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Don't try to connect mass killings to mental illness, psychiatrist advises

Ronald Pies, MDThe link between mental illness and mass shootings is weak, and predicting who might become a mass killer is probably impossible, despite popular notions to the contrary. That‘s the opinion of Upstate psychiatry professor Ronald Pies, MD, who notes that severely mentally ill people commit only 5 percent of violent crimes and 10 percent of homicides. Most mentally ill people are not violent, he said, noting that “we might better spend our time looking at people involved in barroom brawls or domestic violence, not people with schizophrenia.”

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