Between Diagnosis and Behavior: Psychiatric Considerations in Threat Management
Presenter: John “Jack” Rozel, MD, MSL, DFAPA
Abstract: Most violence is not due to mental illness or people with mental illness. Most people with mental illness are never violent. Nonetheless, threat management professionals need to understand how mental illness and targeted violence can and do intersect and, most importantly, how to investigate and manage cases where there is a potential intersection of violence risk and mental illness. Likewise, mental health professionals need to understand how behavioral threat assessment and management can help with identifying and managing their highest risk patients. This presentation will explore the evidence on the role of mental illness in targeted and mass violence, explore the implications and limitations of the available scientific literature, explore practical applications of these findings for both clinical and threat management professionals, and discuss strategies for improving collaboration between behavioral health and threat management professionals.
Learning Goals
- Describe what is and is not known about the correlation between psychiatric illness, treatments, and violence
- Recognize how threat management can mitigate implicit bias in violence risk evaluation
- Distinguish reasons why mental health intervention may or may not be possible for people at risk for violence
- Identify strategies to mitigate risk of violence in people with mental illness
Audience: All professionals working in the violence risk assessment, threat management/BTAM, security, close protection, criminal justice, or mental health fields. You do not have to be a mental health professional to attend and benefit from this workshop.
CPD: 8 General HPCSA CEUs to be applied for.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jack Rozel has been working in emergency mental health since 1990 and serves as the Medical Director of resolve Crisis Services and the Clinical Chief of Crisis Services at UPMC Western Behavioral Health. He is also the founder and co-director of the UPMC Systemwide Threat Assessment and Response Team. Dr. Rozel is a Professor of Psychiatry and Law at the University of Pittsburgh and a past president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry. Dr. Rozel trains and consults with teams across UPMC and the world on projects related to violence and threat management, staff injury prevention, firearm injury prevention, and crisis and emergency psychiatry. He has served as an incident commander for mass shootings and been involved in the behavioral health response to several mass casualty events. He is a member of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and has contributed to major policy efforts including the National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s reports on Mass Violence, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s violence management guidelines, the AMA et al’s Amici brief for the NYSRPA v Bruen case before the Supreme Court, the FBI / American Hospital Association’s Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Compendium, and ASIS International’s Workplace Violence and Active Shooter standards.
