Elephant in the Room - The Connection between Mental Illness and Gun Violence

[Dinner]

In the 1960's there was a "reform" movement which basically began to close down all of the large state owned mental hospitals where the mentally ill had previously been confined to. This movement was started by liberals who thought the mental institutions where inhumane and they cited numerous cases where abuses did actually occur but by the 1970's and 1980's it was conservatives, who wanted to save money, who started closing the publicly owned mental hospitals in mass and then just dumping the mentally ill on the streets where most of them became homeless. Now, this may just be a correlation but there is likely a direct link between closing those old public mental institutions down and the rise of mass shootings in America especially since about half of the mass shooters have histories of mental illness.

Madness, Deinstitutionalization & Murder
March 2012

For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, one of the most shocking aspects of the last three decades was the rise of mass public shootings: people who went into public places and murdered complete strangers. Such crimes had taken place before but their rarity meant that they were shocking.

Something changed in the 1980s: these senseless mass murders started to happen with increasing frequency. Why did these crimes go from extraordinarily rare to commonplace?

For a while, it was fashionable to blame gun availability for this dramatic increase. But guns did not become more available before or during this change. Instead, federal law and many state laws became more restrictive on purchase and possession of firearms, sometimes in response to such crimes. If gun availability does not explain the increase of mass public murders, what else might?

At least half of these mass murderers (as well as many other murderers) have histories of mental illness.

In the 1960s, the United States embarked on an innovative approach to caring for its mentally ill: deinstitutionalization. The intentions were quite humane: move patients from long-term commitment in state mental hospitals into community-based mental health treatment.

Even the mother of all Leftist publications Mother Jones agrees-
Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy

What do you folks think?

[Sava]

EITHER LOCK UP THE CRAZIES OR DONT
OR JUST THE DUMB ONES
OR JUST THE ONES WHO ARE SUPER PARANOID, LIKE GUNS, AND HATE OBAMA

AHKJL:HFD:SKL

[Lorizael]

Half of mass murderers have a history of mental illness, but what fraction of people with mental illness become mass murderers? The problem is that, at present, it's not possible to accurately predict which individuals with mental illness are going to go on to kill lots of people. We should avoid painting a picture of the mentally ill as time bombs, because all that does is further stigmatize mental illness and make people less likely to seek treatment.

[Kidlicious]

Half of mass murderers have a history of mental illness, but what fraction of people with mental illness become mass murderers? The problem is that, at present, it's not possible to accurately predict which individuals with mental illness are going to go on to kill lots of people. We should avoid painting a picture of the mentally ill as time bombs, because all that does is further stigmatize mental illness and make people less likely to seek treatment.

Also they won't be diagnosed.

[Dinner]

Half of mass murderers have a history of mental illness, but what fraction of people with mental illness become mass murderers? The problem is that, at present, it's not possible to accurately predict which individuals with mental illness are going to go on to kill lots of people. We should avoid painting a picture of the mentally ill as time bombs, because all that does is further stigmatize mental illness and make people less likely to seek treatment.

I can agree with that. I still think people with mental illness shouldn't have guns especially if they've previously had issues with violence to themselves or others.

[Dr Strangelove]

In the 1950's and 1960's there were studies published which purported to show that mentally ill people were actually less likely to commit violent crimes than the non-mentally ill. The problem with the study is that as their mentally ill sample they chose people who had already been diagnosed, including many who were long term institutionalized. More recent studies show that there is a correlation between affective and psychotic disorders and violence, but the relative risk is not that big.

You should realise also that the overwhelming majority of mentally ill in the United States are being treated by internists and family practitioners. This country has NO mental health treatment policy.

[Sava]

In the 1950's and 1960's there were studies published which purported to show that mentally ill people were actually less likely to commit violent crimes than the non-mentally ill. The problem with the study is that as their mentally ill sample they chose people who had already been diagnosed, including many who were long term institutionalized. More recent studies show that there is a correlation between affective and psychotic disorders and violence, but the relative risk is not that big.

Yes. They are also more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators. But by all means, let's "other" these people and make it so only their constitutional rights are infringed upon.

This country has NO mental health treatment policy.

Sure it does. It's called "prison".

[DinoDoc]

There is a drumbeat of demand for a new federal assault-weapons ban to prevent more tragedies like the one that happened in Connecticut. If we had not tried the experiment, you could honestly wonder if it would do any good. But the policy has been tried and found wanting.

In 1999, the National Institute of Justice published a study by criminologists Jeffrey Roth and Christopher Koper, “Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994–96.” It examined the effects of the federal assault-weapons ban in its first two years of operation and found no statistically significant reduction in murder rates. “The ban did not produce declines in the average number of victims per incident of gun murder or gun murder victims with multiple wounds.” The study also was unable to find any clear evidence that it reduced murders of police officers. The reason was simple: So-called assault weapons were never commonly used for murders before the ban, and more conventional-appearing weapons were effective substitutes for criminal misuse. Any assault-weapons ban that does not ban firearms that are equally lethal (such as those many Americans already own) is ineffective.

What does work? Professor Stephen P. Segal’s recent study of murder rates and mental-treatment policy, “Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates,” examined state-by-state murder rates and mental-health services and found that “less access to psychiatric inpatient-beds and more poorly rated mental health systems were associated with increases in the homicide rates of 1.08 and 0.26 per 100,000, respectively.” There was an even greater difference in the homicide rate between states with different involuntary civil commitment (ICC) laws. “Broader ICC criteria were associated with 1.42 less homicides per 100,000.” In short, states where involuntary commitment was easy had roughly a third less murders than states where it was very hard to civilly commit a mentally ill person.

The reason that more mental-health services and more relaxed involuntary-commitment standards make such a difference in murder rates is very simple: Mentally ill persons are disproportionately involved in violent crimes, including murder. As of 2002, about 26,000 inmates in state prisons across the United States who were convicted of murder were also mentally ill. A detailed examination of Indiana prison inmates convicted of murder found that 18 percent were diagnosed with “schizophrenia or other psychotic disorder, major depression, mania, or bipolar disorder.” Many of the random mass murders that have so plagued not only the United States but many other industrialized societies in the last few years were committed by persons with clear evidence of severe mental illness, usually schizophrenia.

If we are serious about reducing these relatively rare (less than 1 percent of U.S. murders are incidents of mass murder) but terrifying tragedies, we need to be looking at the root cause: untreated or inadequately treated mental illness. Focusing on the weapons may be good politics, but the experimental evidence suggests that it is bad public policy.

Preventing Mass-Murder Tragedies: What Works, What Doesn’t

[PLATO]

It is a bit upsetting that people question the mentally ill on being violent when the main problem with them is being homeless.

Not that worrying about the violent mentally ill is a bad thing, but it seems that we only worry about the mentally ill when they can harm the rest of us while looking the other way when we see them sleeping in the street.

[regexcellent]

There is absolutely nothing more mental health care or more gun control could have done to stop the man who shot up UCSB (not that six people in a country of 300 million getting murdered is truly a noteworthy event). He was already seeing multiple psychiatrists who did not judge him to be a danger from others. He was interviewed by the police who judged that he was not a danger to others (certainly not enough of one to arrest him or search him). He had no criminal record and would pass any background check.

The elephant in the room is that this is a problem that's not worth solving.

[N35t0r]

**** the dead

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm shocked that the response from California is to ban guns. Shocked I tell you.

[regexcellent]

I'll be a bit surprised if any gun control actually makes it out of the gate. 2014 elections are coming up.

[Dinner]

There is absolutely nothing more mental health care or more gun control could have done to stop the man who shot up UCSB (not that six people in a country of 300 million getting murdered is truly a noteworthy event). He was already seeing multiple psychiatrists who did not judge him to be a danger from others. He was interviewed by the police who judged that he was not a danger to others (certainly not enough of one to arrest him or search him). He had no criminal record and would pass any background check.

The elephant in the room is that this is a problem that's not worth solving.

He did pass a background check as he legally bought his guns at a gun store in Goleta. That's the problem. There are two possible solutions the first I don't really like but it is the easiest to impliment namely 1) if someone has ever had any mental issues what so ever they automatically get turned down and can only get it reversed if a qualified mental health professional or (my preferred solution) 2) Absolutely no one can buy and firearm without having gone through hundreds of hours of mental health screening, the screening must be repeated every year and the second they stop or get red flagged by the mental health folks the gun is automatically disabled via an electronic kill switch. Oh, and every gun has an electronic kill switch and simply possessing one without it is life in prison without the possibility of parole while selling one is automatically the death penalty.

[N35t0r]

If legally drving a car is harder than legally owning a gun, then there's something amiss.