黑料正能量 Note: This comes courtesy of the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery鈥檚 Leah Harris.
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Mental Illness Is Unfairly Scapegoated in Mass Shootings
Two years after the Sandy Hook shooting, a new Vanderbilt University study shows that trying to link mental illness to extreme gun violence actually distracts us from the real issues
By Elizabeth Kulze 听Vocativ December 14, 2014
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Two years ago this Sunday, 20-year-old Adam Lanza burst into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and fatally shot 20 children and six adults with his mother鈥檚 Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle. The incident鈥攐ne of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history鈥攍eft the entire country reeling and ignited a national debate over gun control and mental health. Many were led to believe that the latter was largely to blame for the massacre, but according to a new study by Vanderbilt University, mental illness is wrongly used as a scapegoat when it comes to extreme acts of violence.
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鈥淕un discourse after mass shootings often perpetuates the fear that 鈥榮ome crazy person is going to come shoot me,鈥欌 says Dr. Jonathan Metzl, the study鈥檚 lead author. 鈥淏ut if you look at the research, it鈥檚 not the 鈥榗razy鈥 person you have to fear.鈥
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鈥淥ur research finds that across the board the mentally ill are 60 to 120 percent more likely than the average person to be the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrators.鈥
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Metzl and his colleagues analyzed data and literature from the past 40 years and found that the link between individual mental health issues and mass shootings is actually unsubstantiated. Instead, they found that most gun violence is committed by relatives, friends or acquaintances of the victim(s), rather than a lone psychopath.
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鈥淔ewer than 5 percent of the 120,000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness,鈥 they write. 鈥淥ur research finds that across the board, the mentally ill are 60 to 120 percent more likely than the average person to be the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrators.鈥
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They also found four common myths that regularly resurface in the fallout from mass shootings:
- Mental illness causes gun violence.
- Psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime before it happens.
- U.S. mass-shootings 鈥減rove鈥 that we should fear mentally ill loners.
- Because of the complex psychiatric histories of mass-shooters, gun control 鈥渨on鈥檛 prevent鈥 mass shootings.
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The problem with these illusions, Metzl argues, is that they distract people from important issues involved in the prevention of shooting deaths in the U.S.鈥攐ne being gun legislation.
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鈥淲e should set our attention and gun policies on the everyday shootings, not on the sensational shootings, because there we will get much more traction in preventing gun crime,鈥 he says.
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鈥淏asing gun crime-prevention efforts on the mental health histories of mass shooters risks building 鈥榗ommon evidence鈥 from 鈥榰ncommon things,鈥 all while giving mental health providers the untenable responsibility of preventing the next massacre.鈥
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Surprisingly, Metzl also found that even the psychiatric screening of gun owners does little to prevent these crimes鈥攁 commonly touted solution in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. The study shows that even those who fit the profile of typical mass shooters, as in 鈥済un-owning, angry, paranoid white men,鈥 do not often commit murder. Factors that typically do predict gun violence, however, include drug and alcohol use, a history of violence, firearm access and personal relationship stress.
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鈥淏asing gun crime-prevention efforts on the mental health histories of mass shooters risks building 鈥榗ommon evidence鈥 from 鈥榰ncommon things,鈥 all while giving mental health providers the untenable responsibility of preventing the next massacre,鈥 Metzl writes.
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Metzl concludes that voters and lawmakers would be better off turning their attention to the system, rather than obsessing over individual perpetrators like Adam Lanza. Discussion should be about access to mental health care, medication and the availability of health insurance, rather than what exactly caused Lanza to crack.
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鈥淚n a way, it is a failure of the system often that becomes represented as a failure of the individual,鈥 says Metzl.
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