Mental illness not to blame for gun violence study finds
UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS MEDICAL BRANCH AT GALVESTON
Counter to a lot of public opinion,
having a mental illness does not necessarily make a person more likely to
commit gun violence. According to a new study, a better indicator of gun violence was access to firearms.
A study by researchers at The
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston looked into the association
between gun violence and mental health in a group of 663 young adults in Texas.
Their results were published in the journal Preventive Medicine.
"Counter to public beliefs, the
majority of mental health symptoms examined were not related to gun
violence," said Dr. Yu Lu, a postdoctoral research fellow at UTMB and the
lead author of the study.
What researchers found instead was
that individuals who had gun access were approximately 18 times more likely to
have threatened someone with a gun. Individuals with high hostility were about
3.5 times more likely to threaten someone.
Each year, an estimated 75,000 to
100,000 Americans are injured by firearms and 30,000 to 40,000 die from
firearms, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
"Much of the limited research
on gun violence and mental illness has focused on violence among individuals
with severe mental illnesses or rates of mental illness among individuals
arrested for violent crimes," Lu said.
"What we found is that the link between mental illness and gun violence is not there."
"What we found is that the link between mental illness and gun violence is not there."
Lu and Dr. Jeff Temple, another
author of the study and a professor at UTMB, surveyed participants in a
long-term study about their firearm possession and use as well as about
anxiety, depression, stress, posttraumatic stress disorder, hostility,
impulsivity, borderline personality disorder, mental health treatment and other
demographic details.
The researchers found that
individuals who had access to guns, compared to those with no such access, were
over 18 times more likely to have threatened someone with a gun, even after
controlling for a number of demographic and mental health variables.
Meanwhile, most mental health symptoms were unrelated to gun violence.
Meanwhile, most mental health symptoms were unrelated to gun violence.
"Taking all this information
together, limiting access to guns, regardless of any other mental health
status, demographics or prior mental health treatments, is the key to reducing
gun violence," Temple said.
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This research was supported by
awards from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development and from the National Institute of Justice. The content is
solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the
official views of NICHD or NIJ.