Earlier this week, a friend of my mom’s sent me a podcast because she knew I was interested in mental illness. It was titled, “Most Violence is Not Caused by Mental Illness.” This podcast was recorded by The Daily, and produced by The New York Times. To give some background, most think of mental illness and gun violence as having an immediate connection. It is definitely true that many shootings are caused by a person’s mental illness. Take, for instance, Seung-Hui Cho, a seriously mentally ill individual, who killed 32 and injured 17. (He was not in treatment at the time of the shooting.) Due to these astonishing numbers and headlines, most of us are convinced that mental illness is the sole reason for gun violence. I must admit, I was one of those people as well, until I heard the podcast. During this 22 minute podcast, I listened to a psychiatrist being interviewed by the host of the show. Her name was Dr. Amy Barnhorst and she told her story about how, working as an emergency psychiatrist, she encountered a man who had been posting disturbing things on social media. His parents were worried enough to drop him off at the crisis unit. Now, when we think of those who have a mental illness, we usually think of rambling, sporadic, delusional people who make it quite obvious to the world that they are suffering. But when Dr. Barnhorst first saw the man, she was surprised because he did not appear to fit the outside profile of a man struggling with mental illness. This left the doctor in a bit of a situation- the man did not seem like he had a mental illness, but what would happen if she let him go and he committed a horrific crime? In the end, she decided to commit him to the psychiatric hospital. However, the judge did not find that he met 1 of the 3 criteria: that he was dangerous to himself, dangerous to others, or gravely disabled. This is all to say that a lot of the people who commit gun violence don’t meet the criteria to be involuntarily committed. There is a difference between having a severe mental illness and not being mentally well or stable. Only 4% of community violence is attributed to mental illness. That does not include those who are just moody, angry, extremely bitter young men who feel nobody respects them the way they should. These men will go to great lengths to get the attention they so desperately seek. Unfortunately, there are no medications for people who are angry at the world, as Dr. Barnhorst says. Not all who are dangerous are mentally ill, which means they cannot be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. If the mental health system was really going to try and prevent gun violence, they would have to expand the profile of a murderer to all who are sullen, depressed, resentful young men who may or may not have an interest in guns/violence. The end result would be that very, very few people out of that massive pool would go on to commit violence. Every young man who was moody would then become a threat to the world, and that is not reasonable or cost-effective.
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Out of My Mind 