America’s obsession with blaming shootings on mental health.
There’s always more to the story.
Your psychological and emotional well-being is an important part of your health, so why don’t we talk about it more when tragedies don’t occur?
Mental health becomes a topic frequently brought up after mass shootings, yet it seems to rarely come up on its own accord. Even though these tragedies can shed some light into the world of mental illnesses and the behavioral tendencies they can exhibit, it can also facilitate a stigma around individuals who have a mental illness. This can lead to forming inaccurate assumptions about these people.
“Psychopath” is a very Hollywood term to place on individuals like Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old parkland shooter who took the lives of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School a little over two months ago. It’s a label that is used in the discourse surrounding the likes of Hui Cho and Jared Loughner, and in these cases, the label is well earned.
However, it paints a gruesome picture for those who suffer from any sort of psychosis. Is there a reliable connection between psychopathy and mass murder? When we hear “psychosis” only in the context of a mass shooting, this causes us to continually link mental illness to gruesome behaviors such as Cruz, Cho, and Loughner. Instinctive reasoning might make us believe that the connection is obvious; however, the lines are quite blurry.
Is there a reason psychopathy is associated with mass murder?
When it comes to mass shootings, America is often believed to have one of the highest rates of gun death. An editorial from Investor’s Business Daily notes that while America is high on the list of mass shootings, we’re not number 1 like we’ve heard in the past. These statistics can be skewed depending on the criteria chosen for what classifies as a mass shooting and/or mass murder as mentioned earlier.
Media has played into how the American people view mass shootings, and there’s a common misconception that individuals who commit any sort of gun violence have done so because of serious mental illness. However, according to James L. Knoll, Director of Forensic Psychiatry and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and George D. Annas, Deputy Director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Program and Clinical Assistant Professor in the Division of Forensic Psychiatry, that population is only 1% of the US population. Previous research has also confirmed this statistic.
Nevertheless, it’s possible that select news outlets can push the idea that mass shootings in America are either only a mental health issue or only a gun control issue to their dedicated audience. This can lead to the further polarization of opinions on the subject and results in more shouting matches at the dinner table rather than constructive conversation.
So what is psychopathy?
Many psychologists define psychopathy to have many similarities to antisocial personality disorder (APD), including indifference to another, ’s well-being, absence of guilt, tendency to manipulate others for personal gain, and hyperbolic sense of vanity. APD is typically assumed to not be as detrimental as it could be. Having an extreme case of APD is not the same as being an introvert and wanting to stay home rather than going out to a party. Rather, APD refers to someone who acts against societal norms, laws, and acceptable behavior. Psychopathy is also associated with having a genetic factor, while sociopathy is the development of psychopathic traits based on an individual’s environment.
The most renowned test for discovering psychopathy in an individual is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revisited (PCL-R), named after criminal psychologist Professor Robert Hare. A certified clinician administers the test by conducting an interview and reviewing the individual’s file an interview and answering a 20-item test that measures traits that are deemed psychopathic. The traits include, but are not limited to, need for stimulation, pathological lying, and lack of remorse.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Hare states that people with psychopathy have continued to stun him. “It stuns me, as much as it did when I started 40 years ago,” he said in the interview, “that it is possible to have people who are so emotionally disconnected that they can function as if other people are objects to be manipulated and destroyed without any concern.”
Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry at Duke University, told Fox News in an interview that the topic of mental illness is often politicized after a shooting. Swanson goes on to explain that if mental health precautions would be taken, we would still not see an end to shootings. Why?
“The mass shooters, with some exception, have been angry, alienated, emotionally troubled young men who act out these incredibly deviant cultural scripts and have access to firearms,” Swanson continues, “They don’t have a felony conviction, they’ve never been involuntarily committed. How do you make sure dangerous people don’t get access to firearms?”
Grant Duwe, a leading American criminologist with a focus on mass murder, believes that the stigmatization of mental illness is an authentic concern in an op-ed he co-authored in the LA Times. However, he notes that we might be looking at the role of mental health in shootings through overly-politicized glasses.
“Conversely, some have insisted — wrongly, in our opinion — that mass public shootings are strictly a mental health problem rather than a gun problem. They, too, are on the wrong side of the evidence. It’s possible for mass public shootings to be both a gun problem and a mental health problem.”
— Grant Duwe and Michael Rocque, “Actually, there is a clear link between mass shootings and mental illness.”
Where do we go from here?
Opening a dialogue about mental health only after these mass shootings can be detrimental for multiple reasons. When we talk about any sort of political/religious-based terrorism, the underlying message is that these acts are detrimental to society and classified as inherently evil. Mental illness, especially involving forms of psychopathy, is faced by many individuals who do not turn to violent acts such as mass murder as a “byproduct” of their disease.
As for the argument of gun control versus mental health reform, there’s no reason why implementing policies in both areas should not be considered. Common sense gun laws that do not punish law-abiding citizens paired with efficient mental health programs and assessment tools could greatly benefit our nation in a time where school shootings are regular news stories. However, using mental illnesses as a scapegoat for radically motivated mass shootings will only prevent us from moving forward.
