"In the wake of a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that killed 18 people, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called for more involuntary institutionalization."
"Yet involuntary institutionalization isn't likely to help either. Indeed, making it easier to toss people into mental institutions against their will raises even greater concerns for due process."
""A 2017 task force report on the involuntary referrals of children under Florida's Baker Act found that one-third of them were not necessary," according to a recent article by Kaitlin Gibbs of the University of Florida Levin College of Law. "Many children are Baker Acted more than once, which shows the initial Baker Act may not have successfully treated children with mental illness. At least thirty percent of all children Baker Acted will have a repeat Baker Act within five years.""
"Nor is throwing people into mental wards likely to reduce the number of mass shootings. As Ragy Girgis, a clinical psychiatrist at Columbia University, wrote in 2022, "Serious mental illness—specifically psychosis—is not a key factor in most mass shootings or other types of mass murder." And while 25 percent of mass shootings "are associated with non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses, including depression," he notes that "in most cases these conditions are incidental.""
"If DeSantis' plan were enacted, the likely result would be a rapid increase in the unnecessary institutionalization of mentally ill individuals—and a negligible impact on criminal violence. If taking people's guns is a violation of their rights, forcing them into a mental facility surely is too."
