Sit the right strategy of unlocking assessed observed and continued of important facts about mental illness and violence that I wanted to bring some of them to the website. What follows the next few vignettes are some of Dr. Applebaum's points, blended with other information and a few of own observations. Mental Illness and Violence First, When one considers what portion of the general population has significant mental illness Among people who have significant mental illness, less than 20% of the violence that they commit is attributable to their mental disorder the aggregate violence by mental patients looks the same as violence by people the general population. The rates, kinds of victims, demographics, rationales for the acts, etc., are very similar. One important consideration is substance abuse Mental health professionals often view substance abuse as a clinical diagnosis and or a part of some patients' syndromes; the above statistics do not. As it turns out, intoxication and drug seeking affect violence statistics for the general population and persons with mental disorders the same way: diagnosed people and general population people commit more violence when alcohol or other drugs are involved. There are two primary kinds of multiple murders: those associated with workplace violence and those associated with family violence. About 50% of such tragedies are attributable to diagnosable mental illness some significant way. School shootings involve mental illness not all cases, but it is important to remember that, spite of their enormous publicity, they are extremely rare and a portion of U.S. killings overall Government Controls and Government Reporting Related to Psychiatric Patients and Firearms New 's very large, very comprehensive, and very unwieldy SAFE Act requires that all firearms sales and transfers, public or private, go through a federally licensed firearms dealer. That dealer must do the federally-required background check of the purchasrr or recipient. New also requires all health or mental heal professionals who evaluate or treat a suicidal or homocidal person to report that person, by name, to the NY Office of Mental website. Reporting is mandatory, though there are provisions that indemnify clinicians for good reporting or decisions that a patient is not eligible for reporting. The names reported to OMH are checked against the names of persons who own licensed handguns or assault weapons after which any matched names are forwarded to a law enforcement agency the person's community. What law enforcement does with the information is up to each agancy but, as Dr. Applebaum points out, such a procedure is rife with opportunity for discrimination and heavy-handed government control. addition, it interferes substantially with access to menatl health care, and with clinicians' efforts to help people with psychiatric disorders. Physicians licensed Illinois know that a 2014 new statute regarding concealed of handguns contains a draconian requirement that physicians and others must report patients who they determine present a clear and present danger to themselves or others, or are simply developmentally disabled or intellectually disabled. Indiana has a new statute that allows police to confiscate any form of firearms from people they deem a threat to themselves or others. The intent is apparently to allow law enforcement personnel who encounter high risk of domestic violence or suicide to temporarily remove the guns and decrease the risk of serious injury or death. Should Psychiatrists, Other Clinicians, Mental Organizations, and Advocacy Groups Use Multiple-Killing Tragedies Their Pleas for Better Funding? spite of the apparent opportunity to advocate for better mental health services, it is counterproductive to use such tragedies as the shootings at Newtown, CT; Columbine, CO; Ft. Hood, TX; and CO as examples to justify better funding and better mental health laws. To do enhances the media's marked misconstruing of both the role of mental illness U.S. violence and the incidence of violence among the mentally ill Short-term gains funding, if they come, from riding a groundswell of misguided impressions could well be at the cost of increased, unfair stigmatization of enormous group of people whom we have worked hard to better understand, help, and de-stigmatize for over a century. Women Found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity Ferranti recently published a survey of perpetrator gender differences among homicides committed by persons found not guilty by reason of insanity They compared 47 female NGRI acquitees to 47 male ones, all committed to psychiatric hospitals following the NGRI finding. The authors note that although women are traditionally considered less aggressive than men, those with severe mental illness have similar violence potential Women who commit violent crime are violating social and psychological norms to a much higher extent that their male counterparts. The most striking difference between the male and female groups was the ages of their victims. Forty-four percent of the women's victims were infants or children under 18, and 26% were infants under a year old. All of the men's victims this sample were adults. Three-quarters of the males' victims were outside the perpetrators' families, compared to ouly about a third of the females' victims Axis I mental illness differed to some extent, with men twice as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and or substance abuse and women more likely to have a significant mood disorder, but the overall presence of psychosis appeared about the same. Women