Profiling the Mental Health of Mass Shooters

As the perpetration of mass shootings becomes increasingly associated with white, middle-class men, startled academics and the media have looked for ways to account for this behavior. The resulting narrative often emphasizes the link between social isolation, psychopathy, and violence.

While compelling, this insight into the mind of a mass shooter fails to tell the whole story, according to Donald G. Dutton, Katherine R. White, and Dan Fogarty. In their paper, “Paranoid thinking in mass shooters,” the University of British Columbia researchers examined the diaries and Web sites of multiple perpetrators, from Virginia Tech’s Seung-Hui Cho to Norway’s Anders Breivik. They found substantial evidence pointing to paranoid personality disorder and malignant narcissism as the driving force behind the commission of mass violence.

While the often-cited psychopathic (or sociopathic) condition is associated with antisocial behavior, it is also linked to relatively diminished levels of anxiety, with help ativan, remorse, and empathy, three emotions highly prevalent in the pre-violence writings of mass shooters. The researchers point to the following passage in the diary of Columbine’s Eric Harris as contrary to the typical psychopathic mindset:

“I have a goal to destroy as much as possible so I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy, mercy, or any of that, so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster.”

Additionally, these writings reveal themes more closely linked to paranoia: disproportionate reactions to perceived mistreatment, obsession with social status, self-denial of emotions associated with weakness, and rage resulting from alleged disrespect and rejection.

According to the authors, “the essence of paranoia is that it self-exacerbates because the paranoid individual withdraws and their thought processes are not amenable to corrective feedback.” This reclusive lifestyle seems to foster what previous research has determined to be a large disparity between the perpetrator’s feelings of victimization and the actual social climate as described by his peers and friends.

Furthermore, because this perceived victimization may be the result of psychosis, the authors suggest that the target population (most frequently described as “jocks” and “preps” in the writings of mass shooters) simply happen to be the most prominent group at a natural transition point between paranoia and rage.

As communities struggle to identify potential sources of violence, and politicians seek to legislate sweeping solutions to a complex public safety threat, Dutton, White, and Fogarty suggest a more nuanced approach to psychological evaluation and more responsible rhetoric surrounding these disasters.

Because misdiagnoses of sociopathy can hinder the efforts of those trying to predict and prevent future tragedies, any psychological profile must rely on information gleaned from all aspects of the shooter’s life. The current post hoc ergo propter hoc approach suggests the perpetrator must be a sociopath because he committed an act of mass murder, a shockingly simplistic explanation for such devastating behavior.

By adopting more comprehensive standards for diagnosing the psychosis associated with a perpetrator of mass violence, we can encourage the prioritization of accuracy over rapidity in response to and reporting of mass shootings, and may better equip a community to keep its residents safe.

Feature Photo: cc/(Brent Danley)