Offenders, Convicts & Victims: Honest Justice for the Mentally Ill
“Mentally ill” is not synonymous with “homicidal.” It seems when there’s a gun-related massacre against students, at a nightclub, or against police officers, uninformed public officials and the mainstream news media rush to blame it on the mentally ill. The statistics show that where mental illness and violence come together is that people with mental illness are more often the victims of violence. The people who commit mass shootings most often don’t qualify as mentally ill. People who commit violent acts are sociopaths which doesn’t fit the definition of a mental illness.
The nation’s political leaders scapegoat the mentally ill. “This isn’t a gun problem, this is a mental problem,” Donald Trump told CNN in response to the killing of two Virginia journalists in 2015. “It’s not a question of laws, it’s really the people.” Off-the-cuff statements about a connection between mental illness and violent crime in the wake of senseless acts of violence only perpetuate the negative stereotypes and stigma that make it hard for people with mental health issues to seek professional help in the first place.
Trump opposed tightening gun laws in the U.S., but said he was in favor of addressing mental health to prevent shootings. Trump went on to say that laws should not make it more difficult for “sane people” to have access to guns and that those who knew the shooter most likely thought he should be institutionalized.
Calling the gunman a “very sick man,” Trump said mental illness is “a massive problem” in the U.S. He suggested more resources should be devoted to addressing mental health — hoping to prevent shootings like the one in Virginia, which he called “really, very sad.”
It’s a dangerous stigma to conflate mental illness with physical violence. Research suggests that negative stereotypes is still a large problem when it comes to mental illness, and that stigma acts as a barrier to proper treatment — treatment that helps the nearly one in four American adults who experience a mental health disorder to live healthy and productive lives.
As for the mainstream news media, research finds little has changed in media portrayal of mental illness over a 20-year period. Nearly four in 10 news stories about mental illness analyzed by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers in 2016 connect mental illness with violent behavior toward others, even though less than five percent of violence in the United States is directly related to mental illness.
Findings published in the journal Health Affairs suggest that the news media’s routine linkage of mental illness with violence toward others paints an unfair portrait of those with mental illness, suggesting that most are prone to violence when numerous studies have concluded that only a small percentage actually commit violence. In an ideal world, reporting would make clear the low percentage of people with mental illness who commit violence.
Incarceration of mentally ill people is bleak and deserves a look by policymakers. Inmates with serious mental illnesses remain incarcerated nearly twice as long as others charged with identical crimes. Many inmates with mental illness can’t follow rules and end up collecting additional time on their sentences. Others are held in solitary confinement because their illnesses make them hard to control. A Department of Justice report found that 13 percent of mentally ill prisoners in federal facilities were released directly into communities after spending, on average, more than two years in isolation. There is no justice there.

