The belief that persons with
mental illness are dangerous is a significant factor in the development of
stigma and discrimination. This link is often promoted by the news media and
entertainment; in a survey for the Screen Actors’ Guild, characters in prime
time television portrayed as having a mental illness are depicted as the most
dangerous of all demographic groups: 60 percent were shown to be involved in
crime or violence (Mental Health America, 1999). The majority of news
stories regarding mental illness tend to either focus on people who have
committed a crime who happen to have a mental disorder.
The result is that most Americans
believe that people suffering from mental illnesses are dangerous. The majority
of people in the United States believe that people with a mental illness pose a
threat of violence towards other people (Pescosolido et al., 1999). In reality, however, people
have little reason to worry. The American Psychiatric Association claims that
most perpetrators of violent crime do not have any mental illness, and those
with mental illness are over twice as likely to be a victim of a violent crime than those without; in fact, one in four
people in America with a mental illness experience violence each year (Shapiro,
2014). Even so, there are countless articles and blogs like this one that call
for the mentally ill to essentially be rounded up and institutionalized in the
name of “preventing violence.”
Still, high profile crimes such as mass shootings seem
to always bring up the issue of mentally ill people having access to guns,
regardless of whether or not the shooter actually had a mental illness. In response to the Sandy Hook shootings (the
shooter, Adam Lanza, was never diagnosed with a mental disorder), New York
passed the Safe Act in 2013, which mandated that mental-health professionals file
reports on patients “likely to engage in conduct that would result in harm to
self or others”; those patients, who now number more than 38,000, have been
cross-checked against lists of registered gun owners. Those who have been
labeled as being “at-risk” and own a gun have had them seized and have been
prevented from buying new ones.
Opponents to the Safe Act argue that the law is just another form of
stigma related to mental illnesses. In a 2001 study that looked at 34 mass
murderers, only 1 out of 4 had a history of mental illness (Beckett, 2014). In
contrast, it was found that over half had a documented history of violence.
Jeffrey Swanson, a psychology professor at Duke, states that if he had it his
way, gun prohibitions would not be based upon mental history, but violent
history. As Swanson stated, “Any history of violent behavior is a much stronger
predictor of future violence than mental health diagnoses…People with mental
illnesses are still people, and people aren’t all one thing or another.”
