Curing serious mental illness can’t stop mass shootings like the one in Allen, researchers say

After the latest mass shooting in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said funding for mental health services is the key to preventing future tragedies from occurring.

On Saturday, eight people were killed during an afternoon of weekend shopping at the Allen Premium Outlets. Seven more people were wounded. The motive and mental health history of the shooter, who was killed by a police officer, is not known, although reports say he might have white supremacist and neo-Nazi views.

The tragedy, which comes less than a year after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, has prompted Abbott and other lawmakers to tout mental health treatment as the best response to mass shootings.

“There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that is taking place in America and what Texas is doing in a big time way,” Abbott said on Fox News Sunday. “We are working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it.”

But two researchers who have extensively studied gun violence, including mass shootings, said focusing on mental health and mental health alone would not end mass shootings in Texas or throughout the U.S.

“Gun violence and mental illness are two really different public health problems,” said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. “‘Fix mental health,’ which we hear all the time from people like Gov. Abbott and others after a horrific mass casualty shooting, is a great slogan for a different public health problem.”

In 1990, Swanson published research that gathered data from 10,000 people, and asked them about their violent behaviors, their psychiatric diagnoses, and other demographic and risk factors. The study found that people with serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, are “somewhat more likely to commit violent acts than people who are not mentally ill,” but the large majority are not violent toward others.

If we could completely eliminate serious mental illness as a risk factor, Swanson said, the prevalence of violent acts toward other people would decrease by less than 4% in the U.S.

Adam Lankford, a professor of criminology at the University of Alabama, said mental health should be a part of the conversation when it comes to mass violence, but that it shouldn’t be the only part.

“If you say it’s mental health, it’s mental health, it’s mental health, and you’re the governor of Texas, I would say, ‘Well, why are you allowing people with significant mental health problems to legally purchase firearms?” Lankford said. “And not just firearms, but essentially military grade weapons?”

Both Lankford and Swanson pointed to so-called “red flag laws” as an important area for further research in the effort to decrease future mass shootings. Red flag laws typically allow family, friends, or other individuals to petition a court to temporarily take away firearms from people who might be a risk to themselves or others.

Texas does not have a red flag law.

On Sunday, Abbott told viewers across the nation that the Texas Legislature was preparing to commit an additional $3 billion to mental health initiatives. Senate Bill 30, an appropriations bill, includes $2.3 billion to increase capacity at state mental health hospitals. The legislation also allocates $33.6 million for a behavioral health campus in Uvalde. That bill is currently in a committee made up of House and Senate lawmakers to negotiate on the legislation.

In 2020, the most recent year for which death data is available, 309 Tarrant County residents died by a firearm, according to death certificate data. Of those 309 deaths, more than half died by suicide. According to the most common definition, a mass shooting involved four or more people who have died in a public place. Per that definition, no people died from mass shootings in Tarrant County in 2020.