UTMB News

In Uvalde's wake, Houston doctors stress need for more research funding, bipartisan policy change

In Uvalde's wake, Houston doctors stress need for more research funding, bipartisan policy change

Houston Chronicle, May 27, 2022

As more facts in the Uvalde shooting come to light, Republican lawmakers continue to point to mental illness as the underlying cause of gun violence. But that is a “politically expedient” excuse that does not bear out with existing research, said Dr. Jeff Temple, director of the Center for Violence Prevention at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “We do need resources for mental health, but the fact is less than 5 percent of all gun violence is traced back to someone with a diagnosed mental illness.” Temple published a study in 2019 that found “individuals who had access to guns, compared to those with no such access, were over 18 times more likely to have threatened someone with a gun, even after controlling for a number of demographic and mental health variables.” Temple also discussed how people cope with these tragedies on KCBS Radio and Town Square on Houston Public Media. “The very best thing you could do is talk with your kids and start that conversation,” Temple said on Texas Standard. “Silence actually tells the kids that what happened is so horrible that you can’t even speak of it or that you’re scared that it’s going to happen again.”