Mass Murder and the Mentally Ill: 60 Minutes Gets it Wrong

This psychcentral commentary summarizes my own opinion and perspective on gun violence and the mentally ill, an opinion shared by many professionals as well as people with a mental illness themselves, and ordinary people who want the truth. It does so by stating the facts as we know them, not speculations or lazy assumptions. The comment comes in response to a recent 60 Minutes piece which relied on loose correlations, unfounded assumptions and untested conclusions to call for some ill-advised measures to contain and "prevent" this kind of violence.

Ill-advised because based on little to no data. Ill-advised because no one can foresee the future. Ill-advised because they isolate and target a group of people who need and seek treatment -- making them more likely to forgo any treatment.

Suggesting we initiate mental health screening and vastly increase treatment access is all well and good -- but how would they be funded and carried out? There is no screening tool that can foresee the future of any individual -- how will we develop one? Increasing treatment is a sound goal, a desperately needed goal, but it would cost a fortune. Are we ready to pay for it?

60 Minutes, ignoring these hard questions, accomplished little more than demonizing the mentally ill, relying on "experts" like by Dr. E. Fuller Torey and his Treatment Advocacy Center, who  has been pushing for forced treatment of schizophrenics for years, claiming they pose a unique threat to society but failing to back it up with any scientific data.

And that's what we need. Scientific data and research on gun violence, mental illness, schizophrenia, and if it is possible to prevent horrible crimes before they are even conceived of. Scientific research, furthermore, on better treatments that would actually work and be more tolerable so that people would stay on them. As it is now, our first-line treatment -- drugs -- often carries with it such unpleasant and even debilitating side effects that it's little wonder so many give up on them.

But we won't get it, because it seems that when it comes to mental illness and gun violence, data is irrelevant. We go with the easy conclusion, out of fear of threats to our safety and well-being, however ill-founded and misdirected. We focus on identifying the very tiny needle that is the "dangerous mentally ill" in the vast haystack that is our population -- and that is ridiculous.

Targeting everyone with a severe mental illness, in particular schizophrenia, may make the public feel better, but it is a straw man that needs to be knocked down.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/09/30/60-minutes-connecting-mental-illness-to-violence-with-little-data-facts/

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Mass Murder and the Mentally Ill

THE MENTALLY ILL AND MASS MURDER

Here we go again with the mass shootings and the mental health of the shooter. There's talk of finding ways to identify the "dangerous" mentally ill people and get them help before they kill. As if the only reason society should look after the mentally ill is because they pose a deadly threat to the "sane" people. The shooter becomes "the new face of mental illness in this country," as Brian Williams said on NBC not long ago (re Ariel Castro, kidnapper, torture, murderer).

I hate these debates because mentally ill people as a whole are LESS violent than sane people and more likely to be victims than perpetrators.

And because it is not possible to predict who will become violent; no particular traits, behaviors or symptoms correlate with violence.

And because forcing someone into treatment violates civil rights even when it would benefit the person.

And because requiring therapists to "turn in" patients who show signs of future violence as defined by these laws would discourage people from seeking treatment in the first place.

And because all this surveiling, investigating, correlating, identifying, forced treatment, denial of rights, and all the rest would require a huge bureaucracy dedicated to social control, which is scary (and besides, we already have the NSA for that).

And because, seriously, what is the problem here? Preventing a very few people who cannot be identified in advance from committing mass murders? Or the absurd number of guns in this country, almost completely unregulated and unlimited?

Control guns not minds. Guns are controllable; minds are not.