When I opened my copy of rampage to the Opinion page, the headline “Law targets mentally unstable, not average gun owners,” by Max Clark at the top of the page made me very, very wary.
I became increasingly disturbed by the implication that the mentally ill are responsible for the greater part of mass shootings. The article follows a defense I’ve seen often in the media— when a shooting happens, the shooter is quickly painted as mentally ill. While it is understandable for more responsible gun owners to want to distance themselves from criminals who abuse their weapons, this tactic is extremely problematic.
When criminals are labeled as mentally ill, the stigma against the mentally ill grows. This stigma against mental illness means that people who think they may be mentally ill are far less likely to seek the treatment they need, for fear of permanently associating themselves with violent, unstable, “crazy” people. Clark cites Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista shooter, as an example of a mentally ill criminal. However, the media obsession with Rodger’s mental illness takes the focus away from a far more troubling motive, as indicated by his deeply misogynistic manifesto.
Clark cites a study by the NCBI that claims a correlation between mental illness and gun violence. However, he misrepresents part of the statistics. The study actually says that 23% of the shooters studied had psychiatric histories, whereas Max cites the evidence as saying 23% of shooters were diagnosed with mental illness. In reality, the study states that 6% of that 23% were actually diagnosed with psychosis. In other words, 94% ended up committing their crime despite having been under psychiatric care and not being diagnosed with any significant mental illness.
Many studies show, and most psychiatrists agree, that though serious mental illness can indicate a risk for violence, most of the time, violence has nothing to do with mental illness. According to an interview with a professor of psychiatry conducted by Pacific Standard magazine, people with mental illnesses, even very severe ones, had only slightly higher chances than the general public of committing violent crime. A study in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that the percentage of violent crime attributable to severely mentally ill people was only about 5.2% over a 13 year period and was lowest (less than 3%) among 15-24 year old patients, a very similar age group to the one in the NCBI study cited in Max’s article.
When it comes to violent crime, mental illness is not the culprit we are looking for.