WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Widespread and easy access to guns is the reason behind the shockingly high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, and not any rise in mental health problems suffered by perpetrators, a new study shows.

The United States has the same burden of mental health disorders as 40 other countries with comparable populations, researchers reported recently in the journal PLOS One.

However, the U.S. rate of death by firearms is 20 times greater than those other countries, results show.

“We have the same degree of mental health issues as other countries, but our firearm death rate is far greater and continuing to increase,” said lead investigator Dr. Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor with Oregon Health & Science University. “In most of the countries, firearms deaths are decreasing.”

Polling has shown that most of the public believes that mental health disorders are to blame for the high U.S. firearm death rate, Bleyer said.

But the latest findings indicate that firearm availability is the true cause of America’s gun death epidemic, Bleyer said.

For the study, researchers compared the United States to 40 other countries with similar demographics between 2000 and 2019 using data drawn from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Health Burden.

The research team looked specifically at firearm deaths and the burden of mental health issues in the countries.

Since 2000, the rate of U.S. firearms deaths has increased by 23% overall, researchers found. Suicide gun deaths increased by 18% and murders by 39%.

During the same period, gun deaths in the other 40 countries combined were down by 27%.

Those foreign gun deaths declined even though the countries had similar or higher rates of mental health disorders than the United States, researchers said.

“Every other country, deaths by firearms went down, despite a similar amount of mental health disorders,” Bleyer said in a university news release.

The United States now has 4% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s firearms, researchers found.

“Firearm deaths is a public health crisis in the U.S.,” Bleyer said. “Mental health disorder prevalence does not explain the higher firearm death rate. The difference is we have a way in this country of taking those mental health problems to the extreme by using firearms, which lead to death.”

Bleyer said it’s important to note that his study doesn’t mean to whitewash the mental health crisis in the United States.

“We do have significant mental health problems, there is no doubt about that,” Bleyer said. “We don’t have enough mental health providers, facilities, treatments. It’s the way that we have facilitated killing ourselves that leads to death with firearms, where we take this to the extreme.”

More information

The Pew Research Center has more on gun deaths in the United States.

SOURCE: Oregon Health & Science University, news release, Sept. 9, 2024

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