Mental Health Safety Research Paper

Physical safety and mental health have been common issues work places have come across and tried to deal with. In a number of ways, they have been able to diminish the amount of preventable injury through stricter training and regulation methods as well as imposing work-safe programs which give benefits for years gone by accident free. School systems offer security measures and rule based regulations to create safer learning environments for their students and staff. Mental health programs have been put into place to protect the mentality of workers and students by imposing “mental health days” as well as benefits and counselling to provide therapeutic options for more stressful and traumatic jobs or situations that arise. Some believe policy …show more content…
Shooters in most cases acted alone in their crimes. They usually were white males aged around 14-40 and usually committed suicide or died at the end of their sprees.(Bjelopera et al 10) Mental illness is often associated with shootings but with that said, mental illness alone is not reliable as a causal factor for violence toward the general public. According to Jessica Rosenberg, the author of "Mass Shootings and Mental Health Policy", studies show that people who suffer from mental health issues are more of a risk to themselves rather than to the general public and only about “4 - 5% of violence toward others is associated with mental illness”(118). In the rare cases where mental illness has been linked to violence, “few perpetrators had received mental health services in the past or been diagnosed with mental health problems”(Ferguson, Coulson & Barnett 151). That does not mean mental illness in a particular individual is ruled out. People who were known to the offender failed to noticed the characteristics of abnormal mental health prior to the event. Furthermore, in majority of the cases mental health issues were not known in an individual until after the shootings took place. Attempting to predict the instances of mass shootings through the presence of mental illness is not only damaging to stigma behind mental health, it also causes …show more content…
In almost every case, firearms were the main weapon used when mass murders took place. Even with the statistical evidence many individuals are blinded by their second amendment rights than to see the correlation between guns and mass murder. Even though the link is well noted, imposing stricter gun control laws does have its flaws; they do not account for guns that are purchased legally. Some argue there should be stricter background check for individuals who are purchasing firearms especially when it comes to mental illness and previous crime. But when looking at the statistics behind previous mass shootings, many of the perpetrators were not clinically diagnosed with mental illness. Mental illness also does not imply an individual is dangerous as only a small fraction of individuals known to have mental health issues have violent tendencies as noted above(. In regards to background checks for gun purchasers, many shooters had no prior criminal records and therefore were able to purchase guns legally. Imposing stricter gun laws also does not account for the thousands of guns already owned. In cases such as Sandy Hooke massacre, the shooter used a gun owned by his mother. Even with evidence supporting the relationship between gun violence and lack of gun control, many Americans are too scared to retreat from the