Effect on Mental Health Survivors
Mental health and mental illness become the scapegoat for culpability in the aftermath of mass shootings. After a shooting, there are mainly two arguments, either the general public and our legislators blame the weapon and demand firearm regulations be enacted, or they rebuke the shooter and question his mental health. The problem with this tendency is that it helps stigmatize an already marginalized community. In a TED Talk given by Carmela Epright, a professor at Furman University, she states that these situations spotlight severely ill patients and people suffering from delusions. She says diverting public attention towards mental health worsens the stigma already held about what mental illness looks like and its severity, when in reality 45 million Americans suffer from a mental illness. A clear example of this is incumbent president Donald Trump wanting to reopen more mental health facilities, where only severely ill patients who are deemed incapable of taking care of themselves, like those suffering from schizophrenia, are committed. His suggestion of opening more asylums will not prevent mass shootings from occurring because most of the shooters did not have diseases that meet the criteria to be committed into a mental health facility. Proposals like Trump’s directly affect people suffering from mental illnesses because opening asylums, in theory, could be a positive action if executed and regulated properly but the fear of reviving the snake pits from the 1960’s where patients were abused and forced to live in inhumane conditions is understandably troubling.
Mass Shootings 