Monitor smartphones of people with mental illness

We’ve become largely accustomed to the perpetual maelstrom of bad ideas swirling around the Trump White House, but the latest plan responding to mass shootings reminds us that our cursed timeline can still always get darker.  

Specifically, according to the Washington Post, the White House is considering studying if monitoring individuals with mental illness via their smartphones and smartwatches can predict incidents of mass violence. This idea, which the Post notes relies on the false notion that mass shootings are “directly linked” to mental illness, was reportedly put forth at the request of Ivanka Trump. She asked a group advocating for the creation of a new health-focused research agency dubbed HARPA (a play on the military research agency DARPA) to pitch ideas on the matter.

In other words, an advocacy group pushing for the creation of an as-of-yet nonexistent government agency has the ear of the White House — and it’s whispering some troubling stuff. (Of note, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has also floated the idea of HARPA on the campaign trail, but not in connection to this proposed research.)

Stigmatizing mental illness and discriminating against those who live with it is nothing new, of course, and the United States has a long history of doing just that. However, by now you’d think we know better.

In August, the National Council on Behavioral Health released a report directly addressing the oft-repeated claim that mental illness is the primary cause of mass shootings. Basically, the group writes, it’s way more complicated than that. 

“Many, if not most, perpetrators do not have a major psychiatric disorder.”

“Simplistic conclusions ignore the fact that mass violence is caused by many social and psychological factors that interact in complex ways; that many, if not most, perpetrators do not have a major psychiatric disorder; and that the large majority of people with diagnosable mental illnesses are not violent toward others,” the report states.

This information appears to have washed right over those advocating for investigating the efficacy of predicting mass violence by monitoring those experiencing mental illness via their smart devices. HARPA advocates have dubbed the plan Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes, or SAFEHOME. According to the Post, SAFEHOME would monitor those who’ve volunteered for the program. 

“I would love if some new technology suddenly came along that would help us identify violent risk,” explained the U.S. Secret Service’s former chief research psychologist Marisa Randazzo to the Washington Post, “but there’s so many things about this idea of predicting violence that doesn’t make sense.”

Essentially, the idea appears to be both nonsensical and based on a misreading of the available evidence — which, in the Trump White House, is often par for the course.