Congress bans the CDC from doing study on gun violence

[Faith No More]

You guys and your talk about mental illness shows that you've been snowed by the media and Hollywood, and you're applying a negative stereotype that is not based in reality to a subset of the population.

Facts About Mental Illness and Violence

Fact 1: The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent.

Here is what researchers say about the link between mental illness and violence:

- "Although studies suggest a link between mental illnesses and violence, the contribution of people with mental illnesses to overall rates of violence is small, and further, the magnitude of the relationship is greatly exaggerated in the minds of the general population (Institute of Medicine, 2006)."

- "…the vast majority of people who are violent do not suffer from mental illnesses (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)."

- "The absolute risk of violence among the mentally ill as a group is very small. . . only a small proportion of the violence in our society can be attributed to persons who are mentally ill (Mulvey, 1994)."

-"People with psychiatric disabilities are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime (Appleby, et al., 2001). People with severe mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychosis, are 2 ½ times more likely to be attacked, raped or mugged than the general population (Hiday, et al.,1999)."

http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php

Fact: The vast majority of people with mental health problems are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Most people with mental illness are not violent and only 3%-5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. You probably know someone with a mental health problem and don't even realize it, because many people with mental health problems are highly active and productive members of our communities.

http://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/myths-facts/

Now, some of these mass shooters may have a higher rate of mental illness than the general population, but the idea that our gun violence problem has anything to do with mental illness is absurd and fails to take into account that the lack of empathy combined with the me!-me!-me! mentality permeating through all of our culture is leading us to detach ourselves from the suffering of others.

So please, let's stop laying the blame on the mentally ill.  People without mental issues are quite frequently more than happy to kill others, too. There enough misconceptions about mental illness floating around out there, so let's stop contributing to this one.