By Michael First and Jerome C. Wakefield, Special to CNN
Editor's Note: Michael First, M.D., a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, has worked as a forensic psychiatric expert in capital cases such as the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the convicted co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks, and is the editor of the current edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM-IV-TR.
Jerome C. Wakefield is a university professor and professor of social work and psychiatry at New York University, and coauthor of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder.

At last week's memorial service in Tucson for the victims of the Arizona shooting, President Obama said that “scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. “

It is tempting to view this heinous crime as purely an act of evil, with its senseless loss of innocent lives. However, as Obama went on to say, “we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.” In one sense, any terrible harms that befall us are “evils in the world.” But are the suspected gunman’s alleged actions best understood as human evil, in light of evidence that the suspect has a mental disorder?

Whether a particular hurtful behavior, like the taking of a life, can be considered evil depends on the context in which it occurs and the intentions of the person committing the behavior.

Taking someone’s life because that person was about to kill one’s child would not be considered an act of evil. For a particular behavior to be considered evil, the person committing the act must be in a position to knowingly make a moral choice between doing something wrong and doing something right, choosing the bad action over the good.

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