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Mental illness account for a very small proportion of mass shootings in the US (www.columbiapsychiatry.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Right, and I was already aware of several lists of mass shooting using that or similar criteria to determine what fits. It's just a little strange to me to group so many disparate types of events into a list, and then do a study to say "most of these things don't involve mental illness" when most of those events are wildly different from each other.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Definitely agree with you there. The FBI had traditionally treated different types of shootings as each being unrelated. It was US media that pushed the term mass shooting in its current definition (so they could run big-number stories), and the consolidation of very different profiles under one label has done more harm than good, imo.

If you actually break them apart into distinct groups, there is a much stronger correlation with mental illness among especially e.g. school shooters.