Should We Blame Mental Illness in the Wake of Mass Shootings?
What the President Gets Wrong…
I’m sure you’ve heard the tragic news that broke this past weekend. In what can only be described as two horrific acts of violence — with at least one being an act of terrorism — a white nationalist gunman in El Paso, Texas brutally murdered 22 innocent victims while in Dayton, Ohio another gunman took the lives of 9 others. Collectively, they injured dozens more. That’s 31 innocent lives lost and dozens injured in the span of less than 2 days.
So, once again, America (and the rest of the world) is thrust into a whirlwind of thoughts and prayers, gun control debates, and governmental inaction. Then, in a couple of weeks things will return to the status quo until someone else picks up a gun and decides to go on a rampage that garners mass media attention, thus restarting the cycle.
While there is certainly something to be said about gun control and governmental incompetency — I’ve come to realize that no one on either side of the debate will change their minds. That’s okay, I’ll save those politics for another day.
The politics I do want to get into, however, is the reality that oftentimes our media — and this time even the president himself — blames mental illness or the mentally ill for acts of mass violence, destruction and death.
President Donald J. Trump had the following to say regarding the recent tragedy and regarding gun violence in general, “mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun.”
You read that right. According to Trump, it’s not racist, hateful and frankly evil people who pull the triggers of guns aimed at their innocent victims, it’s mental illness and hatred — two vague, intangible scapegoats.
Trump additionally called mass shooters “mentally ill monsters” and mentioned the idea of involuntary confinement of people suffering from mental illness.
Mental illness, in Donald Trump’s mind, is largely to blame for the epidemic of gun violence in America. But is he right?
Here’s What the Experts Have to Say
Researchers have found that only a small percentage of mentally ill people have a higher than average risk of committing violence. In fact, researchers find time and time again that the mentally ill are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator. Estimates show that about 1 in 5 mass murderers suffer from psychosis — with the other 80% having relatively normal profiles when it comes to mental health history.
Multiple physicians and medical organizations have come out in unison to decry Donald Trump’s comments and the demonization of mental illness by government and media with the American Psychological Association releasing the following statement on August 4th, 2019:
“Routinely blaming mass shootings on mental illness is unfounded and stigmatizing. Research has shown that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for, mental illness. The rates of mental illness are roughly the same around the world, yet other countries are not experiencing these traumatic events as often as we face them. One critical factor is access to, and the lethality of, the weapons that are being used in these crimes. Adding racism, intolerance and bigotry to the mix is a recipe for disaster.”
Meanwhile, the American Psychiatric Association, the largest collection of Psychiatrists in the country had the following to say, “the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence.” They go on to explain that by demonizing mental illness and blaming mass shootings on the mentally ill, media and politicians are further stigmatizing mental illness and preventing people from accessing treatment.
There are countless more experts and professionals who have come out with essentially the same message. The experts all agree on one thing: Donald Trump is wrong. Mental illness is not to blame here.
The Damage Is Already Done… and It’s Only Getting Worse
At this point, I think most people expect for Donald Trump to spout lies, half-truths and misrepresentations of the facts. So with this expectation in mind, how much damage can these ill-informed opinions do? It turns out, quite a lot.
Surprising as it may be, a lot of people give much credence to Trump’s words — millions in fact. Couple this with the fact that he’s not the first and probably won’t be the last to spread this myth and you have, as the experts put it, the further stigmatization of mental illness and the mentally ill. As it turns out, more than half the country believes that an increased focus on mental health would lower the number of mass shootings, despite research showing a weak link at best between mental illness and mass shootings.
To see the effects of stigma in the mental health community, one only has to ask anyone who’s had a mental illness about their experiences. Better yet, just take a quick glance at the statistics. 15% of people believe that people with a mental illness are a burden on society. That’s doesn’t seem like a huge number — but it’s a sizable population of 49 million people in the United States alone, a number larger than that of the population of Canada.
Meanwhile, in Canada — and I use Canadian statistics because our countries are similar so numbers will likely be comparable for Americans — 42% of people are unsure whether they would socialize with a mentally ill friend, 55% would be unlikely to enter a spousal relationship with someone who is mentally ill, 46% of people think that mental illness is an excuse for bad behavior, 64% of workers said they’d be concerned about how work would be affected if a colleague were mentally ill and 40% said they have experienced anxiety or depression but never sought medical help for it. Stigma genuinely can ruin people’s lives, and this isn’t hyperbole.
Admittedly, the stigmatization of mental illness cannot be solely or even mostly blamed on Trump’s comments or the idea of a link between mental illness and gun violence, but the reality is that it contributes to stereotypes that negatively affect the lives of millions of people each day — and some of them end up dying because they’re too afraid to access help because of the stigma that our society has created and continues to contribute to. This is unacceptable and by calling out public, and private, figures when they’re spreading misinformation we can help fight the stigma and hopefully improve lives. We must end the stigma.
In Closing
Sometimes, people do horrible, vile, wretched things. We’ve known this since the dawn of man. Most people can’t fathom how anyone could commit such acts of terror and horror and so they come to the conscious conclusion, or the unconscious conclusion, that whoever were to do such a thing must be “sick in the head.” This is a common phrase that I’ve heard time and time again, and it always makes me cringe.
Just because someone does something that we cannot fathom doesn’t mean they are mentally ill. The truth is, the vast, vast majority of people living with mental illnesses can’t fathom these horrible acts either. Just because we don’t understand someone’s motives or we find their motives questionable or downright absurd doesn’t make them mentally ill. The truth is, if that were the case you would see nearly every murderer, rapist and pedophile successfully plead not guilty by reason of insanity in a court of law. The data, on the other hand, shows that insanity is used as a defense less than 1% of the time with only a 26% success rate — meaning only a minuscule minority of violent and “unfathomable” crimes are committed by people who are genuinely mentally ill and unable to tell right from wrong.
Unfortunately, we live in a world full of hatred, suffering and evil. Unfortunately, some people are truly bad people. Some people are truly evil. Some people are truly monsters. But let’s stop pretending that “evil monster” and “mentally ill” are synonyms, because they’re quite the opposite. Let’s see mass shooters for what they really are: horrible people on a quest for terror, death, destruction and infamy who don’t care who they hurt along the way.
