Shooting Suspect Was Twice Hospitalized for Mental Illness

24-year-old David Katz of Baltimore, the suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida video game tournament, had previously been hospitalized for mental illness, according to court records in his home state of Maryland.

Richard Katz, (David's father), a NASA engineer, said his ex-wife had "an obsession with using mental health professionals and in particular psychiatric drugs to perform the work that parents should naturally do." He said she routinely gave false information to mental health care providers. He described one incident in which his son was handcuffed by police after locking himself in his mother's car in an attempt to avoid going to a mental health appointment with her.

Katz opened fire Sunday at a gaming bar inside a collection of restaurants and shops in Jacksonville. He killed two people and wounded 10 others before fatally shooting himself during the "Madden NFL 19" tournament, authorities said.  (KOMO 4 News, August 28, 2018)
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Four assumptions frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States: (1) that mental illness causes gun violence, (2) that psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime, (3) that shootings represent the deranged acts of mentally ill loners, and (4) that gun control “won’t prevent” another mass shooting. Each of these statements is certainly true in particular instances.

Such associations make sense on many levels - who but an insane person would do such horrifying things? And, of course, scripts linking guns and mental illness arise in the aftermath of many US mass shootings in no small part because of the psychiatric histories of the assailants. Reports suggest that up to 60% of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes.