Mass Shooters and Mental Illness

The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy

Curt and Katie talk about why mass shootings happen. We look at the complexity of the research and how solely blaming mental illness, doesn’t reflect the research and is stigmatizing. We also talk about how to identify risks and what to do to try to prevent violence.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

In this episode we talk about:

• Looking at why Mass Shootings happen
• Defining Mass Shooting
• The harm that blaming mass shootings on mental illness can cause – stigma, lack of seeking mental health treatment
• The limitations and complexity of the research
• The dehumanization of others and the role that it can play in the violence
• Attribution Model, low self-esteem, moving out to fringe groups, radicalization
• Developmental factors including parenting, culture, gender, coercion, history of violence
• The difficulty with learning from sound bites
• The role of violent media, video games
• The importance of differentiating correlation from causation
• The most important factor: access to guns
• “Aggrieved Entitlement” leading to seeking revenge in a violent way for a perceived or actual victimization
• Multi-systemic solutions and what therapists can do to address the situation
• Compassion, listening, and connection as a way to intervene prior to radicalization
• Seeing from a different perspective than what is “acceptable” for you, to help to build alliance and open opportunities for challenging violent beliefs
• Clarifying therapy versus threat assessment
• Fighting Fascism in the world and in the therapy room