Posted on 01/04/2017 5:26:23 AM PST by tired&retired
Perhaps never before has an objective, evidence-based review of the intersection between gun violence and mental illness been more sorely needed or more timely.
Gun Violence and Mental Illness, written by a multidisciplinary roster of authors who are leaders in the fields of mental health, public health, and public policy, is a practical guide to the issues surrounding the relation between firearms deaths and mental illness.
Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides. This book is an apolitical exploration of the misperceptions and realities that attend gun violence and mental illness. The authors frame both pressing social issues as public health problems subject to a variety of interventions on individual and collective levels, including utilization of a novel perspective: evidence-based interventions focusing on assessments and indicators of dangerousness, with or without indications of mental illness.
Reader-friendly, well-structured, and accessible to professional and lay audiences, the book:
Reviews the epidemiology of gun violence and its relationship to mental illness, exploring what we know about those who perpetrate mass shootings and school shootings.
Examines the current legal provisions for prohibiting access to firearms for those with mental illness and whether these provisions and new mandated reporting interventions are effective or whether they reinforce negative stereotypes associated with mental illness. Discusses the issues raised in accessing mental health treatment in regard to diminished treatment resources, barriers to access, and involuntary commitment. Explores novel interventions for addressing these issues from a multilevel and multidisciplinary public health perspective that does not stigmatize people with mental illness. This includes reviews of suicide risk assessment, increasing treatment engagement, legal, social, and psychiatric means of restricting access to firearms when people are in crisis, and, when appropriate, restoration of firearm rights.
Mental health clinicians and trainees will especially appreciate the risk assessment strategies presented here, and mental health, public health, and public policy researchers will find Gun Violence and Mental Illness a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume that eschews sensationalism and embraces serious scholarship.
And this is where I usually take leave of any semblance of rational consideration for the argument.
It is the strength and validity of the thesis that should prevail, not the so-called credentials of the "illustrious" authors.
I stop reading at the title “Gun Violence”. Inanimate objects are not violent.
I would argue that someone attempting (or succeeding at) suicide does in fact have some form of mental illness. Unless faced with a terminal illness there appears to be no rational way to justify taking one's own life.
Reviews the epidemiology of gun violence and its relationship to mental illness, exploring what we know about those who perpetrate mass shootings and school shootings.
If someone thinks shooting/killing a bunch of innocent people is a viable option - they are nuts. Might not be the technical term for it, but no sane, rational person is going to decide a mass killing is a good thing.
Self-defeating phrases ignore that suicide IS a result of mental illness, as it reflects an inability to cope.
“Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides.”
This is a poor attempt to blame guns and exempt the Mental Health community from any responsibility to warn and inform.
If you can’t be trusted to be armed, you should not be running around loose.
The intelligence of a committee is inversely proportional to the number of it’s members.
“Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides.”
Ok, so 65% of firearms deaths are suicides but it is a mistaken belief that people with mental illness are responsible for much of the gun violence. Sounds contradictory to me.
>>I would argue that someone attempting (or succeeding at) suicide does in fact have some form of mental illness.<<
I feel the same way about abortions.
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