Mental Health the truth about mental health & gun Violence

By daniel Gillison, Jr

Every time we experience a tragedy involving guns, people with mental illness are drawn into the conversation. The truth is that the vast majority of violence is not perpetrated by people with mental illness

Whenever we hear about another tragedy involving gun violence, we grieve along with our fellow citizens and community members impacted by it.

NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) sees gun violence as a national public health crisis that impacts everyone.

Every time we experience a tragedy involving guns, people with mental illness are drawn into the conversation. The truth is that the vast majority of violence is not perpetrated by people with mental illness. Statements to the contrary only serve to perpetuate stigma and distract from the real issues. Far too often, we hear stigmatizing comments and generalizations about people with mental illness being violent, which simply isn't true. This kind of misinformation comes as a punch in the gut to those of our family and community members living with mental health conditions.

The overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent Most people with mental health conditions will never become violent, and mental illness does not cause most gun violence. In fact, studies show that mental illness contributes to only about 4% of all violence, and the contribution to gun violence is even lower

Research shows an increased risk of gun violence comes from a history of violence, including domestic violence; use of alcohol or illegal drugs; being young and male; and/or a personal history of physical or sexual abuse or trauma. Mental illness alone is not a predictor of violence. We need to be careful that the response to these tragedies does not discourage people with mental health conditions from seeking treatment. Stigma far too often prevents people from getting the help they so desperately need. "When people unfairly connect mass shooters with mental illness, it stigmatizes the millions of people living with mental health struggles who are not violent," said NAMI's National Director of Advocacy and Public Policy, Kimball Angela

While the relationship between mental illness and gun violence is very low, we need reasonable options. This includes making it possible for law enforcement to act on credible community and family concerns in circumstances where people are at highrisk

Hate Is Not A Mental Illness

Let's be clear: It is incorrect and harmful to link mental illness with gun violence.

Blaming mental illness for gun violence only serves to further stigmatize and discriminate against people with mental health conditions - who are more often the victims of violence than the cause of violence - and further distracts from the real issues at hand in addressing this national crisis.

Radicalism is not a mental illness

Terrorism is not a mental illness. Hate is not a mental illness.

There is no reliable psychiatric cure for angry, often young, men with access to guns who are committed to perpetrating violence (according to the Washington Post, 98% of mass shooters are men and almost half are between the ages of 18 and 29). The mental health system cannot prevent mass shootings because mental illness is not the problem

The Real Issues At Hand

We have to stop using mental illness as a scapegoat and instead focus on evidence-based risk factors for gun violence, like impulsivity and a history of violence.

Mental health conditions are common around the globe, yet no other country comes close to the level of gun violence our country experiences. According to the CDC, firearms have now surpassed car accidents as the No 1 killer of children and adolescents It defies not just statistics, but also common sense, to keep placing the blame for this uniquely American problem elsewhere.

We have to address the real issues at hand - such as the fact that it's easier in our country to get a gun than to get mental health care, and the unfortunate reality that self-directed gun violence is fueling our nation's suicide epidemic: The majority of firearm deaths each year are suicides, and firearms are the most common method used for suicide.

We need to have an honest and productive national conversation about all the factors that play into this type of violence and what we can do to prevent these tragedies. Only then can we find meaningful solutions to protecting our children and communities.

Coping With Vicarious Trauma

In the aftermath of traumatic events like school shootings, the gaps in our current systems of mental health care are further amplified.

According to Texas State Sen Roland Gutierrez , there is only one psychiatrist for all of Uvalde. A lack of providers in rural areas like Uvalde has always been a huge issue, but in the aftermath of tragedy, these disparities in access to mental health care become even more devastating as communities grapple with the lack of providers to address trauma.

Investing in our mental health resources as a nation is more important now than ever - not because doing so is the overriding solution to preventing gun violence, but because the trauma of gun violence is far-rreaching

On an individual level, we must commit to our own self-care and seek support as we try to cope with the vicarious trauma spurred on by the constant news coverage of these terrible tragedies. We must commit to checking in with the people around us, who may be struggling in ways far beyond what we could ever imagine. We must commit to hope where there are feelings of helplessness, love where there is hate, and action where there is apathy

The time for meaningful change is long overdue. Lack of action by legislators is literally killing us.

Daniel H. Gillison, Jr. is the chief executive officer of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Also contributing NAMI California Advocacy & Public Policy

By Patrick Neustatter, MD

In March, Open AI unveiled it's latest, improved, version, GPT-4 4furthering anxiety among us doctors that patients will be consulting with computers, bots and AI, and not needing our professional services.

Artificial intelligence is far superior to the human brain (even that of doctors) in its ability to retain and review information. This makes it ideal for that detective like function doctors perform of diagnosing. Looking at your symptoms and solving the mystery.

It is less likely to have brain farts like doctors do, who, for example, are famous for overlooking obscure but serious conditions like abdominal aortic aneurisms or pulmonary emboli.

What people have reservations about is that some bot won't be good at empathizing - though a study of 200 medical questions posted on Reddit that were answered by doctors and by ChatGPT found that "our panel of health care professionals preferred ChatGPT four to one over physicians."

Technological Inroads - And Reservations

We have seen IT making a lot of inroads in the practice of medicine already.

Everyone seems to consult with Dr. Google to diagnose themselves - or see if the doctor has got it right.

More and more people are buying electronic monitoring gizmos to measure blood pressure, heart rate and rhythm, blood sugar, even assessment of mood.

Surgeons are pretty much standing by while robots do the surgery for them. And we're getting used to consulting via video link - though this, and the autonomous robots that round on patients in the hospital, are not quite the same. They do at least involve linking you to a human provider.

My reservation is not philosophical. That there is anything wrong with patients making their own enquiry and being informed - in fact an informed patients who can help share in the decision making is what an Emancipated Patients should be.

My misgivings are from seeing how awful computerized medical records are. They have been almost universally adopted - thanks to mandates and financial incentives to doctors and hospitals - but are apparently built by geeks who have gone out of their way to make even the simplest tasks like writing a prescription or ordering a lab test involve pulling up multiple screens and making innumerable key strokes.

Not to mention that the 150 odd different vendors, who, in this land of private enterprise, all compete with each other so their proprietary products won't communicate with each other.

Computerized records also suffer that apparently irresistible ability to generate massive amounts of data. So, reports from other doctors that used to be one page long are now an unwieldy 15 pages. Or ER notes and hospital discharge summaries are crammed with irrelevant information - though this "data tsunami" also plagues other industries.

What doctors hope these ever more sophisticated generative pre-trained transformers will do is help with the "busy work" - reading imaging studies, improving documentation by helping to both read and write notes, dispensing medicines, and a whole lot more - unloading doctors to spend more time actually attending to their patients.

Ask GPT

So will AI replace doctors?

These days when you want to know the answer to a question where else would you go but to AI

"No" GPT-4 told me. It is "capable of understanding and processing large amounts of information" but is "not a medical expert."

That's a relief.