Tracking Mental Health to Predict Mass Murders???

[Renegade7]

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-house-considers-new-project-seeking-links-between-mental-health-violent-behavior/?noredirect

 

I'm going to remain calm and hope somone comes in to ease my concerns, but honestly, this feels like a prototype that if implemented will claim to be voluntary at first then become mandatory with public pressure from the constant putting of mental health in front of every Mass Murder that occurs now.  They may not even tell us they made it mandatory once the public gets a taste of it, why I don't support it.  I would support the CDC being opened to investigating Mass Murder before I ever support being this specific on mental health and creating the architecture to go too far with it.

 

Not white nationalism, not the guns, but mental illness that most people don't understand.  There are so many thoughts running through my head on the ramifications of this, such as people avoiding health from becoming in a database, to the ourdacity of even suggesting to making this information public (I'm praying to God they are talking about the research itself from initial implementation and not hinting at the individuals involved if it becomes expanded).

 

I've mentioned before that I don't believe anyone should be deciding if someone shouldn't have a gun unless they are a mental health professional and that everyone should need a doctor's note before making a firearm purchase.  The idea of tracking our devices and internet traffic to figure out if we are prone to committing mass murder feels like some dystopian reality where we surrender all our privacy in the name of our security.  

 

But this is different then PRISM in that there will be people clamoring that the ends justify the means because they don't have mental health issues and thus they themselves have nothing to worry about.  What else will society decide people with mental health problems can or can't do as opposed to an employer for a specific job?  We are deepening the stigma of mental illness by even having this conversation.

 

I implore you, read the whole article first before commenting.  And keep in mind there doesn't seem to be a differentiation between people that are diagnosed with serious issues and people who decide to take anti-depressants and then decide they don't need them anymore if you consider this a good idea that should be expanded after implementation.  I don't want to be labeled a second class citizen by people that have no idea what I'm going through and making this a political issue versus looking at what really makes the most sense to do.

 

This is a private poll, as usual, be respectful, this is a conversation that's going to be personal to some people, but we can't avoid this conversation anymore.  This does feel like the first step in banning anyone diagnosed with a mental illness from owning a firearm, regardless of what it is.  Is zero-tolerance of something that isn't fully understood the right way to go way this?  I may be a tad bit biased, but this still feels like a scapegoat approach to addressing this issue, so the only reason I'm taking it seriously is that I do believe some people would be fine with this because of its not their problem.

 

Quote

The White House has been briefed on a proposal to develop a way to identify early signs of changes in people with mental illness that could lead to violent behavior.

 

Supporters see the plan as a way President Trump could move the ball forward on gun control following recent mass shootings as efforts seem to be flagging to impose harsher restrictions such as background checks on gun purchases.

 

The proposal is part of a larger initiative to establish a new agency called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency or HARPA, which would sit inside the Health and Human Services Department. Its director would be appointed by the president, and the agency would have a separate budget, according to three people with knowledge of conversations around the plan.

 

HARPA would be modeled on DARPA, the highly successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that serves as the research arm of the Pentagon and collaborates with other federal agencies, the private sector and academia.

 

The concept was advanced by the Suzanne Wright Foundation and first discussed by officials on the Domestic Policy Council and senior White House staffers in June 2017. But the idea has gained momentum in the wake of the latest mass shootings that killed 31 people in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio.

The Suzanne Wright Foundation re-approached the administration last week and proposed that HARPA include a “Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes” — project. Officials discussed the proposal at the White House last week, said two people familiar with the discussions. These people and others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversations.

 

The attempt to use volunteer data to identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act” would be a four-year project costing an estimated $40 million to $60 million, according to Geoffrey Ling, the lead scientific adviser on HARPA and a founding director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office.

 

"Everybody would be a volunteer,” Ling said in an interview. “We’re not inventing new science here. We’re analyzing it so we can develop new approaches.

“This is going to have to be done using scientific rigor,” he said.

 

But there are plenty of researchers and mental health experts who believe that mental health and gun violence aren’t necessarily linked.

 

Mental illness can sometimes be a factor in such violent acts, experts say, but it is rarely a predictor — most studies show that no more than a quarter of mass shooters have a diagnosed mental illness. More commonly shared attributes of mass shooters include a strong sense of resentment, desire for notoriety, obsession with other shooters, a history of domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

 

The president has said he thinks mentally ill people are primarily responsible for the spate of mass shootings in the United States. And this proposal is likely to be welcomed by Republicans and gun-rights activists who have argued the same thing.

 

“We’re looking at the whole gun situation,” Trump said last week. “I do want people to remember the words ‘mental illness.’ These people are mentally ill. . . . I think we have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the ’60s and ’70s, so many of these institutions were closed.”

 

Trump has reacted “very positively” to the HARPA proposal, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions and has been “sold on the concept.” But it’s unclear whether the president has reviewed the new “Safe Home” component of the proposal and creating an entire agency would be a huge lift in Congress.

 

In the immediate aftermath of Dayton and El Paso, Trump said he might support background checks for all gun purchases and “red flag” laws to deny guns to those deemed a hazard to themselves or others. But Trump on Tuesday called universal background checks off the table in a conversation with the head of the National Rifle Association, though he later denied saying that.

 

“Every time this has been brought up inside the White House — even up to the presidential level, it’s been very well-received,” a person familiar with discussions said. “HARPA is the health-care equivalent of DARPA, and it’s a great legacy project for the president, one he is uniquely positioned to get done.”

 

That person said that Trump could benefit in a variety of ways from getting behind a project like HARPA right now.

 

“There is no doubt that addressing this issue helps the president deal with two issues he has yet to find real success on: one is the health-care front and one is on the gun-violence front,” the person added.

 

Trump has a close personal relationship with Bob Wright, who founded the Suzanne Wright Foundation after his wife passed away from pancreatic cancer. Wright is the former chair of NBC and was in that job while Trump headlined “The Apprentice."

 

Wright sees Ivanka Trump as the most effective champion of the proposal and has previously briefed her on HARPA himself, Wright said.

 

“It would be perfect for her to do it — we need someone with some horsepower — someone like her driving it. ... It could get done,” said one official familiar with the conversations. “We’d be able to put every resource of federal government, from the highest levels of the scientific community to say: ‘This is how people with these problems should be treated and have limited access to firearms.’ ”

 

The HARPA proposal was initially pitched as a project to improve the mortality rate of pancreatic cancer through innovative research to better detect and cure diseases. Despite internal support over the past two years, the model ran into what was described as “institutional barriers to progress,” according to a person familiar with the conversations.

 

“He’s very achievement oriented and I think all presidents have difficulties with science,” Wright said in an interview. “I think their political advisers say, ‘No that’s not a game for you,’ so they sort of back off a bit.”

 

He added: “But the president has a real opportunity here to leave a legacy in health care.”

 

The idea is for the agency to develop a “sensor suite” using advanced artificial intelligence to try to identify changes in mental status that could make an individual more prone to violent behavior. The research would ultimately be opened to the public.

 

HARPA would develop “breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence,” says a copy of the proposal. “A multi-modality solution, along with real-time data analytics, is needed to achieve such an accurate diagnosis.”

 

The document goes on to list a number of widely used technologies it suggests could be employed to help collect data, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home. The document also mentions “powerful tools” collected by health-care provides like fMRIs, tractography and image analysis.

 

“Advanced analytical tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly improving and must be applied to the data,” states the document.

 

Those familiar with the project stressed it would not collect sensitive health data about individuals without their permission. The government is simply trying to identify risk factors when it comes to mental health that could indicate violent behavior, they said.

 

“Privacy must be safeguarded. Profiling must be avoided. Data protection capabilities will be the cornerstone of this effort.”

 

Proponents of the plan say that an agency like HARPA, which applies technology being used in other fields to develop medical breakthroughs, is long overdue.

 

“DARPA is a brilliant model that works. They have developed the most transformational capabilities in the world for national security,” said Liz Feld, the president of the Suzanne Wright Foundation, saying those techniques had yet to be applied to health care. “We’re not leveraging the tools and technologies available to us to improve and save lives.”

2

 

 

 

[twa]

Slippery slopes.

Warm buns.

Can't we all just get along?

[Kosher Ham]

How long did it take to find Osama and Sadam? 

 

A: Way too long.

[tshile]

I’m all for increasing investment in mental health research (and treatment and facilities for care etc). 

 

I dont know if a new department was needed... and it’s hard to ignore the concerns. 

 

Also as much as I’m interested in the mental health angle to gun violence it seems like a really narrow scope. Especially for an entire department. 

[Kurd Cudins]

Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes”

 

That is trying WAY too ****ing hard to make an acronym.

[LadySkinsFan]

More commonly shared attributes of mass shooters include a strong sense of resentment, desire for notoriety, obsession with other shooters, a history of domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

 

This is the important part that needs to be tracked, not all persons with diagnosed mental illness. 

 

It's important to increase studies of mental illness, develop comprehensive treatment programs, and cover that treatment instead of tying it to gun sales, unless the person is a direct danger to others. 

 

I don't like this idea the Trump administration is looking at. It reminds me of the Nazis putting mentally ill people in concentration camps and experimenting on them.

[No Excuses]

There's something missing from this story or it's poorly communicated or maybe it's a dumb idea.

 

If this new agency is modeled after DARPA, then you're talking about investments in research that are typically moonshots and have a high likelihood of not resulting in feasible technologies. A lot of the work DARPA funds fizzles out because their mission isn't to fund easily achievable science. It's taking on niche ideas, very early-stage concepts, sometimes totally theoretical ideas, spending 2-4 years funding these projects and then either spinning them off or shutting them down. It's been a fairly successful model of research, leading to the creation of everything from the internet to stealth technology. In the bio space, they are currently funding a lot of early stage work in synthetic biology and brain-computer interfaces. But because a lot of the work is classified, the failure rate of a lot of the work also remains out of public sight and scrutiny.

 

The DoD has other research agencies that fund more tangible and typically low-risk (in terms of failure) research. DARPA basically operates in a very nimble capacity, with an annual budget of like 2-3 bilion compared to other DoD research-focused offices. They also don't give grants the way NIH or NSF do, where a block of money is guaranteed to a grant recepient, where as DARPA constantly evaluates project performance and results and retains the authority to revoke funding if a concept isn't working.

 

So if HARPA is created to fund work that the NIH would consider high-risk in terms of failure, then this wouldn't be a bad idea. What's laid out in the WaPo article would basically be an individual program within a bigger agency (if it is to be modeled like DARPA). HHS already has a DARPA-lite agency called BARDA, which operates in the biomedical countermeasures space against CBRN threats. So you could perhaps create "HARPA" and have subdivisions within it like BARDA, maybe some other ones that deal with specific areas like genetics, neurological disorders etc. This would be similar to DARPA, which is basically broken down into various sub agencies like BTO (Biotech Office), MTO (microelectronics office) etc.

 

The idea that we can determine someones proclivity for violence from data collected from wearables or cell phones isn't very well backed by research, but it's the kind of idea that an agency modeled in the style of DARPA would pursue. I think it's a decent idea and worth investigating.

[Llevron]

Well it sounds alot better when you say it like that 

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, No Excuses said:

The idea that we can determine someones proclivity for violence from data collected from wearables or cell phones isn't very well backed by research, but it's the kind of idea that an agency modeled in the style of DARPA would pursue. I think it's a decent idea and worth investigating.

 

We tried a similar approach gathering as much information by any technological means neccesary as possible to find terrorists with the PRISM program, only difference was it was involuntary and not public knowledge.  

 

I'm not against pulling more information together to look for what leads to mass murders, but why are we allowing a program to target mental health before allowing CDC to look at everything at the same time?  If they even tried to frame this for looking for risk signs for suicide, I'd be more understanding, but it's clear their main target is looking for as much evidence as possible to blame mass murder on mental illness. 

 

This isnt a program designed to help people with mental illness, it's a program design to protect people from them, which is the wrong message and wrong approach.  If mental health professionals are saying only a fraction of mass shooters have mental illness, why have an entire research department targeting that?  To say you did something instead of fixing the gun laws? 

 

They are about to pour millions of dollars into trying to prove this is a cause when the profession is saying this is a factor at best, they arent listening to then because it's not what they want to hear.  

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, LadySkinsFan said:

More commonly shared attributes of mass shooters include a strong sense of resentment, desire for notoriety, obsession with other shooters, a history of domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

 

This is the important part that needs to be tracked, not all persons with diagnosed mental illness. 

 

It's important to increase studies of mental illness, develop comprehensive treatment programs, and cover that treatment instead of tying it to gun sales, unless the person is a direct danger to others. 

 

I don't like this idea the Trump administration is looking at. It reminds me of the Nazis putting mentally ill people in concentration camps and experimenting on them.

 

You know why else this smells like BS?  Saying they are looking for warning signs of mass murder in volunteers. 

 

What potential mass murderer is going to volunteer for a program designed to figure out how to catch them before they do it?  I dont know about concentration camps, but I totally believe the reveling of this program is for testing the waters of public opinion so they can it in the open instead of hiding it like the PRISM program. 

 

What health information do they plan to get from an Amazon Echo? The same devices that listens for everything in case someone finally says a trigger word like Alexa?  There may be some thing I really do want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on, but this wont be one of them.

[Destino]

I don’t want the government, or anyone, collecting data from my devices.  I don’t want to be attacked by law enforcement just because some fringe science future crime AI decides I might be dangerous. In fact I want the government to ban wide data collection by tech companies almost entirely.  This goes in the wrong direction, a dangerous direction, in my opinion.  

 

This all feels like a way to put off gun control and cracking down on white nationalism in the US.  We don’t need more monitoring and more government intrusion.  We need fewer guns, to make guns more difficult to acquire, and more law enforcement attention placed on violent domestic groups.

 

 

[Elessar78]

This is brilliant. 

 

So . . . we are going to do a mental health background check on everybody, so people buying guns don't have to undergo a background check?

[Renegade7]

6 hours ago, Elessar78 said:

This is brilliant. 

 

So . . . we are going to do a mental health background check on everybody, so people buying guns don't have to undergo a background check?

 

I hope when they turn it on it beeps out of control over Trumps twitter account like some beach metal detector.  

[Nerm]

12 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

You know why else this smells like BS?  Saying they are looking for warning signs of mass murder in volunteers. 

 

What potential mass murderer is going to volunteer for a program designed to figure out how to catch them before they do it?  I dont know about concentration camps, but I totally believe the reveling of this program is for testing the waters of public opinion so they can it in the open instead of hiding it like the PRISM program. 

 

What health information do they plan to get from an Amazon Echo? The same devices that listens for everything in case someone finally says a trigger word like Alexa?  There may be some thing I really do want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on, but this wont be one of them.

 

 Well, my guess is that the "volunteers" would come from people "agreeing" with the 500 page terms of service from whatever app they download, or putting their initials on one of the 15 places you have to initial when filling out paperwork for a new patient.  

 

However, you would not get much info from people who are afraid to get their guns taken away.  It is similar to rules that prohibit pilots from flying if they are treated for mental health issues.  Simple solution, if you have mental health problems, never tell a medical professional that you have any symptoms and never seek treatment of them.  Then, they will leave you alone and let you do what you think is best.

[Springfield]

So I like the idea of HARPA, an advanced research agency focused on health.  I like the idea of studying mental health as it relates to mass murders.  I like the idea of a HARPA developing advanced treatments and diagnostics over pressing medical issues.  Better health care is great and I’m willing to throw money at smart people to try and help the cause.

 

As it relates to mass murders...  

 

As I said in the gun control thread, I think this whole mental health aspect of gun control is a cop out.  It’s never going to go anywhere.  How do you protect someone’s 2nd amendment rights while also protecting their 4th amendment rights?  Not every mentally ill person is going to murder 20 people at random just like not every gun owner is going to murder 40 because they can.  In fact, I’d bet that they’re both very, very rare in either case.

 

If you use mental health screenings based on HARPA research to prevent gun ownership then you’re going to prevent people who would be lawful from owning guns.  Same way with some sort of gun ban, background check, or whatever.

 

So, I’m in favor of a HARPA as far as research.  Not in favor in practice and I don’t foresee any practical way to implement a mental health screen to prevent mass murders.

[Renegade7]

10 hours ago, Nerm said:

 

However, you would not get much info from people who are afraid to get their guns taken away.  It is similar to rules that prohibit pilots from flying if they are treated for mental health issues.  Simple solution, if you have mental health problems, never tell a medical professional that you have any symptoms and never seek treatment of them.  Then, they will leave you alone and let you do what you think is best.

 

Do you seriously consider that a solution?

 

https://nypost.com/2018/08/15/suicide-by-plane-has-killed-393-people-in-just-4-years/

 

Quote

A Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed into a mountain while en route from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany. Preliminary information indicates that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, locked the captain out of the ****pit before deliberately crashing the aircraft, killing 150 people. Officials said Lubitz had previously been treated for depression and suicidal tendencies

 

[Bozo the kKklown]

Anything to make sure white terrorists, sympathizers of white terrorists, and those who cringe at the word white aren’t held accountable for their crimes. Including some insane minority report isn’t that will target vulnerable and non violent people. 

[Nerm]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

 

Do you seriously consider that a solution?

 

 

No, not at all.  But that is the result of the policy.

[Renegade7]

10 minutes ago, Nerm said:

 

No, not at all.  But that is the result of the policy.

 

To be fair, confirmed plane crashes from suicide are rare.  But I would rather them require mental health evaluations,  even if I think they will lie, then not have them at all.  I think that is a bigger conversation about what to do for people afraid to say anything to get the help they need. 

 

Making it clear society is afraid of them instead of doing something radical like offering tuition assistance for another field if they fail a mental health exam, for example. No one wants to pay to help them and then suprised when it costs them anyway, many times more in most cases.

[Bang]

On 9/6/2019 at 2:29 PM, Destino said:

I don’t want the government, or anyone, collecting data from my devices.  I don’t want to be attacked by law enforcement just because some fringe science future crime AI decides I might be dangerous. In fact I want the government to ban wide data collection by tech companies almost entirely.  This goes in the wrong direction, a dangerous direction, in my opinion.  

 

This all feels like a way to put off gun control and cracking down on white nationalism in the US.  We don’t need more monitoring and more government intrusion.  We need fewer guns, to make guns more difficult to acquire, and more law enforcement attention placed on violent domestic groups.

 

 

10000% agree.

This sure as hell can be abused, and will be abused.

Very very very dangerous.

 

Predicting who may commit crimes when none have been committed.. (which will lead to action, either denial of rights, and likely eventually arrests..)  this is insidious and 100% against everything our entire legal system is based on.

 

~Bang