Imagine being a therapist and one of your patients, suffering from delusions and paranoia, tells you he’d had a bad week, that he’d considered buying a gun and ending his life and maybe “taking out a bunch of people” with him.
For one therapist I talked to last week, it’s not a hypothetical — that very thing happened to him recently. What’s more, there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it.
“It’s the kind of situation that would not meet the standard of imminence to hospitalize someone against their will,” said this therapist, whom I’m not naming because he was discussing patient issues. “There’s no specific target or timeline, he’s hinting at things in a vague way and there’s not much we can do to sound the alarm.”
In this particular instance, the patient agreed to let therapists tell his family so they could at least monitor his behavior.
But there’s more Utah can do.
Recently, several states have passed laws to allow those close to an at-risk individual to seek a restraining order that would prevent the mentally ill patient from buying or possessing a firearm.
“I have no interest in being the person who decides whether or not people can have guns,” said the Utah therapist, a supporter of the concept. “What I do want is a mechanism to alert the people who make those decisions of information that is pretty relevant.”
California enacted a “gun violence restraining order” in 2016, two years after a man shot 10 people, killing three in Isla Vista, Calif., before killing himself. The man’s behavior had been a concern to his family, who notified his therapist, who contacted police. Officers interviewed him, but could not take away his guns.
Under the California law, a family member, spouse, domestic partner or legal guardian can attempt to show there has been a threat of violence, a pattern of mental health issues, a conviction for domestic violence or a history of threats or violence. In those instances, the court can issue the order.
The versions of the law enacted in California and also in Washington require the subject of the order to relinquish all of his or her firearms. The orders are temporary, but can be extended for up to a year by the court. Last year, Oregon enacted its own version of the protective order law.
Connecticut has had an “extreme risk protective order” law on its books since 1999. A study in 2016 found that in the first 14 years, the state issued 762 such orders. Researchers estimated that, for every 10 to 20 orders issued, there was one life saved because a suicidal individual did not have access to a firearm.
We don’t yet know exactly what unfolded leading up to the recent school shooting in Florida, but given the young man’s history of mental health issues and the vague threats that were not adequately addressed by authorities, it’s not unreasonable to think that a gun violence or extreme risk order could have helped avert the massacre.
I should point out that a person with mental illness is statistically much more likely to be a victim of violent crime than a perpetrator. But the impacts of these types of laws could go well beyond stopping mass shootings.
On average, 380 Utahns die from gunshots every year — more than one a day — and 87 percent of those were suicides, a number that could surely be reduced if concerned family members could intervene to disarm a loved one in trouble.
Utah should also let mental health professionals alert law enforcement or state health officials of a danger — either to the patient or others — and enable them to seek an order, if necessary.
Rep. Stephen Handy, R-Layton, is proposing just such an “extreme risk protection order”; the question is whether he’ll be able to drum up enough support with just two weeks left in Utah’s short legislative session. House leaders are interested in exploring some school safety and gun-related bill, while Senate leaders are more skeptical.
If state lawmakers want to make a change that isn’t controversial and could make a real difference, empowering those closest to a mentally ill person would be a good place to start.
