Thanks for the link! IMO, it reinforces that our health care system, including access to quality, needed mental health care, is woefully inadequate.
It also proves, imo, we need to do more to restrict access to lethal firepower. The article’s data reflects a similar recommendation.
One thing the article suggests is universal background checks.
HERE IS THE CONTEXT from that story:
“According to our research, only one-third of the people who have committed mass shootings in the U.S. since 1900 had sought or received mental health care prior to their attacks, which suggests that most shooters did not seek or receive care they may have needed.
“This treatment gap is underscored by evidence showing that the U.S. has higher rates of untreated serious mental illness than most other Western countries. Additional research shows that the gap is even larger for males, who have committed 99% of the country's mass public shootings.
“Although the link between mass shootings and mental illness has only recently gained widespread recognition, the correlation itself is longstanding. Indeed, we see it in some of the earliest such shootings in the U.S. Gilbert Twigg, who opened fire on a concert crowd in Winfield, Kan., in 1903, killing nine, had displayed signs of paranoia beforehand. Howard Unruh, who shot and killed 13 people in Camden, N.J., in 1949, was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. (Both were also Army veterans who had seen combat.)
“One of the primary reasons some are reluctant to establish the link between mass shootings and mental illness is a fear that it will lead to the stigmatization of such disorders. This concern is valid.
“The vast majority of people with mental disorders are not violent, after all.”
(snip)
“Conversely, some have insisted — wrongly, in our opinion — that mass public shootings are strictly a mental health problem rather than a gun problem. They, too, are on the wrong side of the evidence.
“It's possible for mass public shootings to be both a gun problem and a mental health problem.
“Increasing access to mental health care may reduce mass public shootings. But while such events are more commonplace than they should be, the reality may be that they're still too rare to develop and implement policies that reduce their incidence or severity specifically.
“Policymakers should therefore focus on strategies that have shown promise in reducing gun violence in general, like a federal universal background check.”
^^^^ THESE FOUR PARAGRAPHS ^^^^