CATAP 2025 Webinar Series |
Join us for our first webinar of 2025!
Malice, Mental Illness, and Mitigation: Understanding the Role of Mental Illness in Targeted Violence
Presented by John “Jack” Rozel, MD, MSL, DFAPA
When: March 13, 2025
Time: 1000-1130am (PDT)
Where: Virtual (Google Meet)
Cost: CATAP / TAP Members: FREE* | Non-members: $25
*Registration is required
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. This presentation will provide an update on the evidence about mental illness and targeted and mass violence, explore the implications and limitations of the available scientific literature, and explore practical applications of these findings for 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
About our speaker:
Dr. Rozel has been working in emergency mental health since 1990 and has been the medical director of resolve Crisis Services of UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital since 2010. He is a Past President of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry, the leading national organization dedicated to the improvement of compassionate, evidence-based care for people with psychiatric emergencies. He divides his time between emergency psychiatry and violence work.
Dr. Rozel trains and consults with teams across UPMC and the country 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, and the AMA et al’s Amici brief for the NYSRPA v Bruen case before the Supreme Court. He is the co-director of the UPMC Systemwide Threat Assessment and Response Team.
Dr. Rozel is board certified in general, child, and forensic psychiatry. He earned a bachelor’s in Biomedical Ethics and an MD at Brown University and a Master of Studies in Law from the University of Pittsburgh where he also completed his general psychiatry residency and child and forensic psychiatry fellowships at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC. Dr. Rozel is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and an Honorary Member of the American College of Emergency Physicians. He is currently a Professor of Psychiatry and Law at the University of Pittsburgh.
