Gun Violence and Mental Illness

With the alarming increase in mass shootings, the link between firearm violence and mental illness has increasingly generated both sensational headlines and serious inquiry. Gun Violence and Mental Illness looks beyond the inflammatory social and political rhetoric that all too often surrounds discussions of gun violence in the United States. This important, multidisciplinary volume presents evidence-based analyses and risk assessment strategies for mental health clinicians, trainees, and those interested in finding more effective interventions to decrease the costs of the serious public health problems of gun violence and mental illness. Leading mental health clinicians, public health researchers, and legal scholars address the many misconceptions regarding the relationship between mental illness and gun violence, misconceptions that all too often result in an inability to effectively address either issue. The authors draw on current research in mental health, public health, and public policy to explore novel interventions to decrease firearm morbidity and mortality and to improve access to mental health on individual and collective levels. Topics range from the intersection of psychiatry with mass shootings, the National Criminal Background Check System, and barriers to accessing mental health care, to the critically important subjects of firearms, suicide, and violence risk assessment. To decrease the devastating costs that gun violence and mental illness take on individuals, families, communities, and society, we must improve our understanding of these problems and of the barriers that prevent us from taking effective action. Gun Violence and Mental Illness separates fact from fiction, presenting an apolitical, balanced, rigorous, and timely examination of the intersection between gun violence and mental health.