ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The following was issued today by the Treatment Advocacy Center:
Aaron Bassler suffers from a treatable brain disease, the non-treatment of which apparently led to the shooting deaths of two public officials and a protracted manhunt that could bankrupt the small county where the killings occurred. “As long as public policy ignores the well-established link between violence and severe mental illnesses and fails take steps to break the link, this scenario will continue to occur, lives will be destroyed and communities will suffer,” said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder and a director of the Treatment Advocacy Center.
Relevant facts and role of untreated mental illness:
- Bassler's behavior prior to the shootings and his disappearance is consistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
- Family members attempted to alert local officials to his potential danger early in the year and received no response. Families of ill adults have essentially no recourse but pleading.
- People with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses are no more likely to commit acts of violence than the general public provided they are receiving treatment.
- Only about 1 percent of those not in treatment commit acts of violence, but they account for a number of deaths vastly disproportionate to their representation in the population.
- For example, individuals with untreated severe mental illness make up less than 2% of the total population nationwide, yet they commit about 10% of all the homicides in the U.S. According to a Department of Justice study, defendants with mental illness also account for roughly 25% of cases where children killed their parents.
- An estimated 1600 people become homicide victims in the U.S. each year in an act of violence committed by an individual in psychiatric crisis.
- Treatment works to reduce this risk, and California has a law known as Laura's Law to provide public officials with a means of getting people like Bassler into treatment before they deteriorate to a degree that people like Jere Melo and Matthew Coleman die.
- Mendocino County was not using this law.