“”A 2017 task force report on the involuntary referrals of children under Florida’s Baker Act found that one-third of them were not necessary,” according to a recent article by Kaitlin Gibbs of the University of Florida Levin College of Law. “Many children are Baker Acted more than once, which shows the initial Baker Act may not have successfully treated children with mental illness. At least thirty percent of all children Baker Acted will have a repeat Baker Act within five years.”
Nor is throwing people into mental wards likely to reduce the number of mass shootings. As Ragy Girgis, a clinical psychiatrist at Columbia University, wrote in 2022, “Serious mental illness—specifically psychosis—is not a key factor in most mass shootings or other types of mass murder.” And while 25 percent of mass shootings “are associated with non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses, including depression,” he notes that “in most cases these conditions are incidental.”
In the case of last week’s murders in Maine, the shooter, 40-year-old Robert Card, was hospitalized during the summer. But officials say there is no evidence this hospitalization was involuntary. And Card’s history of mental illness makes him unusual among other mass murderers.”
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“If DeSantis’ plan were enacted, the likely result would be a rapid increase in the unnecessary institutionalization of mentally ill individuals—and a negligible impact on criminal violence.”