Might I also add that I hate how mental illness has now become the black sheep for these mass shootings? Even though more funding towards mental illness would be good, branding all mass shooters as mentally ill is not the way to go.
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Experts say the people willing to kill strangers don’t all have a certain mental illness, and in many cases never sought professional help. They are often paranoid, resentful or narcissistic, but not always to the extent that they had been found to have a disorder.
Dr. Michael Stone, a New York forensic psychiatrist, found that about half of the 200 mass murderers he had studied had no clear evidence of mental illness before the attacks. About a quarter displayed signs of depression and psychopathy.
It’s not clear that access to mental health care would have prevented violence. Elliot O. Rodger saw several therapists before he killed six people in Isla Vista, Calif., in May 2014. His therapists disagreed on the nature of his mental disorders.
Adam Lanza, who killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, had received years of counseling from psychiatrists and psychologists. Though he had Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism that does not suggest violent behavior, he had never been found to have any mental illness that would.