Mental health has been a strong component of the national discussion about gun violence for decades. In recent years, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., recently chosen to lead the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services in the new Trump administration, has embraced unsupported claims that antidepressant use leads to mass shootings. But according to experts, connecting mental health to the perpetration of gun violence — whether it’s homicide or suicide, which is more common — is problematic.
“Our ability to predict whether somebody dies by suicide is barely better than chance, and that’s barely gotten better in decades of research and practice,” said Daniel Semenza, PhD, director of interpersonal violence research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University.
While some data may suggest a majority of people who die by any method of suicide could have an undocumented mental illness, the predictive ability of that data is not a sure bet, Semenza said.
“It’s just not a good predictor of whether somebody is going to die by their own hand, and it’s an even more difficult predictor of [homicide],” he said. “A person with a mental illness is far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator of a violent crime.”
Nonetheless, media coverage of mass shootings often includes a discussion of whether the perpetrator was struggling with mental illness, and in some cases, evidence that the person was not getting the help they needed, Semenza said. In cases where a person is expressing an intent to harm themselves or others, it’s essential to ensure that individual is provided with the resources to remove those threats, he said.