Aaron's mental health

iheartslashers--extreme events can certainly influence brain chemistry, changing the way in which information is processed.
Most everyday events don't. However, what they can do, is influence the response to similar events, depending on how they are perceived and processed. If you insert a perfectly good instruction in the wrong place in a computer's program, the result can be bizarre, semi-functional or a total meltdown. Such things may not be discovered until specific data is inputted. Similarly, with hardware(processor, memory, video card) malfunctioning, programs that work fine in an identical but undamaged computer can crash. I had a DVR damged by an electical surge. While it recorded fine if just told to record, trying to progam it for, say 2 hours, resulted in only 2 minutes of recrding before it shut off.
While I believe mental illnesses are a result of bad brain chemistry, the behaviors are what everyone else see. Some behaviors are extremely irritating to others because we consider them improper or offensive and interfere in normal interpersonal interactions, such as a scowling "Don't talk to me!" response to a "Good morning." Those kind of behaviors can be addressed with lesser interventions. Slashing a throat in response to a solicitation goes a little beyond what most consider rude behavior.
Of course, I am afraid I may have digressed a bit from your original question/position.
By the way: there's a nice Peter Ustinov hosted Jack review on Youtube that deals with some of the noted suspects with FBI profilers giving a brief conclusion as to why Aaron was the most likely candidate. I think it was called "Jack the Ripper's Secret Identity" or something like that. Not as in depth as I would have liked, but its television.

Just rechecked the title. It's "The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper" from 1988.
Mordke-Since it works in the U.S., I wonder if it works in the UK.

Ah, I think I saw that on youtube - so thanks!
Plus, some of those posts were old and I have another theory about Aaron that's quite interesting. Maybe he had two mental illnesses in one, so to say. Sometimes schizophrenia is not enough to make a person do what Jack did, so if he was JtR,there may be a possibility that he was also a psychopath which helped the drive for the killings and the schizophrenia could have removed the restriction from doing so, allowing him perform the killings. Badly explained, but it's the best I can do for now. It may also have been the schizophrenia that stopped the killings if JtR was Aaron, since reading the asylum notes shows that he might have been 'burnt out.' If the psychopath element to him wanted to continue, then the schizophrenia might have stopped this if this were the case. All speculation, but mental illnesses are complicated. Plus, they need a trigger - New information reveals that Aaron's dad died in 1887, just before the Ripper murders. Maybe this deep emotional response helped turn the switch to psycho mode?

Paranoid schizophrenia chemistry must be present for it to develop into a full-blown case. It can develop slowly or much faster if there is a trigger--an extreme event such as death of close family member, use of drugs or some really horrific eventg.
Now as I understand it, sociopaths know what they are doing is wrong but don't care. Psychopaths don't know what they're doing is wrong or think it's right, anyway. Psychopathia is not, as I recall, a specific disorder but a generalized term until a specific diagnosis can be made.
You can be severely mentally ill and not a psychopath. Sociopaths can just be disturbed. Both imply dangerous behaviors.
I am trusting my memory on these statements--or is it "rusting?"

Yeah - I agree.
Obviously I am still learning about schizophrenia and all that since it's been new to me, so thank you for informing me about it!
From the notes on Aaron in the Asylum, he had been insane for 5 years. That places the age of him becoming schizophrenic at about 20, which does fit into when it typically begins to develop. Also, could alcohol have aggravated the schizophrenia, since I know that Whitechapel was a large drink area, and it is more than likely that Aaron was intoxicated a great deal of the time knowing the nature of the district?

Heavy drinking could hasten things gradually. Mind-altering drugs like LSD,ecstasy,even a good marijuana bash could bring it out quickly.

I think the most likely drug available to Aaron at the time would have been alcohol, and we can assume he was consuming it pretty much every day knowing the area and what the people were like there, so there is a high chance that the alcohol had considerable effects to worsten his schizophrenia.

You are, of course correct. Opiates were available, but cost much more than alcohol. Doubt if marijuana was considered.
Nowadays we have much faster and efficient means of bringing out psychoses.

Yeah - it's also important to note that we have much better ways of treating it too, which of course they didn't have in Jack's time, so comparing him to modern sufferers is almost out of the question.

Modern sufferers?

Some people still wont get the treatment to cure themselves of the addictiveness the drugs give people, even today.

I think I was referring mainly to his schizophrenia then, because nowadays they can almost cure it, but then, there was nothing to help his schizophrenia and all they could do was drug him up till he was almost brain dead when he had his attacks.