Tuesday’s editorial page of the New York Times (December 15th) asked that we—please—not blame mental illness for gun violence in the country. The Times has been speaking rather forcefully on the subject of gun violence as of late, calling it a “moral outrage” and a “national disgrace” in a front-page editorial of the paper about two weeks ago … the first time the paper ran an editorial on its front page in 95 years.
The editorial noted that:
“Blaming mental health problems for gun violence in America gives the public the false impression that most people with mental illness are dangerous, when in fact a vast majority will never commit violence. Still, some legal changes should be made to reduce access to firearms among the small percentage of people with mental illness who are dangerous to themselves or others.”
The Times also referenced empirical studies which show that mass shootings are a small number of all shootings, and a very small percentage of people with mental illness committed homicide by gun.
While it’s great that the paper is speaking out on this issue (something many news organizations have woefully failed at), what the Times is not mentioning in its analysis is also very revealing: While those who have mental illness may not be behind the majority of mass shootings, they are certainly dying at the hands of police officers. Persons with mental illness are 16 times more likely to die by cops than by non-law enforcement personnel are people without mental illness. Time magazine cites a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center that reports “a minimum of 1 in 4 fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness.”
Monday, Jan 4, 2016 · 2:19:23 PM +00:00
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Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Originally, this post stated that “ a mentally ill person is 16 times more likely to be killed by a cop than by a non-cop.” It should have stated that “a mentally ill person is 16 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a non-mentally ill person is likely to be killed by a cop.”
The post has been corrected with the original wording struck through.
Read one of the key areas identified in the executive summary as one of the barriers to effective resolution of this problem:
“ … in a data- and cost-driven world – making the case to invest in any solution requires reliable data about the scope and nature of the problem to be addressed. Reliable data about fatal law enforcement encounters in general do not exist, much less data about the role of mental illness in them.
Here’s why:
“More than a half-dozen federal databases tasked with tracking and/or reporting the number of fatal law enforcement encounters in the U.S. have been developed in recent decades, but not one exists that produces complete and reliable statistics. Underreporting is so endemic that one audit of the government’s efforts concluded “the current data collection process results in a significant underestimation and potentially a biased picture of arrest-related deaths in the United States.” We can learn the average prenatal litter size of a feral cat in America but not the number of civilians killed during encounters with law enforcement.”
Gun violence, seemingly unfettered access to guns, and murder by police are all public health hazards that need to be addressed cohesively and comprehensively. The most vulnerable of our communities deserve that much. Don’t they?
The executive summary and a pdf of the study entitled “Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters,” are available here.