Healthcare Professional: Mental Illness Not Statistically Linked to Violence

Editor's Note: This is part two of two stories looking at the issue of mental health on the Plateau. Click here to read part one.

Ann Christian from the Washington Community Mental Health Council said that 26.2 percent of Americans over age 18 are diagnosed with a mental disorder in a given year, and six percent are considered serious illnesses.

However, "when people can actually get connected to" proper treatment including medication, counseling, crisis intervention and life-long support, it works and recover is possible at a rate of 70 percent to 90 percent. Contrast that to the recovery rate for heart disease which is between 40 percent and 50 percent, she said.

Contrary to current political discourse, most violent people don't have mental illnesses, she said. Mental illness is not statistically linked to violence; the latter seems to align more with certain characteristics determined by gender (male), age (youth), income (poverty) and social (isolation) factors.

Violence that stems from a combination of guns and alcohol are more prevalent that those from guns and mental illness, she said.

The link to mass shootings is not understood, largely because mental health is still a very new science. Diagnosis is done by a combination of observation, symptoms and history. At this time, "there is not a linear relationship betweeen mental illness and violence."

However, in 2010, 38,000 people died from suicide.

That delicate balance between the potential to harm others or harm the self is also reflected in state policy that allows for law enforcement to involuntarily commit a person if they judged them to be a danger, Christian said.

But the 1974 law was written with a heavy weight on the subject's own civil rights, and so that balance is a "very difficult and painful process" as well.

U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Auburn) who delivered the keynote address at the summit, recalled his frustration with this balance while working a domestic violence case when he was a law enforcement officer. After tussling with a man with a butcher knife in hand and receiving 45 stitches on his neck from being slashed by the suspect, Reichert shared his dismay that he plead not guilty by reason of insanity in court and walk away a free man only to repeat his offense again.

"We didn't help this guy," he said.

All Talk, Then Action

The decision to focus the entire summit on mental health was deliberate because it was an issue that was brought up from the very beginning that has not been property addressed, Enumclaw Regional Healthcare Foundation President Alan Predmore said.

Prior summits that focused on issues of transportation, dental health, substance abuse, domestic violence and access to information and to food have led to many notable services now available on the Plateau including the Dental Van, the LINCCK Violence Prevention Task Force that spearheads Domestic Violence Awarenss Month and Neighbors Night Out, the healthcare resource site AskFlin.com and Neighbors Feeding Neighbors that serves both local youth and seniors, he said.

Reichert commended the spirit of the summit and of the foundation for bringing people together to tackle these issues. "There is a great heart in this room," he said.

This year's summit concluded with participants breaking up into groups that focused on the needs and issues of specific age groups. Some of their findings were:

• School-aged Children: Isolation is a problem. "Kids need someone to walk through life with."
• Young Adults: Having grown up in an unprecedented time around technology, many have problems dealing with transitions and turn to addiction. They need a safe place.
• Adults: Resources to crisis and outpatient care are scarce locally. Professionals fear losing patients if they can't help them right away. Having more local resources like a psychiatric ward at St. Elizabeth or local crisis stabilization beds would help.
• Seniors: They are dealing with all of the previously identified problems on top of senior issues like loss of a loved one or loss of place in the world that leads to bad habits like hoarding, substance abuse and suicide. Offering one-on-one support locally, making those available at each of the senior centers in Enumclaw, Buckley and Black Diamond and improving on the connections between the centers, would be helpful. Better communication with King County as well as with doctors who dismiss depression as 'normal' for seniors or who prescribe psychotropic drugs without understanding or communicating all the side effects would also be helpful.

The foundation's Mental Health Task Force was compiling the findings to bring about solutions that will be presented to the public during the "Taking Action" follow up meeting on Tuesday, June 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the Summit Church in Enumclaw. Those who did not make this summit but are interested in learning more and/or how to help are encouraged to attend.

Fundamentally, Christian summed up the necessary action: "we need to get treatment for people who need it, faster."