Mass Shootings and Mental Health

[jimhines]

This is a repost and slight expansion of a Twitter thread from a few days ago.

::Taps microphone::

For the record, I have a mental illness, and have never committed a mass shooting.

Research shows that “the overall contribution of people with serious mental illness to violent crimes is only about 3%. When these crimes are examined in detail, an even smaller percentage of them are found to involve firearms.”

If you’re looking for a more telling correlation, consider this finding from an FBI study of 160 active shooter events between 2000 and 2013: “Only 6 (3.8%) of the 160 cases involved a female perpetrator.” (p. 85)

I mean, please, PLEASE, do improve mental health care in this country! But don’t expect it to have any impact on mass shootings.

One argument points to a Mother Jones article claiming mental illness is frequently a factor in these shootings. So I downloaded their data set.

Factors they listed in the mental illness column include:

• History of domestic conflict
• Violent criminal history
• Family said he was mentally ill (no illness/diagnosis specified)
• Cousin said he was depressed and “going through a lot of things”
• Experimented with pot and hallucinogens

They also listed some actual mental illness diagnoses. But counting those diagnoses right alongside things like “stalked and harassed a colleague” completely undermines their research and conclusions.

One individual was upset I argued against blaming mass shootings on the mentally ill, then turned around and pointed out that almost all mass shooters are male. I mean, I guess I’m sorry he felt upset or attacked or whatever, but the facts are pretty straightforward:

• Most mass shooters are not mentally ill.
• Mass shooters are almost always male.

Yeah, we know most men aren’t mass murderers. But since mass shootings are committed almost exclusively by men, don’t you think maybe it’s worth asking why? (Don’t #NotAllMen me, bro!)

We could also look into the significant correlation between mass shootings and domestic violence.

I’m not the first to point any of this out. There’s plenty of research out there, and people have been challenging the “mass shootings are a mental health problem” refrain for years.

At this point, if you’re still beating the “mental illness” drum as a response to mass shootings in the USA, I have to assume it’s because you’re uninterested in addressing the real problems.

TL;DR – I’m mentally ill. Please stop blaming this epidemic on us. Thanks.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Comments

[theshadowpanther]

The problem is that mass shooters ARE mentally ill. They're psychopathically mentally ill, and there isn't enough of a separation between this extremity of mental illness and the (I hesitate to say "normal" but considering how widespread it is, it applies) normal spectrum of mental illness. I see where you're coming from, though, and agree that the media need to switch the terms they use from mentally ill to psychopaths, because that's who they're really describing.

Or, in a major twist of media perception, how about labeling them "thugs" like they do black murderers? Or unarmed black victims of police shootings? (Why don't they call the police psychopaths...?)

[drwex]

While I generally agree with your premises and conclusions, I want to point at something and then ask if I'm reading you right.

Most mass shooters are not mentally ill.

I would say, "Most mass shooters do not have a diagnosed mental illness at the time of their crimes."

This has something to do with the atrocious state of mental health services in America, something to do with a lack of correlation between a diagnosis and future behavior, and the ongoing attempt to redirect attention away from the actual causes of gun violence in America.

Because, to me, the telling factor is that Canada has about the same rate of mental health disease occurrence as we do, MUCH better treatment and other options for people with these diagnoses, and yet has nowhere near our mass murder rate (per capita). So, yeah.

At base, I think it's a both-and situation. We both need to provide better services for people who should be getting diagnoses and treatment AND we need to recognize that there's just no correlation here so the provision of those services is not going to change the gun violence problems we have. Which I think is the direction you're pointing, yes?