U.S. considers project examining mental health, violence

The White House has been briefed on a proposal to develop a way to identify early signs of changes in people with mental illness that could lead to violent behavior.

Supporters see the plan as a way President Donald Trump could move the ball forward on gun control following recent mass shootings as efforts seem to be flagging to impose harsher restrictions like background checks on gun purchases.

The proposal is part a larger initiative to establish a new agency called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency or HARPA, which would sit inside the Health and Human Services Department. Its director would be appointed by the president and the agency would have a separate budget, according to three sources with knowledge of conversations around the plan.

HARPA would be modeled on DARPA, the highly successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that serves as the research arm of the Pentagon and collaborates with other federal agencies, the private sector and academia.

The concept was advanced by the Suzanne Wright Foundation, and was first discussed by officials on the Domestic Policy Council and senior White House staffers in June 2017. But the idea has gained momentum in the wake of the latest mass shootings that killed 31 people in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio.

The Suzanne Wright Foundation approached the administration last week, and proposed that HARPA include a “Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes” — project. Officials discussed the proposal at the White House last week, said two people familiar with the discussions.

The attempt to use volunteer data to identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act” would be a four — year project costing an estimated $40 million to $60 million, according to Dr. Geoffrey Ling, the lead scientific adviser on HARPA and a founding director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office.

“Everybody would be a volunteer,” Ling said. “We’re not inventing new science here. We’re analyzing it so we can develop new approaches.”

But there are plenty of researchers and mental health experts who believe that mental health and gun violence aren’t necessarily linked.

Mental illness can sometimes be a factor in such violent acts, experts say, but it is rarely a predictor — most studies show that no more than a quarter of mass shooters have a diagnosed mental illness. More commonly shared attributes of mass shooters include a strong sense of resentment, desire for notoriety, obsession with other shooters, a history of domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

Trump said he might support background checks for all gun purchases and “red flag” laws to deny guns to those deemed a hazard to themselves or others. But Trump on Tuesday called universal background checks off the table in a conversation with the head of the National Rifle Association, though he later denied saying that. The president has said he thinks mentally ill people are primarily responsible for the spate of mass shootings in the United States. And this proposal is likely to be welcomed by Republicans and gun rights activists who have argued the same thing.

“We’re looking at the whole gun situation,” Trump said last week. “I do want people to remember the words ‘mental illness.’ These people are mentally ill . ... I think we have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the ’60s and ’70s, so many of these institutions were closed.”