Beautiful Trauma: Find A Way

Part. 2

written by Oliver Schofield

"you do not have to suffer alone, there are people that love you."

We need to think of violence itself as a communicable disease, we have kids growing up exposed to terrible trauma. We did a study some years ago, looking at [violence risk] among people with serious mental illness.

The three risk factors we found were most important: (first, a history of violent victimization early in life. second, substance abuse and the third is exposure to violence in the environment around you.)

People who had none of those risk factors even with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia had very low rates of violent behavior. Abuse, violence in the environment around you and those are the kinds of things you're not going to solve by having someone take a mood stabilizer.

An estimated 50% of Americans are diagnosed with mental illness or disorder such as depression, at some point in their lifetime (CDC). 1 in 25 live with a serious mental illness (CDC).

Suicide rates have increased in nearly every state since 1999 (CDC), it is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15-34 (CDC). So clearly, mental health concerns in America are real. But is mental illness to *blame* for gun violence?

Nearly 50% of Americans think so, blaming the mental health system “a great deal” for mass shootings (Gallup poll, 2013) vs 40% who blame “easy access to guns.”

But actual academic research shows that mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, PTSD etc) are not strongly related to gun violence. Mental health disorders are common across the globe and the U.S. is not exceptional in that regard (WHO surveys). Yet our gun violence numbers are different, so mental illness cannot take all the blame.

Further research (are you tired of all this research yet?) suggests that limiting gun access for folks with serious mental illness would lower *suicide* rates, not violent gun crime or interpersonal violence. (Swanson, et al 2016).

Yes, there have been mass shooters with serious mental illness which could have been a factor in their actions but Lu or Temple study reinforces that mental health symptoms are not a good *indicator* nor the *root cause* of gun violence. Suggesting that people with mental illness are inherently violent (see attached example) is stigmatizing and just plain inaccurate (and armchair-diagnosing shooters with mental illness is something that nobody on twitter is qualified to do)

• FBI could only verify 25% had diagnosed mental illness.
• Conclusion: “declarations that all active shooters must simply be mentally ill are misleading and unhelpful,” which is not to say shooters were not stressed, 62% judged to have mental health strain (not = illness) but FBI says "absent specific evidence, careful consideration should be given [...] before concluding that an active shooting was “caused” by mental illness."

BELATED ADDITION:
people keep arguing, “but no shooter could be sane." — i’m not saying shooters are all mentally healthy, i’m saying that mental illness doesn’t, in and of itself, cause or predict gun violence and writing policy based on that premise won’t end mass shootings.

THE REALITY IS SIMPLE:

being a murderer is not a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, people who think mass shootings can be solved or prevented by a psychiatrist are at best deluding themselves and more likely just seeking cover from actual political solutions.

SOURCE

• CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/data_publications/index.htm
• GALLUP
https://news.gallup.com/poll/164507/americans-fault-mental-health-system-gun-violence.aspx
• ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743519300143?via%3Dihub
• Health Affairs
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0017