Washington – Doctors Blast Trump’s Mental Illness Focus To Fight Violence

    8

    FILE - In a Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018 file photo, students hold their hands in the air as they are evacuated by police from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla, after a shooter opened fire on the campus. Frustration is mounting in the medical community as the Trump administration again points to mental illness in response to yet another mass shooting. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP, File)Washington – Frustration is mounting in the medical community as the Trump administration again points to mental illness in response to yet another mass shooting.

    Join our WhatsApp group

    Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email


    “The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense,” said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago’s Rush University Medical College. “The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness.”

    Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old charged with killing 17 people on Valentine’s Day at his former high school in Parkland, Florida has been described by students as a loner with troubling behavior who had been kicked out of school. His mother recently died and Cruz had been staying with family friends.

    Since the shooting, his mental health has been the focus of President Donald Trump’s comments. And on a Thursday call with reporters, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration is committed to addressing serious mental illness and that his agency “will be laser-focused on this issue in the days, weeks, and months to come.”

    Mental health professionals welcome more resources and attention, but they say the administration is ignoring the real problem — easy access to guns, particularly the kind of high-powered highly lethal assault weapons used in many of the most recent mass shootings.

    “Even for those who manage to survive gun violence involving these weapons, the severity and lasting impact of their wounds, disabilities and treatment leads to devastating consequences,” American Medical Association President David Barbe wrote in an online column after the shooting.

    “We are not talking about Second Amendment rights or restricting your ability to own a firearm. We are talking about a public health crisis that our Congress has failed to address. This must end,” Barbe wrote.

    Better access to mental health care, including for those who might be prone to violence, is important, but “to blame this all just on mental illness is not sufficient,” he said in an interview Friday.

    The AMA has supported efforts to boost gun violence research, ban assault weapons and to restrict access to automatic weapons. Barbe wrote in his column that federally funded research is crucial to address an “urgent health crisis.”

    Under gun industry pressure, U.S. government research on firearm violence has been limited for decades.

    The American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and four other medical associations issued a joint statement Friday urging comprehensive action by Trump and Congress, including labeling gun violence a national public health epidemic.

    The groups’ recommendations include limits on high-powered, rapid-fire weapons designed to kill and funding gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    According to the CDC, there were about 38,000 U.S. gun deaths in 2016, slightly more than the number of people who died in car crashes.

    “The families of the victims in Parkland and all those whose lives have been impacted by daily acts of gun violence deserve more than our thoughts and prayers. They need action from the highest levels of our government to stop this epidemic of gun violence now,” the groups said in a statement.

    The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Osteopathic Association contributed to the statement.

    White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Sunday that Trump is working with senators on a bill designed to improve criminal background checks. “While discussions are ongoing and revisions are being considered, the President is supportive of efforts to improve the Federal background check system,” she said.

    Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, a Trump ally, said he had discussed with Trump and GOP leaders how to restrict gun access to the mentally ill.

    Federal and state laws already attempt to do this, in many cases with a ban on gun ownership for people who have been treated in mental institutions.

    Kraus noted that a year ago Trump rolled back an Obama-era law that aimed to prevent certain mentally ill people from buying guns. But he suggested that is beside the point.

    “There’s a great naivete to what the president and the governor are proposing,” Kraus said. A history of violent behavior, alcohol and substance use, and previous criminal behavior are all more pertinent factors to consider.

    Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of a violence prevention research program at the University of California, Davis, said gun violence restraining order laws in California and Washington are “a much more focused approach.” The laws allow courts to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose threats to themselves or others.

    “Florida has no such mechanism. Could have prevented this one; there was plenty of advance notice,” Wintemute said.


    Listen to the VINnews podcast on:

    iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podbean | Amazon

    Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates


    Connect with VINnews

    Join our WhatsApp group


    8 Comments
    Most Voted
    Newest Oldest
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    JCSHOULSON
    JCSHOULSON
    6 years ago

    Here are some key findings from the CDC report, “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” released in June:

    1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
    “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

    2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
    “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

    3. Mass shootings and accidental firearm deaths account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths, and both are declining:
    “The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths.

    JCSHOULSON
    JCSHOULSON
    6 years ago

    Part 2:
    there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” The report also notes, “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

    4. “Interventions” (i.e, gun control) such as background checks, so-called assault rifle bans and gun-free zones produce “mixed” results:
    “Whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue.” The report could not conclude whether “passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.”

    5. Gun buyback/turn-in programs are “ineffective” in reducing crime:
    “There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-

    walkinsilence
    walkinsilence
    6 years ago

    Both The President & Dr. Louis Kraus are wrong. A “single-cause” approach will give the same results as the “war on drugs”.
    Many countries have easily available guns and many persons with “Mental Illness”
    but do not have school massacres or Las Vegas-style wholesale shootings.
    There are many competent Criminologists and many capable “Agents” who could produce positive approaches to limiting such incidents.
    Get the Agencies out of politics and get The President out of the mental health arena and we might see progress.

    6 years ago

    Note the source of this article – the Associated Press which is part of the mainstream media fake news propaganda cabal. Also note the three leading trade organizations mentioned that are blaming guns and essentially stating that the 2nd amendment is a public health menace – The A.M.A. A.P.A. and the A.A.P.. This is a propaganda piece with two objectives. 1. to keep the focus off the role of vaccine induced neurological damage,Autism, and the role of psychotropic drugs in school shootings and other violence by blaming guns – similar to how the sugar industry successfully convinced everyone that fat was the villain and not sugar. 2. to further weaken public support for the second amendment. Some of us are old enough to remember that the phenomenon of the school shootings is new essentially starting with Columbine in 1998. Although some would like to blame the culture and Hollywood movie violence, there was plenty of violence in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s, and no school shootings. The two obvious environmental factors that changed in the 90s were the use of medical psychotropics in children and teens and the slew of new vaccines that were being given to children and teens.

    BoruchH
    BoruchH
    6 years ago

    The problem in America is moral decline they took G-d out of the schools the seven noahide laws now.
    At least a moment of silence now.
    Let us civilize America

    lazy-boy
    Active Member
    lazy-boy
    6 years ago

    Why does VIN have to go along with fake news?

    Since when is Trump mentally ill? He may not be the suave speaker that Obama is, but he is not a turn coat and liar like Obama either.