The APA takes on the NRA - People with psychiatric disorders are not more violent than general population

From the American Psychiatric Association:

APA is responding once again to mischaracterization of people with mental illness within the context of the current debate on firearms.

In a recent interview on NPR’s "Weekend Edition," David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association, spoke about mental illness as it relates to crime, saying “…we destroyed our mental health care system.... There are more people in our prisons who have been diagnosed as severely mentally ill than in all the public and private mental health facilities in that state. And it's those people … who are slipping into that state that we really need to deal with.”

In a letter to Rachel Martin, host of NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday," APA President Dilip Jeste, M.D., wrote: "While it is an unfortunate truth that there is a serious need for better mental health care in America, and many with mental illness end up in prison, Mr. Keene’s insinuation that the mentally ill pose a greater risk of violence than the general population is just plain wrong. More than 90 percent of violent acts are committed by people without a mental illness, and a majority of the mentally ill people in prison are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. Mentally ill individuals are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

In the current debate on reducing gun-related violence, one should not make people with serious mental illnesses a convenient target of attack." Jeste called on Martin to help end the stigma against people with mental illness by acknowledging his letter on the air "in order to give hope to the nearly one-fifth of your listenership who struggle every day with a mental illness."

Editor's note: As a practicing Psychiatric Social Worker for 45 years, I can attest from my professional experience as well as the research I have read that people with psychiatric illness are no more dangerous than people in the general population, maybe even less so, because they have sought out and received treatment for their illness. Further stigmatizing people with psychiatric illness does us a disservice as a nation and makes the problem worse not better if it leads to people needing help being afraid of seeking it. Unfortunately, the mental health center which I helped start in Brockport in 1980 was closed after 25 years in 2005 by Unity Health System because of a lack of funding. This has made it much more difficult for people needing and wanting help for psychiatric problems in the Brockport area to obtain it.