So now let's get started last week when President Donald Trump described the two
mass shootings as a quote mental health problem your CEO dr. Arthur Evans
immediately responded by issuing a statement reminding the public that that
information was all wrong in a move that took courage dr. Evans boldly called it
unfounded to blame the shootings on mental health and especially without
considering bigotry hateful rhetoric and access to drugs dr. Evans is a scientist
practitioner a clinical and community psychologist and healthcare innovator
please join me in welcoming him to the stage dr. Arthur Evans
thank you so much thank you so as we start this conversation the first
question that I had for you is the APA has approached the conversation about
gun violence at least every year for the past five years why was it important for
you to have this conversation specifically in Chicago and on this
broad of a stage well we've we've taken a very strong
stand on this issue because when you look at the public policy around gun
violence it doesn't match what we know from the science and as a scientific
organization we think it's really important to inform public policy to
make sure that we're using the knowledge that we have as discipline and
profession to really address these big social issues the reason that we thought
that it was important to address us in Chicago is that for over a decade I was
a commissioner of behavioral health in the city of Philadelphia in every major
city in this country we are dealing with gun violence on a day to day basis and
it seems like the national conversation around gun violence only occurs when
there is a mass shooting and I think it's important for us to make sure that
our public our policymakers understand that this is a much bigger issue and
that we have to think about not only these mass shootings but what's
happening in this country on a day to day basis many more people unfortunately
died from gun shots during the week than these major incidents I'm glad that you
use the phrase day to day we will explain the stance as an organization of
trying to influence public policy and having a role in that national
conversation but what can psychologists do day-to-day in their own work to have
an impact in this field that is a great question and I think that the thing that
we can bring as as people who are trained first as scientists even if
you're a practitioner you're trained as a scientist and then as a practitioner I
think it's important for us to know what the science says to know what the
research says and to be able to educate in almost all these instances you know
whether you're in Iowa or Chicago or Philadelphia media are in people in the
media are putting out information that we know is incorrect and I think it's
psychologists we should be able to write to editors we should make sure that we
are available to the media it's really important for our voice as a discipline
and profession to be out there on these issues you talk about being out there
and talking to the media you've done that quite a bit this week as you have
corrected President Trump who wrongly asserted that this the mass shootings
were a result of mental illness can you talk about the role that hateful
rhetoric plays and bigotry in these types of incidents it's a very good
question I think in in our statement we said that blaming mass shootings on
mental illness is simplistic and it's inaccurate and it doesn't follow the the
data it is simplistic because if you look at whether it's mass shootings or
gun violence in general there are confluence of issues that are
influencing that phenomena and we thought it was really important to get
that that get that that broader picture out there and so we're going to continue
to do that it's important that we do that as an association in Chicago which
is where you're hosting this wonderful event
our mayor Lori Lightfoot has said that gun violence should be handled as a
public health crisis can you give me some feedback on what that looks like
can you unpack how that approach would look couldn't agree more
this is a public health issue and if you think about the public health issues
that we've had in this country whether it's smoking or using seatbelts things
you know if you go back 20 40 years you look at these kinds of issues where I
guess the public believed that this was a problem that we couldn't solve
and when we've used public health approaches we've actually been able to
solve those in the gun issue I think one of the issues one of the things that
public health teaches us is that we ought to be working as far upstream on
these issues as possible we should be looking at not only how do we deal with
people who are at that point at which they are about to commit one of these
acts and we certainly should be doing that but we should be thinking about
much further upstream not only for that individual but but also in terms of
developmentally what are the things that we do to help children develop in a way
that they don't see violence as a way of solving problems and addressing issues
and so that public health mind mindset that way of thinking about issues I
think opens up a whole range of things that we should be doing that if we're
only thinking about the crisis we miss Wow so often when we talk about gun
violence wonder things think it's tossed around a lot is the word senseless you
challenged that word talk to me about why what I think is senseless about gun
violence is that we're not doing anything about it the fact that we know
things that we could do to reduce gun violence in this country and we don't do
it to me that is senseless the other reason that we ought to
challenge that word is that when you talk about these issues as being
senseless what it does is it creates an image in people's mind that this is an
intractable problem that these people are doing something that we have no
answers for we have no explanations for and the fact is we do have an
explanation for much of that and you're gonna hear from experts today that have
studied this and can talk to us about what the research says around that we
need to understand that this is not an intractable problem it is not we know
some things that can help reduce gun violence and we need to do the research
to develop new interventions you know if we have a plane crash in this country
10 hours we are deploying people to that plane crash to try to understand every
single thing that we can so that it doesn't happen again
we will spend millions of dollars just to find the black box because we don't
want that to happen again we need to do the exact same thing when there's a mass
shooting in this country and we can
so I I would love to see us develop the research developed the the political
will to respond to these situations in a very similar way we can do that and I
think it starts with committed people like us standing up having a voice and I
will say this you mentioned the the the coverage that APA got we as of within 72
hours we were cited in over a thousand publications and articles around the
world literally around the world our voice was out there and what that told
us is that when we act when we act boldly when we are unapologetic about
putting the research out there when we are truthful that people listen I had a
colleague to even send me a note about a Ox new show where conservative
commentators were talking about APA and the route and the research that we cited
and so even across the political spectrum we can have an impact when we
when we do that and I think as a Association I think it's an exciting
time because I think we see more and more of our members stepping up and
stepping into that void absolutely you know you've been very visible and as you
said unapologetic in tackling this issue it's very admirable there's so many
things that we could talk about we could talk about trauma we could talk about
public policy but as we enter into this broader conversation and bring out some
of the other guests what are your hopes and wishes for this audience what do you
want them to take away from this conversation that we're having well I
hope that every single person in this audience commits themselves to this
issue I think that again it's senseless that we're not doing something as a
country on an issue that we know that there are things that we can do and I
hope that people will educate themselves be willing to write a brief letter to
talk to their legislators about things that they can do this is something that
we can actually change and I hope we're starting a movement in this country or
joining a movement because there many people that have been talking about this
for you and I think joining our voice to that
chorus I think will make a big difference so I hope people will do that
and so you want your members to then be moved to action from today the time for
waiting is over indeed agreed thank you so much for this
conversation