The mental health records of the Virginia Tech gunman unveiled yesterday don’t reveal much at all about why he killed 32 fellow students and himself. The records (online here and here ) depict Seung-Hui Cho as a fairly ordinary depressed and anxious student and don’t give any clue about the rampage he would go one just a year and a half later. That’s not surprising because predicting who might commit violence is really hard. After studying the subject extensively , researchers have identified certain signs associated with violent behavior. But even so, the ability to predict whether any one person is likely to be criminally violent is very low. One review of the literature , now 10 years old but still referred to frequently, found that the best predictor of violence were the same for people with and without mental illness: whether they had a criminal history. Factors related to mental illness were less important to the equation. A large study

published in February in the Archives of General Psychiatry also found that mental illness by itself doesn’t predict violence. A past history of violence or substance use, or current stressful event like divorce or job loss, were more helpful in predicting violence than just knowing whether people had a mental illness, according to the examination of data from more than 30,000 people. But those who had a mental illness and used recreational substances had a greater likelihood of committing violence compared to those with a mental illness and used no substances, researchers found. Of course that doesn’t mean that every person who fits those characteristics is going to be violent. For more on the Virginia Tech gunman’s records, read coverage from the WSJ , Washington Post , and New York Times , ABC News and the Roanoke Times , among others. Image: iStockphoto

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Violence Prediction and the Records of the Virginia Tech Shooter