NYAPRS Note: The conclusions in the long-awaited report from the Connecticut state commission offering recommendations in the wake of the tragedy at Newtown are both stringent and responsible. Focusing primarily on the security of individual classrooms and enhanced teacher and administrative awareness, rather than on a broad appeal to enhance overall security or restrictive mental health assessments and services, the report balances expert opinions with a measured and proven response to averting school-based gun violence. The report appropriately notes the complexity of reforming mental health care in light of the tragedy, and focuses on campaigns to reduce stigma, offer more opportunities for inclusive early intervention, and trauma-informed and age-appropriate assessments.
The Commission did not recommend the use of outpatient commitment.
See the full report at http://www.governor.ct.gov/malloy/lib/malloy/SHAC_Doc_2015.02.13_draft_version_of_final_report.pdf
Key findings and recommendations include:
- “a diagnosable mental illness alone is a very weak predictor of interpersonal violence – particularly compared to other factors such as substance abuse, a history of violence, socio-economic disadvantage, youth, and male gender. All of these factors have far stronger correlations with a risk of violence than does a psychiatric diagnosis.
- Accessible community treatment programs can reduce the relatively low risk of violence among most people living with mental illness. The Commission recommends expansion and increased availability of early intervention programs for those young adults…to reduce the likelihood that a person facing a psychotic illness might resort to violence or self-harm.
- No one has yet devised a reliable method for predicting future violence. Trait-based profiling appears to represent an ineffective and even counterproductive means of identifying individuals likely to commit acts of targeted violence and instead more likely creates stigma. Instead, behavioral threat assessment could be useful; it focuses on identifying and intervening with individuals whose behavior and/or communications clearly indicate an intention to commit violence.
- The Commission recommends the formation of multidisciplinary teams to conduct risk assessments in schools.
- No “recommendation concerning adopting involuntary outpatient commitment as an option short of involuntary hospitalization in Connecticut.”
Newtown Panel’s Report Aims to Improve Safety
New York Times; Marc Santora, 2/12/2015
More than two years after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 schoolchildren and six faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., as well as killing his mother and himself, a state commission released a draft report of a wide-ranging set of recommendations on Thursday with the goal of preventing such killings.
The recommendations include simple measures — like ensuring that all classrooms can be locked from the inside — as well as more ambitious and difficult reforms of both the mental health care system and the way the public views those struggling with mental illness.
There are also calls for stricter gun laws, better training for school staffs and a comprehensive plan for law enforcement to follow in the event of a mass shooting.
The panel, known as the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, also dedicates dozens of pages to discussing school design, but it warns against going too far and turning schools into fortresses.
“The initial, and entirely natural, reaction to a tragedy like the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School is to consider steps that would make it virtually impossible for such a violent event to occur at a school ever again,” the authors of the report wrote. After listening to testimony from officials in other communities, however, the commission found that there was a danger of schools’ feeling like “minimum security prisons in terms of their design.”
“Such facilities may, in fact, effectively eliminate some of the risk of an event like Sandy Hook,” the report said. “But they achieve that objective at a great cost, not just financial, but mental, emotional, and self-development as well. That is not the direction the commission believes the American educational system should follow.”
Instead, the 256-page report offers recommendations on designing schools to increase the situational awareness of teachers and staff members and to safeguard students.
Perhaps most important, the members of the commission found, is the simplest measure: Make sure classrooms can be locked from the inside.
“The commission cannot emphasize enough the importance of this recommendation,” the authors wrote. “The testimony and other evidence presented to the commission reveals that there has never been an event in which an active shooter breached a locked classroom door.”
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will consider the recommendations, some of which he can effect without legislative approval. The report was timed for release during the current session of the General Assembly so state legislators can consider the measures that will require changes to the law.
The commission, whose members include teachers, public safety and mental health professionals, was given the task of not only reviewing the massacre at Sandy Hook in detail but also delving into some of the deadliest school shootings in the nation’s history, including Columbine and Virginia Tech.
The governor directed the panel to recommend changes in three areas: mental health, school safety and gun violence prevention.
Some of the recommendations are likely to be met with resistance, especially those involving gun control.
Connecticut already has relatively strict gun laws, but the commission said the state should go further. After the shooting, the legislature banned the sale of military-style rifles similar to the Bushmaster XM-15 used in the attack at Sandy Hook.
But the recommendations that concern mental health policy face the biggest challenge, which the commission acknowledged. The report emphasizes attention to inadequate insurance reimbursement rates, overcoming stigma and risk assessment of those with mental illness.
It is, the authors wrote, an “enormous, and enormously complex, subject.”
They pointed out that the public may never know Mr. Lanza’s mental state in the weeks leading up the shooting, in part because he also killed the person who had the most insight into his thinking: his mother, Nancy Lanza.