, but it is also impossible to exclude the fact that he is sane. Most psychiatrists are skeptical about the concept of limited sanity. Often this factor mitigates the punishment and sends a person for compulsory treatment in a psychiatric clinic. Limited sanity can be with neuroses, craniocerebral trauma, in a state of passion, in alcoholics and drug addicts. However, psychologists attribute neuroses to every third person in the world, it turns out that a third of the population is capable of crimes that threaten the life and health of other people.
About sixty percent of serious crimes are committed by people with limited sanity, when, even realizing the consequences, these people cannot refrain from committing a crime.