@article{ref1,
title="Mental illness, mass shootings, and the future of psychiatric research into American gun violence",
journal="Harvard review of psychiatry",
year="2021",
author="McKay, Tara and Piemonte, Jennifer and Metzl, Jonathan Michel",
volume="29",
number="1",
pages="81-89",
abstract="This article outlines a four-part strategy for future research in mental health and complementary disciplines that will broaden understanding of mass shootings and  multi-victim gun homicides. First, researchers must abandon the starting assumption  that acts of mass violence are driven primarily by diagnosable psychopathology in  isolated &quot;lone wolf&quot; individuals. The destructive motivations must be situated,  instead, within larger social structures and cultural scripts. Second, mental health  professionals and scholars must carefully scrutinize any apparent correlation of  violence with mental illness for evidence of racial bias in the official systems  that define, measure, and record psychiatric diagnoses, as well as those that  enforce laws and impose criminal justice sanctions. Third, to better understand the  role of firearm access in the occurrence and lethality of mass shootings, research  should be guided by an overarching framework that incorporates social, cultural,  legal, and political, but also psychological, aspects of private gun ownership in  the United States. Fourth, effective policies and interventions to reduce the  incidence of mass shootings over time-and to prevent serious acts of violence more  generally-will require an expanded body of well-funded interdisciplinary research  that is informed and implemented through the sustained engagement of researchers  with affected communities and other stakeholders in gun violence prevention. Emerging evidence that the coronavirus pandemic has produced a sharp increase both  in civilian gun sales and in the social and psychological determinants of injurious  behavior adds special urgency to this agenda.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1067-3229",
doi="10.1097/HRP.0000000000000280",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000280"
}