Editor’s Note: Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicide thoughts or mental health issues.
In the US, Call or Text 988, The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Globally: International Suicide Prevention Associations and beFrienders for Befrienders worldwide have contact information for crisis centres around the world.
After a random shooting in Austin, Texas, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said the suspect had past criminal offences and “serious issues.” The 32-year-old suspect was arrested after police found him naked and claimed he was yes with the Bible.
“There have been some serious mistakes here,” Davis said.
A few days ago, a 30-year-old man fired hundreds of shots at a U.S. center to prevent disease in Atlanta, killing a police officer. The gunman who took his own life reportedly spoke of suicide and reached out to mental health assistance before the attack.
And a few days ago, another gunman with a history of mental health issues shot and killed four people in a Manhattan skyscraper before pointing his gun at him.
While suspects in several recent well-known attacks have been described as having mental health issues, experts say it doesn’t mean their mental health issues are due to the murders.
Experts say there is no mental health system built to catch such rare and explosive crimes. But the potential solution is that many politicians don’t have a stomach to deal with. That is, it limits access to the gun.
“We often tell stories of mental illness. If we focus on it, or focus on it, it lacks all these other factors that much more predictive of mass shooting,” says Vanderbilt University’s medical dean, “We can die in the countryside.”
“Having mental health issues doesn’t predict mass shooting,” Metzle said. “Many people have symptoms of mental illness, and that’s definitely true, but that’s a different argument from saying that mental illness caused mass shootings.”
Violence is not a listed condition of mental health issues, such as major depression or schizophrenia, Metzle noted. “In fact, there is no mental illness in which symptoms cause violence against others or shooting others.”
Many people in the United States suffer from mental illness. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five adults experience mental illness in a given year.
People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence, research shows. And if someone with mental health problems hurts someone with guns, it’s probably in itself, Dr. Jeffrey W. Swanson, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, also wrote extensively about gun violence and mental health.
Studies have shown that mental illness is a strong causal factor in suicide, but only about 3% to 4% of violent behaviors are attributed to serious mental illness, Swanson’s study showed. Even during gun violence, mass shooting is rare: Of the 150,000 people filmed in the US each year, only about 1-2% were victims of mass shootings.
“If you think about it, we certainly have problems with gun violence in the US. We have problems with mental illness. These are two really big public health issues that intersect with their edges, but mental illness is not the place where many people start just trying to stop dying from mass shooting,” Swanson said.
Mass shootings do not generally come from one problem, but several factors can increase the risk. History of violence, access to guns, violent social networks, misogyny and substance abuse all create a list.
“Most perpetrators of mass shootings had a history of domestic violence, or a targeted family or intimate partner,” said Lisa Geller, senior advisor to implementing the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Dome violence has played a key role in mass shootings with more issues than any other,” Geller said.
And while some may argue that mass shootings will be prevented if attackers are better able to access their mental health system, J. Thomas Sullivan, professor emeritus at Little Rock William H. Bowen Law School at the University of Arkansas, also said he doesn’t think it’s right.
“Trading the mental health system to provide the help needed to stop these shootings is an inappropriate way to change responsibility,” said Sullivan, who wrote extensively about the topic.
Sullivan said some of the mental health experts he taught said their patients were constantly pose threats. “But not everyone can accurately predict who is actually threatening to chase it,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan and other experts CNN said focusing on the tools used to hurt others is a more effective solution.
“I don’t think a lot of people want to hear this, but the real problem is access to the gun,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said many responsible gun owners were included, but said “it’s very difficult to stop someone from firing a gun when they have a gun.”
Gun restrictions are what countries like Australia and New Zealand looked at after mass shootings. Swanson said the strongest risk factors for common violent behavior are young and male. “But you know you can’t cut them up, right?” Swanson said. In some countries, “we decided that the idea that everyone has easy access to firearms is extremely dangerous. Therefore, they broadly restrict legal access to guns,” he said.
“It’s important that neuroscientists come up with magical molecules and eliminate harmful behaviors, while still focusing on the issue of lethal measures,” Swanson said.
One way to do that is through An extreme protection order also known as the “Red Flag” Act. Depending on the law, if a family member or family member or law enforcement believes that a person is at risk of harming himself or others, the court may restrict access to a firearm as long as the order is in effect.
Red Flag laws are important, Geller said, “it’s because it focuses on people’s actions rather than diagnosis.”
“Just because someone is experiencing mental health issues doesn’t mean they have a mental illness that can be diagnosed,” Geller said.
21 states in the Washington, DC and the US Virgin Islands have some form of red flag law in their books, according to Everytown, a nonprofit for gun safety.
After Connecticut increased its Red Flag Act enforcement, the survey found it was linked to a 14% decline in the state’s firearm suicide rate. In California, the gun violence control order is believed to have blocked at least 58 potential mass shootings and other types of gun violence in that state, including suicide.
Polls show that the majority of Americans support this type of restriction, but political reality doesn’t always reflect that.
In Texas, three people (store employee, 4-year-old grandfather) were killed in a targeted parking lot in Austin on Monday, and Congress recently passed a law that would make such gun law restrictions illegal.
