Editorial in response to Gun Violence letter from Dean Mondros, March 26
Julie Burroughs Erdman, MSW candidate, 2021
she/her/hers
While I am grateful for the optimistic tone of the letter from Dean Mondros on March 26 and agree that social workers have the ability to intervene at a preventative level with individuals who may be troubled by traumas they may have endured, or who struggle with violent thoughts, I feel compelled to raise my second point--that to use the term, "mental illness", as was done in the letter, in connection with mass shootings is misleading and may feed biases towards people diagnosed with major mental health disorders (Metzl & MacLeish, 2015; Mental Health.gov, 2017).
Conglomerative research showed that people diagnosed with serious mental illness are responsible for fewer than 5% of violent crime in the United States (Applebaum, 2006; Metzl & MacLeish, 2015). According to a report by Mental Health.gov, (2017), people identified as having a serious mental illness are at least 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population, in contrast to the presumption that they are perpetrators of violence.
Processing the mass shootings that took place last week, and the numerous that came before, was a topic of discussion in a couple of my classes. The topic of mental illness as a genesis of mass shooting was pondered by some, to which I responded by self-identifying as one who has a mental health diagnosis, as I have shared contextually in many, if not most, of my classes. I have also found that I am not in any way alone. I believe that, by my example and others, that the School of Social Welfare readily accepts qualified candidates of all abilities, but I also recall moments when stigmas about people with mental health conditions have infused classroom conversations.
The term, "serious mental illness" has devolved into a deterministic label of hierarchical disability that is fundamentally flawed, obscuring the fact that countless numbers of people diagnosed with major mental health disorders do recover. And infinitesimally few are responsible for the proliferation of mass shooting. Disparities in recovery have more to do with social capital--whiteness and wealth--than severity of illness. Far more people who experience emotional distress are killed by law enforcement than commit acts of violence, a fact unexplored in virtually all of my classes.
The Dean's commitment to social justice is an example for all of us, and I greatly admire the professors who have taught me so much. I ask only that researched evidence dispelling myths of mental illness have a greater presence in the classroom and appear with greater frequency in the syllabi. The modern mental health recovery movement is a social justice movement worthy of more mention.
Applebaum, P.S. (2006). Violence and mental disorders: data and public policy. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163(8), 1319-1321. DOI: 10.1176/ajp.
Mental Health.gov. (2017). Mental health myths and facts. https://www.mentalhealth.gov/
Metzl, J. & MacLeish, K. (2015). Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms. American Journal of Public Health, 105(2). 240-249. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
