Associate director for the Center for Bioethics and president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, joined Dr. Doug Urness of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and Dr. Jon LaPook on CBS Mornings to discuss mental illness and gun violence. While mental illness rates are similar in the two countries, the rate of gun violence in the United States is much greater than in Canada.
"We have more firearms than people in the United States and so that difference really highlights the number one risk factor for gun violence—which is the presence of a firearm," said Dr. Brendel. "We need to do systematic research about different kinds of firearm violence including mass shootings to help us understand what commonalities exist and what risk factors might be present... There's no one-size-fits-all when we're talking about these relatively rare, although all too common, incidents of mass violence."