Mass Shooters, Drugs, and Personality Disorders
A Short Note on the Psychology of Mass Shooters
Before returning to my series on Mattias Desmet’s new book, I want to write about something a bit different. Ben Swann recently reposted his 2018 Reality Check “Are Psychiatric Drugs Really the Leading Cause of Mass Shootings” in response to the Highland Park mass shooting. He’s careful not to make the claim that antidepressants (or anti-psychotics) are the direct cause of the mass-shooting phenomenon, but asks the question as to why so many just happen to be on such medications.
Personally I tend to think the medications are a side issue, or at best secondary. One study (Lee 2013, referenced in this paper) suggests that only 12% of school shootings, for example, are caused by either side-effects or non-compliance with taking prescribed psychiatric drugs. “Bullying” (more on which below) accounts for the bulk: 87%. This one found that just over a third of 21st-century school shooters were either currently on medication, or had been in the past. This paper, by contrast, found that “most school shooters were not previously treated with psychotropic medications - and even when they were, no direct or causal association was found,” but I don’t have access to the full paper to read it for myself. According to the CDC, 5.5% of young men have used antidepressants in the past 30 days (as of a handful of years ago), so such drug use does seem more prevalent among shooters than among the general population of that age group—two to six times as prevalent perhaps.
But the phenomenon itself predates modern psychiatric medications. From the first paper (published in 2015):
During the 19th century, there were 49 K–12 school shootings, 207 K–12 school shootings nationwide throughout the 20th century, and since 2000 there have been 152 K–12 school shootings … As these statistics reveal, school violence has increased by 19% in the 21st century.
The numbers have risen over the centuries (and with Columbine, the number of victims), though not as much as you’d think when you factor in population growth. The U.S. population grew from around 5 to 76 million in the 19th century, up to 280 million by the end of the 20th, and up another 50 million in the first 20 years of the 21st.
The bigger issues are personality disorders and mental illness. According to one recent paper:
The majority of assailants (87.5%) had misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated or undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric illness. Most of the assailants also experienced profound estrangement not only from families, friends, and classmates but most importantly from themselves. Being marginalized and interpersonally shunned rendered them more vulnerable to their untreated psychiatric illness and to radicalization online, which fostered their violence.
The psychiatric illnesses they found were predominantly schizophrenia (56%) and other disorders (31%) like bipolar, delusional, and personality (paranoid and borderline). (I suspect schizophrenia may be overdiagnosed here, and personality disorder underdiagnosed.)
As for the “profound estrangement,” marginalization and shunning, no, I don’t think bullying causes school shootings. Rather, it’s a similar dynamic to that of parents who adopt a violent parenting style in response to their child’s own aggression. Some people really do want friends, but their personalities repel normal people and inspire some to tease, bully, or harass them to the point of a breakdown, which seems to be the case with many school shooters.
In the notes for Political Ponerology, in the section on “schizoid psychopathy,” I wrote: “Many school shooters have schizoid, schizotypal, and avoidant (or asthenic) traits” (p. 108).1 A doctoral dissertation by Tawnya Michelle Ayim, which I cited in the note, makes a similar observation: “Imminent and high risk cases showed an elevated presence of pathology on the following personality profiles [in decreasing order]: introversive-schizoid, inhibited-avoidant, doleful-depressive, unruly-antisocial, oppositional-negativistic.” Commenting on “the quiet, withdrawn paranoid,” Robins and Post write: “Many [attempted assassins of U.S. presidents] led quiet, withdrawn lives prior to their history-changing acts. Brooding, distrustful loners, they manifested both grandiosity and bitterness. The gap between their majestic ambitions and their failed lives was extreme” (Political Paranoia, p. 18). So in the case of mass shooters, we often see dangerous combinations of pathological narcissism, introversion, emotional detachment, neuroticism, and/or paranoia.
Dr. Peter Langman at schoolshooters.info also sees a connection, characterizing such shooters into three broad groups:
Psychopathic shooters are narcissistic, entitled, lacking in empathy, and sometimes sadistic. Some are abrasive and belligerent; others are charming and deceptive.
Psychotic shooters have either schizophrenia or schizotypal personality disorder, with a combination of psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thoughts/behavior), eccentric behavior and beliefs, and severely impaired social/emotional functioning.
Traumatized shooters grew up in chronically dysfunctional families characterized by parental substance abuse, domestic violence, physical abuse, sometimes sexual abuse, frequent relocations, and changing caregivers.
In my opinion, Lobaczewski’s description of “schizoid psychopathy” overlaps with modern diagnoses of schizoid PD, schizotypal PD, and autism spectrum disorder. There may also be some overlap between his “asthenic psychopathy” (which is now referred to as “avoidant personality disorder”) and schizotypal. (According to Millon’s PD model, “schizotypal traits can emerge through the deterioration of an avoidant personality.”) On these traits and their differences, I’ve found Dr. Todd Grande’s videos to be great little summaries. For example, here are the differences between avoidant and schizoid:
Very briefly summarized, schizoids are detached and don’t care (low extraversion, low neuroticism); avoidants want relationships, but avoid them out of fear (low extraversion, high neuroticism).
And between schizoid and schizotypal:
Both lack close relationships with others, but schizotypals are odd or unusual in their presentation and thinking (strange beliefs, ideas of reference, paranoid). Though as Grande points out, the two are often comorbid. Here’s an interesting case study: Pazuzu Algarad.
And here’s one on the connections and differences between autism and personality disorders:
Grande quotes one study on 54 autists, just under half of which were also diagnosed with personality disorders (the number was higher in the men—two thirds). In order from most to least prevalent: schizoid, obsessive-compulsive, avoidant, and schizotypal. Interestingly, there was no comorbidity with the Cluster B disorders (narcissistic, antisocial, borderline, histrionic), or paranoid or dependent PDs (though keep in mind the sample was small). So the overlap seems to be primarily with Cluster A and Cluster C personality disorders.
He also has a series of insightful videos looking at the crimes, personalities, and psychopathologies of several mass shooters, e.g. Robert Crimo, James Holmes, Elliot Rodger, Adam Lanza, Nikolas Cruz, Seung-Hui Cho, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.2
In some of the above videos Grande points out that autists are probably less likely to commit violent crimes compared with the general population, but that he suspects a small subtype of autistic psychopathy.
Finally, I found a couple interesting things while doing research on this topic. First: “The Myth That the US Leads the World in Mass Shootings.” Also, it turns out Adam Lanza had a YouTube channel where he rambled about his “anti-pedophobia,” among other things, which wasn’t discovered until 2021 (!). Full transcripts at the link. He makes sure to say that he isn’t a pedophile; it’s just that children can consent to sex with adults, and it is as harmless as sex between adults. Here’s a gem of paramorality: “Consent is something which is important to me, on the contrary people who oppose pedophilic relationships are the ones who do not care about consent. They completely dismiss children’s wills and desires as being nonexistent.” And this one:
If you really cared about children then why are you advocating civilization? Civilization is the systematic rape of — mind-fucking of the children, of children’s minds but you don’t care about children, you don’t care about that because you want to propagate your own values onto them! You’re angry at me because I want to free children from you. Because, I don’t, want to allow you to have children be your property. And I don’t understand why I’m so alone on this, I feel like I’m the only non-pedophile in the entire world who can see that this hysteria about childhood sexuality isn’t about protecting children, it’s protect — about protecting their status as property.
Reads like left-brain pathology to me…
As a refresher, here are some of the traits Lobaczewski ascribes to schizoidia: dull affect (but efficient speculative reasoning), intellectual arrogance, hypersensitive and distrustful (more of a schizotypal trait), take extreme positions (though simplistic and legalistic), sometimes eccentric and odd (another schizotypal trait), poor understanding of others’ motivations, pessimistic regarding human nature, psychotic episodes under stress. And this one has some wide-ranging implications: “easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals” (pp. 107-108).
Here are some more sources linking specific PDs with recent school shooters: Dylann Roof (schizoid, possible autism), Seung-Hui Cho (paranoid-schizoid), James Holmes (schizotypal), Dylan Klebold (avoidant, schizotypal), Elliot Rodger (schizotypal, psychopathic), Adam Lanza (avoidant, schizoid, autism).
Fascinating that there were school shootings in the 19th century. I'd thought the first one was in the 50s.
In any case, it seems very clear that the explosion in school shootings in recent decades has nothing to do with guns (which were always there) and everything to do with the pathogenic circumstances of modernity. But addressing the latter, also implicated in e.g. the dramatic growth in the abuse of prescription and recreational chemicals, would require asking questions about social organization. And no one with power wants to do that.
Great article Harrison - I haven’t yet but will watch the videos - thanks for highlighting them!
In my experience the distinction between DSM categories with real clients can be rather blurry, nevertheless I understand and appreciate the definitions - giving us solid points of reference from which we can sensibly talk about such pathologies, while accepting the often dynamic blurry edges that living beings inevitably display.
And congratulations again on the notes in PP - a remarkable effort that really brings an important dimension to this latest edition. I’m probably not mistaken in assuming such work could have produced a book on its own! (I guess you can tell you have a fan in me!)