Politicians Need to Address the Role of Mental Health in Gun Violence

Why no mention of suicide in talk about gun control when it accounts for 56% of gun deaths?

I’ve now sat through the State of the Union, presidential candidate debate, Biden’s Stephanopoulos interview, and the Biden press conference, and I have yet to hear a single mention of the crisis in mental health and suicide in the US today. (It’s a global problem, for sure, but for purposes of this post we’ll stick to our home ground for ease of statistics and because it relates to US politics).

More than Half of Gun Deaths in the US Are Suicides

We hear plenty about gun violence and deaths in general. But did you know 56% of gun-related deaths in the United States in 2022 were suicides? That’s more than half, to you.

In the State of the Union, Biden mentioned school shootings and crime. “Give communities the tools to crack down on gun crime, retail crime, and carjacking.” But that doesn’t address the root cause of much of it.

And neither candidate had a thing to say about mental health in the debate.

While 41% of 2022 gun deaths were homicides, and about 1% were preventable or accidental, the majority of gun deaths were to suicide, which has a mental health component in most cases.

In gun control and firearm debates, school shootings are often mentioned, but rarely is mental health and suicide discussed. But shooters often have mental health issues; for example, one of the two Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold, expressed severe depression in his journals, which his mother, Sue, only discovered after his death. She writes about it her book, “A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy.” She mentions “brain health” several times in it.

And just to name one more example, Seung-Hui Cho, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooter, was referred to the university's counseling center by a professor in November 2005. The following month, Cho was hospitalized briefly after a roommate was concerned he was suicidal. While in the hospital, Cho was diagnosed with a mood disorder. A court found Cho to be a danger to himself after his release, and ordered him to undergo outpatient treatment, but after that he slipped through the cracks.

Every year, suicide claims tens of thousands of lives in the US. For 2021, the most recent year for which I could find statistics, suicide claimed the lives of over 48,100 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WISQARS Leading Causes of Death Reports.

That’s 48,000 deaths!

37,396 Gaza Deaths vs 48,000 US Suicide Deaths: Where’s the Outrage?

In contrast, as of June 19, 2024, 37,396 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Gaza situation is a terrible tragedy, and deserves attention, for sure, but where is the outrage for some 48,000 deaths every year in our own country?

According to ABC News' Bill Hutchinson, in Biden’s State of the Union Address in March, “he said the nation reported a historically low murder rate in 2023 and that overall violent crime had plummeted to one of the lowest levels in 50 years.”

Well, that may be hunky-dory for his candidacy, but suicides were up, with nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. taking their own lives in 2022, up 3% from the previous year. And those numbers began steadily ticking up in the late 1990s and have risen ever since.

Suicide is a Leading Cause of Death for Young People

I have written more about suicide statistics here: (“Suicide Statistics Are Alarming When Viewed in Context”), but a brief recap:

In 2020, suicide was the second leading cause of death for those ages 10 to 14 and 25 to 34. Suicide was the third leading cause of death for ages 15 to 24, the fourth leading cause of death for ages 35 to 44, and the seventh leading cause of death for ages 55 to 64.

So What Can We Do?

There’s a lot that can be done to improve mental health outcomes. I’ve written several blog posts about newer, more effective treatments — one example is here, but beyond advocating for those, to begin with we must start addressing this elephant in the room at the highest level of US politics.

I sometimes feel a lone voice howling into a great void. Is anyone out there? Does anyone care?

There are some lights in the chasm, though.

More influencers on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, and good old Substack are starting to open up about their depression and other struggles. Tim Ferriss has an excellent podcast, and right here on Substack we have wonderful voices such as Russell Carr’s A Psychiatrist Returns from War, just to name one.

So dear reader, I hope you will join me in adding your voice to the void in any way.

One thing everyone can do is check in on any friends or family members who are struggling….especially ones you just haven’t heard from in a while. Depression can percolate in isolation, and since suicidal people don’t always voice their real thoughts due to a fear of forced hospitalization, judgment, career repercussions, or other stigma-related reasons, giving them a judgment-free zone to vent can be priceless.