Guns, mental health and the truth

Last weekend our nation woke up, not once but twice, to headlines about mass shootings. The horrific violence in El Paso and Dayton left 31 dead, dozens wounded, and a wave of grief in its wake.

Next came the flood of “thoughts and prayers” and the pundits who took to television and social media to ask: Why did this happen? Too often, mental illness is proffered as the answer.

As a mental health advocate, I welcome the opportunity to bring attention to the mental health crisis in our nation. But blaming mental illness as the sole reason for the recent horrific shootings is just plain wrong, as a ton of evidence shows. Experts like Arthur Evans, the chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association, have spoken out in recent days to say what advocates know: Most people with mental illness are not violent, they are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, and gun access — not mental illness — drives these tragedies.

A 2016 analysis of data from 171 countries by Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminologist, showed that a country’s rate of gun ownership is a better predictor of public mass shootings than mental illness.

And when mental illness is a factor, a study by scholars Grant Duwe and Michael Rocque shows that only onethird of those who have carried out mass shootings in the U.S. since 1900 had sought or received mental health care prior to the attack, highlighting a major treatment gap.

Mental illness respects no geographic boundaries, but only in America do we have so many mass murders. That’s largely because only in America do we have a proliferation of easily obtained firearms that are used by people to harm others and themselves.

If our nation is to heal, we must stop looking for scapegoats and acknowledge that we have a deeply rooted problem of racial hate, far too many guns on our streets, and, yes, not enough mental health services. We need real leadership to set a new tone on all these problems simultaneously. There have been

more than 250 mass shootings — meaning, incidents in which four or more people are shot — this year.

If we really want to help people with mental illness and reduce gun violence, we need to move away from idle threats about locking people away. We need to open more doors to mental health services and interventions rather than focus on the criminal justice system as a panacea for violence.

We must bring together an array of institutions, like schools, government, nonprofits, the health sector and the criminal justice system, to share information and craft creative policies to prevent and reduce all kinds of violence, from domestic violence to hate crimes to suicide.

To address some of the cases where mental illness is a contributing factor in violence, there are preventative steps we can take. By conducting universal background checks and supporting redflag laws, we can intervene or prevent someone in crisis from accessing a firearm. Redflag laws have been adopted by at least 17 states and the District of Columbia, including recently here in New York.

But to save as many lives as possible from gun violence, we have to be honest about it.

More people die from suicide by gun than in homicides, and the country’s suicide rate has steadily climbed in the last 20 years. The poor souls who complete suicide do not leave behind the fear of domestic terrorism, but their deaths still bring trauma and grief to their families and friends.

The fact is most people with mental health conditions are not violent. People with serious mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. As a nation, we need to stop blindly using mental illness to explain these tragedies and stop acting as if there is nothing we can do to stop the horror.

Let’s start working on all fronts. It’s a matter of life and death.

McCray is first lady of New York City.