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Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence

This article outlines a four-part strategy for future research in mental health and complementary disciplines that will broaden understanding of mass shootings and multi-victim gun homicides. First, researchers must abandon the starting assumption that acts of mass violence are driven primarily by d...

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Autores principales: Metzl, Jonathan M., Piemonte, Jennifer, McKay, Tara
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7803479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33417376
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000280
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author Metzl, Jonathan M.
Piemonte, Jennifer
McKay, Tara
author_facet Metzl, Jonathan M.
Piemonte, Jennifer
McKay, Tara
author_sort Metzl, Jonathan M.
collection PubMed
description This article outlines a four-part strategy for future research in mental health and complementary disciplines that will broaden understanding of mass shootings and multi-victim gun homicides. First, researchers must abandon the starting assumption that acts of mass violence are driven primarily by diagnosable psychopathology in isolated “lone wolf” individuals. The destructive motivations must be situated, instead, within larger social structures and cultural scripts. Second, mental health professionals and scholars must carefully scrutinize any apparent correlation of violence with mental illness for evidence of racial bias in the official systems that define, measure, and record psychiatric diagnoses, as well as those that enforce laws and impose criminal justice sanctions. Third, to better understand the role of firearm access in the occurrence and lethality of mass shootings, research should be guided by an overarching framework that incorporates social, cultural, legal, and political, but also psychological, aspects of private gun ownership in the United States. Fourth, effective policies and interventions to reduce the incidence of mass shootings over time—and to prevent serious acts of violence more generally—will require an expanded body of well-funded interdisciplinary research that is informed and implemented through the sustained engagement of researchers with affected communities and other stakeholders in gun violence prevention. Emerging evidence that the coronavirus pandemic has produced a sharp increase both in civilian gun sales and in the social and psychological determinants of injurious behavior adds special urgency to this agenda.
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spelling pubmed-78034792021-01-27 Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence Metzl, Jonathan M. Piemonte, Jennifer McKay, Tara Harv Rev Psychiatry Perspectives This article outlines a four-part strategy for future research in mental health and complementary disciplines that will broaden understanding of mass shootings and multi-victim gun homicides. First, researchers must abandon the starting assumption that acts of mass violence are driven primarily by diagnosable psychopathology in isolated “lone wolf” individuals. The destructive motivations must be situated, instead, within larger social structures and cultural scripts. Second, mental health professionals and scholars must carefully scrutinize any apparent correlation of violence with mental illness for evidence of racial bias in the official systems that define, measure, and record psychiatric diagnoses, as well as those that enforce laws and impose criminal justice sanctions. Third, to better understand the role of firearm access in the occurrence and lethality of mass shootings, research should be guided by an overarching framework that incorporates social, cultural, legal, and political, but also psychological, aspects of private gun ownership in the United States. Fourth, effective policies and interventions to reduce the incidence of mass shootings over time—and to prevent serious acts of violence more generally—will require an expanded body of well-funded interdisciplinary research that is informed and implemented through the sustained engagement of researchers with affected communities and other stakeholders in gun violence prevention. Emerging evidence that the coronavirus pandemic has produced a sharp increase both in civilian gun sales and in the social and psychological determinants of injurious behavior adds special urgency to this agenda. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 2021 2021-01-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7803479/ /pubmed/33417376 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000280 Text en Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) , where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.
spellingShingle Perspectives
Metzl, Jonathan M.
Piemonte, Jennifer
McKay, Tara
Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence
title Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence
title_full Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence
title_fullStr Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence
title_full_unstemmed Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence
title_short Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Future of Psychiatric Research into American Gun Violence
title_sort mental illness, mass shootings, and the future of psychiatric research into american gun violence
topic Perspectives
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7803479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33417376
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000280
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