We are consistently experiencing tragedy in our country in regards to violence; in the past week we have seen two of the 353 mass shootings in 2015. As often as we see these outbursts of violence in the media, we see tragedies linked with -- or even as a result of -- mental illness. Because of course someone but be, at some level, insane to engage in extreme violence. This is the story that the media portrays, but is violence really closely linked with mental illness? Are the mentally ill really more likely to commit violent acts of crimes than those who are mentally “healthy”?

In 2013, an astounding 46 percent of participants in a national survey said that the mentally ill are more dangerous than other people, and increasingly more people are attributing mass shootings as a result of dysfunction in the mental-health system. According to Gallup Polls, 80 percent of the national population believes that illness is to some extent to blame for incidents of violence.

Due to this reinforced link between violence and mental illness, there are a number of policies which require a mental health background; if one has a diagnosis, they could be denied the purchase of a firearm. However, do these policies neglect to integrate the science behind mental illness? These policies do not necessarily consider the fact that mental illness, in many cases, is not a lifelong diagnosis; in fact, some people who have a mental illness will later be given a clean bill of health or may never even be diagnosed in the first place. On the other hand, “What happens if the act of violence is the first diagnosable act? Any policy based on mental illness would have failed to prevent it.”

Researcher Jeffrey Swanson analyzed this link between mental illness and violence. After following 10,000 cases, Swanson found that mental illness alone only explained 4 percent of the cases. Instead, violence was more closely associated with particular demographics, including poverty and substance abuse, which alone could predict violence without any sign of mental illness. So, if someone fit these particular demographics, their likelihood of committing a violent act was higher than if they fit none of the demographics and were mentally ill -- in which case they were unlikely to be violent. Swanson’s study “debunked two myths. One: people with mental illness are all dangerous. Well, the vast majority are not. And the other myth: that there’s no connection at all. There is one. It’s quite small, but it’s not completely nonexistent.”

In 2002, Swanson replicated his study and followed 800 people with the most severe forms of mental illness: psychosis and major mood disorders. After tracking these people for one year, he found that only 13 percent committed violent acts and that the likelihood of these incidences was dependent on whether the subject was unemployed, poor, living in a disadvantaged environment, using substances, or had previously suffered violence victimization.

All in all, the correlation between violence and mental illness exists, but is small and unpredictable. In all of his research, Swanson found one recurring factor: past violence remains the single biggest predictor of future violence. He explains, “Any history of violent behavior is a much stronger predictor of future violence than mental-health diagnosis.” So the media should consider their reinforcing ways in regards to the link between mental illness in violence. On the one hand, mental illness is a much larger issue than our society seems to believe; one in four people suffer from mental illness, but each and every one of those people is just as likely to be violent as the other three. So, by immediately focusing on the mental state of the person involved in a violent act, the media is strengthening this association of the mentally ill being extremely violent, and upholding the stereotype that they are people to be afraid of. In doing this, they are enforcing the existing stigma surrounding mental illness, which affects sufferers and their families in a negative way; each day they are suffering alone because they are too afraid to be open, in fear of being judged by their peers. This stigma is disempowering to those who suffer, and the media encouraging this association makes their experiences all the more negative.