The state of a perpetrator's mental health is often the focus of news reports in the aftermath of mass shootings and other acts of violence.

Legislators and the public want to be able to predict

if and when a person will become violent.

In this episode, forensic psychologist Joel DeVoskin

talks about why the stigma surrounding mental health is to blame

and also how psychologists can help prevent more violence

if they are just given the opportunity.

I'm Audrey Hamilton, and this is speaking of psychology.

Joel Devoskin teaches in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona.

He is chairman of the Governor's Advisory Council on Behavioral Health for the state of Nevada.

He's also a clinical and forensic psychologist.

He served as an expert witness in several state and federal courts throughout the U.S.,

and he specializes in assessing a person's risk of violence to self and others as well as

workplace violence prevention. Welcome, Dr. Devaskin. Thank you very much for having me.

There have been several high-profile shootings in the news where the suspect has been described as

having some sort of mental disorder, either officially or anecdotally. What sort of message is this sending

to the general public about the association between

mental illness and violence?

Is there a link?

Well, there's a lot of messages that it sends, and some of them are very inaccurate

and, in fact, counterproductive and harmful.

The short version is that while people with serious mental illness are slightly more likely to commit acts of violence than people without mental illness, the risk that it creates is pretty small compared to other known risk factors. For example, current substance abuse. It's also true that a lot of the people that you read about,

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