Family said Colorado suspect had 'mental illness.' Experts say that's rarely the cause of mass shoot

The 21-year-old suspect arrested in the rampage, the second in a week, was almost immediately described by family members as paranoid and antisocial. But researchers and advocates say the rush to cast blame on a mental illness is misplaced. "People are searching for explanations for behavior they don't understand. It's easy to put a label like mental illness on behavior that frankly seems just beyond the pale," said Angela Kimball, national director for advocacy and public policy at NAMI. Police have not yet said what the gunman's motive was, but Metzl said immediate blame on mental illness does not tell the full story of what causes a mass shooting. "Mental illness alone is not a predictor of violence," Kimball said. "If mental illness were a cause, we would be seeing proportionally so many more mass shootings." When people unfairly connect mass shooters with mental illness, it stigmatizes the millions of people living with mental health struggles who are not violent, Kimball said. "When they hear people falsely associate mental illness with a mass shooting, people tend to feel a kind of dread of this being associated with a condition that they may be living with every day of their lives," she said.