Psychiatry and Mass Violence

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/opinion/psychiatry-mass-violence.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Psychiatrists Can’t Stop Mass Killers,” by Richard A. Friedman (Op-Ed, Oct. 12):

I respectfully disagree with my distinguished colleague’s article.

While Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University, found that people with mental illness commit less than 5 percent of violent crime in the United States, the criminologist Adam Lankford has reported that they account for over 50 percent of mass violence incidents (predominantly young men with untreated psychotic disorders).

Consequently, if we view mass violence as a possible, albeit rare, consequence of mental illness, as are suicide and addiction, it follows that more accessible, effective mental health care services, and policies that facilitate treatment of people — even if necessary over their objection — would reduce the possibilities of such tragedies occurring.

Psychiatrists can play an important role in enacting and carrying out such policies.

JEFFREY LIEBERMAN, NEW YORK

The writer is chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a former president of the American Psychiatric Association.