Citation

Swanson J, Easter M, Brancu M, Fairbank JA. Adm. Policy Ment. Health 2018; 45(4): 673-683.

Affiliation

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Mid-Atlantic Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (VISN 6 MIRECC), Durham, NC, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10488-018-0881-y

PMID

29797151

Abstract

This article examines the public safety rationale for a federal policy of prohibiting gun sales to veterans with psychiatric disabilities who are assigned a fiduciary to manage their benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The policy was evaluated using data on 3200 post-deployment veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan war era. Three proxy measures of fiduciary need-based on intellectual disability, drug abuse, or acute psychopathology-were associated in bivariate analysis with interpersonal violence and suicidality. In multivariate analysis, statistical significance remained only for the measure based on acute psychopathology. Implications for reforms to the fiduciary firearm restriction policy are discussed.

Language: en

Keywords

Fiduciary; Gun violence; Mental Illness; Suicide; Veterans