Mental illness expert: We should be asking whether political climate helped trigger shooting

By Greg Sargent

A leading expert in mental illness tells me that asking whether the Arizona shooter's violent behavior might have been partly triggered by the nation's political climate is a wholly appropriate line of inquiry -- even if the shooter is found to be insane.

"It's a reasonable question to ask," Dr. Marvin Swartz, a psychiatry professor at Duke University who specializes in how environment impacts the behavior of the mentally ill, said in an interview this morning. "The nature of someone's delusions is affected by culture. It's a reasonable line of inquiry to ask, `How does a political culture affect the content of people's delusions?'"

Dr. Swartz's assessment goes directly to the heart of the raging debate over the shooting between right and left. Conservatives have pointed out that Jared Loughner is deeply disturbed, and that there's no connection between his violent behavior and the current political climate -- whether it be violent imagery, eliminationist rhetoric, references to armed revolution or secession, or hints that the political opposition is illegitimate.

While some on the left have wrongly blamed specific voices on the right for the shooting, many liberals have simply argued that even if the shooter is a madman, the tragedy is a good jumping off point for a discussion of whether our toxic climate risks playing a role in tipping the unhinged towards political violence.

Dr. Swartz is the co-author of a 2006 study, reported on yesterday by Time magazine, finding that environmental factors can play a role in increasing violence in schizophrenics. I thought it would be worth asking him for his thoughts on the current debate over the shooting.

Dr. Swartz cautioned that there's still much we don't know about Loughner or more generally about the impact of the political climate on the mentally ill. But he asserted that asking how our politics might have impacted Loughner's behavior was an entirely natural line of questioning.

"We know the manifestation of mental illness is affected by cultural factors," Dr. Swartz said. "One's cultural context does effect people's thinking and particularly their delusions. It gives some content and shape to their delusions. While we don know whether there was a specific relationship between the political climate that he was exposed to and his thinking, it's a reasonable line of inquiry to explore."

Asked whether Loughner's mental illness invalidated questions as to whether his behavior might have been partly caused by the political climate or by violent rhetoric and imagery, Dr. Swartz said it shouldn't.



"Studying the cultural influences on people's delusions or persecutory thinking, and looking at different aspects of culture and how they effect people's behavior, is a legitmate area of inquiry," Dr. Swartz said.

In other words, even if the shooter is a complete nut, we should be asking whether the tone of our political discourse might also have played a role in triggering the shooting -- and if so, whether such a thing could happen again.

