Court Ruling May Increase Role of Mental Health Professionals in Evaluating Gun Rights

This past September, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that a federal law permanently barring the sale of firearms to people who have been involuntarily hospitalized for a mental illness was unconstitutional. The case centered around a 74-year-old Michigan man named Clifford Tyler, who, in 2011 was denied from purchasing a gun after a background check revealed that 25 years earlier, distraught over an impending divorce, he had been committed to a psychiatric hospital.  

In a column published yesterday in Psychiatric Services in Advance, Paul Applebaum, M.D. (pictured above), the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law at Columbia University, pointed out that this decision could impact mental health professionals and organizations that predominantly favor gun restrictions and a desire to reduce discrimination among people with mental illness. “There is likely … to be a certain amount of ambivalence about endorsing an approach that will restore gun access to at least some people with histories of involuntary hospitalization, even if doing so enhances the extent to which they are treated as ordinary members of society—otherwise an important goal,” he wrote.

“A parallel dilemma likely to arise in the wake of Tyler will be the demand for psychiatrists and psychologists to become involved in determining when it is safe to restore firearm access,” he continued. Understandably, there are concerns by clinicians of the liability, adverse publicity, and sanctions they could face should their decisions turn out to be wrong. 

“The decision in Tyler suggests that we may be moving toward more individualized determinations of risk for larger groups of people, for whom the predictors of violence are even less well specified. If that’s true, the odds are that mental health professionals will once again be asked to undertake that role,” he concluded.

For related information, see the Psychiatric News column “Psychiatrists Have a Role to Play in Latest Gun Law Debates” by APA President Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., and “APA Weighs In on Cases Where Law Intersects With Psychiatry.”

Judge Blocks Florida Law Restricting Gun Questions From Doctors

A federal judge has blocked enforcement of the Florida law that restricts what physicians can say or ask about guns to their patients. The law was passed earlier this year by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law June 2 by GOP Gov. Rick Scott. The governor, the National Rifle Association, and other supporters contended it was a violation of privacy and possibly the Second Amendment for physicians to question patients about the presence of guns in their home.

District Judge Marcia Cooke ruled that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech guarantees and does not trample gun rights. In her ruling, Cooke said she found very little evidence of widespread harassment or discrimination of gun owners by physicians. Republican Sen. Greg Evers, who was the chief Senate sponsor said he was disappointed in the ruling and expected an appeal would be filed.  

In a resolution passed at its June meeting, the AMA has expressed opposition to the law. Read more about this controversial law in Psychiatric News at http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/14/10.3.full.

(Image: Shutterstock)

AMA Responds to Florida Gun Communication Law

Credit: Nikola Bilic

The AMA is a vigorous defender of the physician-patient-family relationship and opposes state or federal efforts to interfere in the content of communication in clinical care delivery between clinicians and patients. Thus, the AMA plans to support litigation that may be necessary to block the implementation of newly enacted state or federal laws that restrict the privacy of physician-patient-family relationships or that violate the First Amendment rights of physicians in their practice of the art and science of medicine. That’s what the AMA House of Delegates said at this year’s annual policymaking meeting in Chicago in June.

The resolution is in response to a controversial new Florida law that restricts what physicians are allowed to discuss with patients about gun ownership. Florida psychiatrists and other physicians have voiced strong concerns about how this would interfere with a potentially important element of the doctor-patient relationship, since this type of knowledge can be crucial in preventing accidental, or even deliberate, injuries or deaths. For coverage of the AMA meeting look to upcoming editions of Psychiatric News, and for more information about the Florida law see Psychiatric News at http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/5/16.3.full.