[Locking people up in mental health facilities doesn’t
automatically cure them. And considering mentally ill people are far
more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence, it
does not adequately address the mass shooting crisis. ]
[[link removed]]

BLAMING MASS SHOOTINGS ON MENTAL ILLNESS DOESN’T ADDRESS EITHER
ISSUE  
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Olivia Riggio
November 15, 2023
FAIR
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_ Locking people up in mental health facilities doesn’t
automatically cure them. And considering mentally ill people are far
more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence, it
does not adequately address the mass shooting crisis. _

,

 

Since a gunman went on a rampage in Lewistown, Maine, killing 16
people, we’ve learned a few things about the shooter, Robert Card
[[link removed]],
who was found with a fatal self-inflicted gunshot wound after a
two-day manhunt. A member of the Army Reserve
[[link removed]],
Card had recently been committed to a mental health facility after he
reported hearing voices and threatened to shoot up the National Guard
base in Saco, Maine.

Card’s mental health history has been central to reporting that laid
out the lead-up to the deadliest mass shooting in the US this year.
Questions of how Card was able to have access to guns, given his
psychiatric hospitalization and documented concerns of family and
soldiers in his reserve unit, drove much of the coverage. Lax gun laws
that allow people like Card to slip through the cracks warrant
interrogation, but the reality is that most mass shooters don’t have
a mental health history like Card’s, nor is a record of mental
illness
[[link removed]] a
good predictor of gun violence.

Card’s ability to carry out this tragedy is a symptom of the gun
violence crisis in the US, but the presence of his mental illness is
not representative of the issue. In the vast majority of cases of mass
violence, mental illness is not considered a primary factor
[[link removed]].
Attempting to rationalize the horrors of a mass shooting by
emphasizing the perpetrator’s mental state does very little to
address the larger issue at best, and leads to dangerous mental health
stigma at worst.

A ‘TEXTBOOK CASE’?

The NEW YORK TIMES piece “The Signs Were All There. Why Did No One
Stop the Maine Shooter?” (11/2/23
[[link removed]])
referred to Card having a “textbook set” of warning signs,
including that he was “hearing voices.”

[CNN: The Maine gunman was a ‘textbook case’ for a state law
designed to remove firearms from people like him. Why didn’t it
work?]

_Robert Card might be the “textbook case” of someone Maine’s law
was aimed at (CNN, 11/5/23
[[link removed]]),
but he’s not the textbook case of a mass shooter._

“The Maine Gunman Was a ‘Textbook Case’ for a State Law Designed
to Remove Firearms From People Like Him. Why Didn’t It Work?” read
a CNN headline (11/5/23
[[link removed]]).

“Even to the most untrained eye, Card is the literal textbook
example of a person who shouldn’t be allowed to have access to
firearms,” a NEW YORK POST editorial  (10/26/23
[[link removed]])
declared.

These pieces refer to Maine’s “yellow-flag” laws, which gun
control advocates consider watered-down versions
[[link removed]] of red-flag
laws
[[link removed]].
Also known as extreme-risk laws, red-flat laws allow the loved ones of
a person in crisis or law enforcement to petition a court for an order
that temporarily prevents the person from accessing guns. Yellow-flag
laws require several procedural steps, including a mental health
evaluation, before a gun can be removed from someone’s possession.
Red-flag laws don’t require mental health evaluations.

It needs to be made clear: While Card’s mental illness might make
him a “textbook example” of someone who should not have had access
to a gun, it does not make him a “textbook example” of a shooter.
A large majority
[[link removed]] of
firearm deaths involving mental illness are suicides. These pieces did
not make that distinction. (Gun suicides outnumber gun murders
overall, but by a narrower margin
[[link removed]].)

A TINY MINORITY

[FBI: A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the
United States]

_FBI (6/18
[[link removed]]):
“In light of the very high lifetime prevalence of the symptoms of
mental illness among the US population, formally diagnosed mental
illness is a not a very specific predictor of violence of any
type.”_

So while a critique of the weak gun laws that allowed Card access to
firearms is warranted, harping on his mental illness doesn’t add
much context to the larger epidemic of mass shootings in the US.
Mental illness exists all around the world, after all, but only one
country accounted for 73%
[[link removed]] of
the mass shootings that occurred in the developed world between 1998
and 2019. And removing guns from everyone who displayed similar
symptoms to Card is not likely to decrease mass shootings by a
significant amount.

An FBI study
[[link removed]] that
monitored pre-attack behaviors of mass shooters between 2000 and 2013
found that 25% of them had diagnosed mental illnesses (which includes
non-psychotic conditions, such as depression and substance abuse).
This is not far off from the 23% of US adults who experienced mental
illness in 2021, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness
[[link removed]]. Only 5% of the shooters in the FBI
study had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.

And a diagnosis doesn’t necessarily assert a causal relationship. In
most cases, the relationship between the violent act and mental
illness is incidental (Columbia Psychiatry, 7/6/22
[[link removed]]).

In a piece for the American Association of Medical Colleges (1/26/23
[[link removed]]),
John Rozel and Jeffrey Swanson cited a 2018 study
[[link removed]] that found
that less than 5% of mass shooters had any record of a
gun-disqualifying mental health adjudication, like involuntary
hospitalization:

Indeed, if serious mental illnesses suddenly disappeared, violence
would decrease by only about 4%
[[link removed]]. More than 90% of violent
incidents, including homicides, would still occur.

They added, “The real story—and the real need—regarding mental
illness and violence is suicide.”

THE REAL RED FLAG

[MSNBC: Maine Shooting Suspect Was Sent by Military Unit for
Psychiatric Treatment]

_Contrary to the implication of MSNBC‘s headline (10/26/23
[[link removed]]),
“psychiatric treatment” is not a helpful criterion for identifying
mass shooters._

Card’s family’s concern for his mental health was central to
corporate media reporting, including a segment on MSNBC‘s CHRIS
JANSING REPORTS (10/26/23
[[link removed]])
and an NBC piece (10/26/23
[[link removed]])
that described Card’s family and colleagues recalling him hearing
voices. A CBS NEWS BOSTON piece (10/26/23
[[link removed]])
that outlined a number of facts authorities knew about Card when he
was on the run headlined his mental illness: “What We Know About
Lewiston, Maine, Shooting Suspect Robert Card and His Mental Health
History.”

“Even as [Card] was confronted and hospitalized and had a
sheriff’s deputy come knocking, nothing went far enough,” the NEW
YORK TIMES article (11/2/23
[[link removed]])
read.

“Cops Were Warned About Maine Gunman’s Declining Mental Health in
May,” reported the DAILY BEAST (10/30/23
[[link removed]]).

A NEW YORK POST report (10/31/23
[[link removed]])
was headlined “Maine Mass Shooter Robert Card Claimed Voices in His
Head Were Calling Him a ‘Pedophile.’”

ECLIPSING THE WHY

[Boston Globe: Scapegoating mental illness is ineffective in
preventing mass shootings]

_Kris Brown (BOSTON GLOBE, 10/30/23
[[link removed]]):
“By irresponsibly promoting myths that link mental illness with
dangerousness, officials perpetuate stigmas that only continue to hurt
people suffering from such illness.”_

The obsession with Card’s mental health eclipses _why_ stronger
risk-based gun restrictions—like red-flag laws—are so effective.
In an opinion piece for the BOSTON GLOBE (10/30/23
[[link removed]]),
Kris Brown, the president of gun violence prevention group Brady
[[link removed]], points out:

Importantly, these laws were intentionally designed, in their initial
recommendation by the Consortium for Risk Based Firearm Policy
[[link removed]], to avoid reliance on mental
health diagnoses, and instead to focus on the behaviors that best
indicate potential future violence.

As NBC (8/6/19
[[link removed]])
reported in 2019, mental illness is not a significant risk factor in
mass shootings—but a record of violent and risky behavior is.
Card’s spoken threats and access to guns were statistically much
more indicative of the risk he posed to the public than the mental
illness that dominated the headlines.

INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT AND STIGMA

The stigma caused by this type of reporting is palpable. Following the
massacre, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took
to TWITTER (10/26/23
[[link removed]]),
painting with dangerously broad and wantonly vague strokes:

We must remove these violent, psychiatrically deranged people from
their communities and be willing to involuntarily commit them.

[NY Post: Maine needs red flag laws and better ways to commit the
mentally ill like Robert Card ]

_The NEW YORK POST (10/26/23
[[link removed]])
defined the issue as “making sure the mentally ill or unstable
can’t access guns.”_

Unsurprisingly, the NEW YORK POST editorial board (10/26/23
[[link removed]])
was also a fan of involuntary commitment, suggesting that Maine needs
red-flag laws—_and _“better ways to commit the mentally ill.”

The POST editorial made the solution seem simple:

The state must intervene by making sure the sick person’s getting
the treatment they need, and keeping them totally isolated from any
and all guns. Imagine if cops, prosecutors and mental health workers
had acted swiftly to put Card back in a mental hospital and not let
him leave.

Advocating for more mental health hospitalization requires an
understanding of what’s wrong with mental healthcare in the first
place. What, exactly, is the “treatment they need”? Is it
available? Are psychiatric hospitals adequately staffed and funded? Is
the staff trained enough to manage patients’ conditions and keep
everyone safe? Does the patient have insurance, or sufficient funds to
pay for treatment? How does stigma from communities, politicians and
media serve as a barrier to effective treatment?

The NEW YORK TIMES piece’s subheading (11/2/23
[[link removed]])
said, “Shortcomings in mental health treatment, weak laws and a
reluctance to threaten personal liberties can derail even concerted
attempts to thwart mass shootings.” But the text of the article
hardly addressed the former. It stated:

The system to treat people who resist getting help on their own is
geared toward acute, not long-term, problems. Involuntary stays
require an imminent threat of harm and generally last from 72 hours to
two weeks.

Suggesting that involuntary commitment can prevent mass violence
without engaging in meaningful discussion about barriers to effective
mental health treatment—and the trauma
[[link removed]] inadequate
mental health treatment can cause—is lazy.

In response to Ramaswamy’s ill-informed and stigmatizing tweet,
journalist Ana Marie Cox (MSNBC, 10/26/23
[[link removed]])
highlighted another crucial point: 97% of mass shooters are men, and
the majority of those men are white
[[link removed]].
Involuntary commitment _has already been _on the rise
[[link removed]],
but white men remain significantly underrepresented
[[link removed]] in
involuntarily  committed populations.

‘THAT UNSTABLE NEIGHBOR’

[St Louis Post Dispatch: Unstable people shouldn't have guns. (Or
legislative power, for that matter.)]

_The ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH (11/2/23
[[link removed]])
snarks that bad lawmaking is “a clear sign of mental
instability.”_

A ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH editorial (11/2/23
[[link removed]])
that advocated for tighter gun laws also used vague and stigmatizing
language that villainized “unstable” people. While first
discussing red-flag laws that should keep guns out of the hands of
those who display signs of mental illness, the piece later
sarcastically accused legislators who refuse to pass gun control
measures of “mental instability”:

These are the same lawmakers who (talk about a clear sign of mental
instability) defeated a measure this year that would merely have
specified that children aren’t allowed to carry guns around in
public. On firearms, these folks are immune to common sense and beyond
convincing.

The piece ended:

Fully 60% of Missourians favor the modest, rational step of keeping
guns from the mentally ill, according to a St. Louis University/YouGov
poll this year. Yet the only way they will ever achieve that
imperative is by sending a saner delegation to Jefferson City. Until
then, you’ll just have to keep an eye out for that unstable
neighbor.

The righteous call for stricter gun laws is obscured by the facetious
conflation of mental illness with violence, political corruption and
the need to be locked up. Statistically, the bigger reason to “keep
an eye out for that unstable neighbor” with a gun is because of the
risk of suicide—not mass violence.

Public stigma—including branding mentally ill people as
dangerous—leads to worsening symptoms and reduced likelihood of
receiving treatment. It can also lead to discrimination by employers,
the healthcare system and the law (American Psychiatric
Association, 8/20
[[link removed]]).

Locking people like Card in mental health facilities doesn’t
automatically cure them. And considering mentally ill people are far
more likely
[[link removed].] to
be the victims than the perpetrators of violence, it certainly does
not adequately address the mass shooting crisis in this country.

_Olivia Riggio is a journalist and FAIR author who became FAIR's
administrative and fundraising director in April 2021. You can follow
her on Twitter @oliviariggio97._

F_AIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging
corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. We work to invigorate
the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press
and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest,
minority and dissenting viewpoints. We expose neglected news stories
and defend working journalists when they are muzzled._

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TO REMAIN INDEPENDENT. DONATE
[[link removed]] TODAY TO BE A PART OF THIS
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]

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