Confirming similar studies that have found that mental health problems are not correlated with violence, a new National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper concludes that there is no statistical link between violent crime and people who suffered from depression as teenagers.

While opponents of gun violence legislation have tried to shift the gun violence prevention debate to focus on the mentally ill, the reality is that the victims of mental illness-related violence tend to be the patients themselves. And depression specifically is one of the most widespread mental health concerns in the world. As the report states, “depression is the leading cause of disability and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease,” and mental illnesses is prevalent among young Americans, with “8.1 percent of 2 million adolescents aged 12-17 experienced at least one major depressive episode in 2009.”

Although the NBER report found “little evidence that adolescent depression influences the likelihood of engaging in violent crime or the selling of illicit drugs,” it did conclude that such depression was a significant predictor for future property crimes, costing hundreds of millions of dollars per year in damages and underscoring the economic costs that exacerbate the social costs of mental illness on the public.

That makes early detection efforts and community support systems geared towards addressing mental health in children vital to public health and preventing certain future crimes — and some lawmakers are taking action to do just that. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) recently introduced the Mental Health In Schools Act in an effort to “allow schools to collaborate with mental health providers, law enforcement, and other community-based organizations to provide expanded access to mental health care for their students” and “support schools in training staff and volunteers to spot warning signs in kids and to refer them to the appropriate services.”

(HT: Wonkblog)

During a Senate hearing on gun violence prevention on Wednesday, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) issued a stark warning: don’t stigmatize Americans suffering from mental illnesses.

Since December’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, lawmakers have been engaged in a debate over the best ways to curb gun violence. Much of that debate has centered on America’s expensive and inaccessible mental health care system, since several perpetrators of mass shootings in recent years have also had mental illnesses. But the conversation has veered wildly off-course — stigmatizing Americans suffering from mental disorders as dangerous, and turning them into the scapegoats for gun violence, as the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre did during his bizarre press conference in reaction to the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

At today’s hearing, Franken tried to stop that train of thinking in its tracks. The senator acknowledged the need for a stronger mental health safety net while also pointing out that Americans with mental illness are not actually prone to violence:

FRANKEN: I have supported funding for law enforcement programs and I work every day to carry out the work Paul Wellstone does to repair our mental health system. Tomorrow I will introduce the Mental Health In Schools Act, which will improve access to mental health care for kids. Catching these issues at an early age is really important. I want to be careful here — that we don’t stigmatize mental illness. The vast majority of people with mental illness are no more violent than the rest of the population. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims of violence. These recent events have caused us as a nation to scrutinize our failed mental health care system and I’m glad we’re talking about this in a serious way.

The statistics clearly support Franken’s argument — over 92 percent of Americans with mental disorders do not engage in violent behavior. The ones who do tend to be violent towards themselves.

That’s also why mental health professionals are concerned that some of the mental health reporting provisions in new gun safety laws — such as the one recently signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) — might discourage patients from seeking care or being honest with their doctors about violent thoughts for fear of being reported to the authorities. Such measures add even more stigma to a public health crisis that is already widely stigmatized in America. According to the latest data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), over 29 percent of Americans who do not receive mental health care cite social stigma or the fear of being institutionalized as the main barrier to their care.

During a wide-ranging hearing on the status of America’s mental health system before a Senate health committee on Thursday, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) declared his intention to introduce the Mental Health In Schools Act to address issues of mental illnesses among America’s youth. Thursday’s event was the first Senate hearing on mental health care in six years, as the U.S. is currently engaged in a renewed national conversation on gun safety and mental health issues after last month’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Franken explained that his legislation would “allow schools to collaborate with mental health providers, law enforcement, and other community-based organizations to provide expanded access to mental health care for their students” and “support schools in training staff and volunteers to spot warning signs in kids and to refer them to the appropriate services.”

While emphasizing that he didn’t want to inaccurately stigmatize most Americans with mental illnesses as being predisposed to violence, the senator questioned the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel, about the correlation between untreated mental problems in American youth and subsequent violent behavior:

FRANKEN: If mental health issues go untreated, does that increase the chance that someone within a subset, a certain subset of a type of mental illness, will become more violent, Dr. Insel, or will be higher chance that they might become violent?

INSEL: So, Sen. Franken, within that narrow band of the people we’re talking about — which is a small, small segment of the population of people with a mental illness — but those, for instance, who have what we call ‘first episode psychosis’ — we know that the duration of untreated psychosis is related, in fact, to the risk for having a violent act. That’s been studied quite carefully and there’s a real correlation there, so closing that gap is one of the things we can do to increase safety.

FRANKEN: So since, in a sense since Newtown did prompt this, in that very narrow — and that was one of a number of horrific occurrences where I think that no one would question that in Tucson, in Newtown, that we’re talking about someone who’s deranged — that had that person been diagnosed, say, in school and had been able to get some kind of treatment, that there is some kind of connection between making sure that we’re identifying and treating children early on with the tragedy that brought us here?

INSEL: …The published data are quite clear. The difference between severely violent acts like homicide between those who are untreated and those who are treated is fifteen fold. So you drop the risk fifteen fold with treatment. So it’s vital – it’s absolutely vital – that we detect earlier and intervene earlier with something that’s effective.

While the public education system serves as American children’s primary resource for accessing mental health care, only one in five American children in need of treatment actually receives it. This is particularly problematic considering that half of all lifetime mental disorder cases set in by the age of 14.

But if the last several weeks are any indication, lawmakers seem to have woken up to the fact that the current trend is unsustainable. Franken’s proposal for expanding the public school system’s mental health safety net would work in conjunction with President Obama’s Project AWARE initiative to provide similar support and training to schools and other community-based organizations.