Getting the facts straight about gun violence and mental illness: putting compassion before fear.

Discussions about gun policy reflect a growing willingness to treat gun violence as a public health issue. We emphatically support this movement and add our voices to the growing chorus of physicians calling for more stringent gun control. Mental illness has figured prominently in the public dialogue, and we are concerned about its conflation with gun violence in both the popular press and the academic literature. This rhetoric too often portrays people with mental disorders as more dangerous or a greater part of the problem of gun-related violence than they actually are. Although we support reasonable restrictions on gun access among persons with mental illness, such measures will have only a small impact on gun-related violence. More important, we must provide better services for mentally ill persons, a need that is too easily overlooked when inordinate attention is paid to restricting their access to firearms.