Gun Restraint Essay

The results suggested that the news stories caused people to have more negative perceptions on individuals with severe mental illness and to favor gun policy (McGinty et al., 2013). In comparison to the control group, participants who read about the mass shooting event with the suggestion of gun control on people with severe mental illness were in favor of banning high-capacity magazines (McGinty et al., 2013). Participants who read about the mass shooting with the suggestion of banning high-capacity magazines favored both gun policies (i.e., gun control for those with severe mental illness and banning high-capacity magazines; McGinty et al., 2013). However, in comparison to the news story that only included the mass shooting event, news stories

However, helping those with serious mental illness cannot merely involve banning weapons from them. There are two issues that arise from placing gun restraints on people with severe mental illnesses. One issue is the fact that there is not a direct association between violence and severe mental illness (McGinty et al., 2013). Individuals with serious mental illness can have concurring conditions that may lead them to violence, for example, drug dependence (McGinty et al., 2013). For the most part, individuals with a severe mental illness are not violent and thus, placing gun restraints on everyone with a severe mental illness would not target the correct subgroup that would most likely conduct violence (McGinty et al., 2013). Another concern about banning weapons from people with severe mental illness is that the policies cause the population to develop harmful ideas about individuals with severe mental illness (McGinty et al., 2013. Consequently, people with severe mental illness do not go into treatment (McGinty et al., 2013). Misconceptions about severe mental illness are not the only contributors to stigma; labels can also have a large effect on how the general population feels about those with severe mental

Szeto, Luong, and Dobson (2013) aimed to look at the perceptions of the labels “mental illness,” “mental disorder,” “mental health problem,” “mental disease,” and “depression.” The participants were undergraduate students in Canada who were taking psychology courses (Szeto et al., 2013). A total of 124 students participated. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the five labels and they completed a questionnaire packet that assessed their thoughts and feelings about the labels; the questionnaire packed included questions about social interactions, the workplace, stigma, prejudice and discrimination, and prognosis (Szeto et al., 2013). The results suggested that people viewed the label of “depression” in a more negative light than the other labels (Szeto et al., 2013). In specific, people regarded the “depression” label as uncharismatic and repulsive (Szeto et al., 2013). Moreover, participants also indicated that prejudice and discrimination were less likely to happen in individuals with depression in comparison to the other labels (Szeto et al., 2013). The participants considered depression as a non-biological illness (i.e., an illness caused by internal and external events), which led them to have a better prognosis too, while the other labels elicited responses that involved biology and genetics (Szeto et al., 2013). Szeto et al. (2013) hypothesized that the