Jeffrey W. Swanson (born March 24, 1957) is an American medical sociologist and professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at

Duke University School of Medicine The Duke University School of Medicine, commonly known as Duke Med, is the medical school of Duke University. It is located in the Collegiate Gothic-style West Campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The School of Medicine, along wit ...

. He is an expert in psychiatric epidemiology, especially as regards the epidemiology of violence and serious

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

Education

Swanson received his B.A. from Westmont College in sociology in 1979.Swanson, Jeffrey W. "Curriculum Vitae". Chapel Hill, NC: Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, 2017. https://sph.unc.edu/files/2017/11/swanson_hpmcv.pdf He later received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1980 and 1985, respectively. His PhD was in sociology and his dissertation was entitled "The Moral Career of the Missionary," later published by Oxford University Press as a book titled "Echoes of the Call: Identity and Ideology among American Missionaries in Ecuador."

Career

Swanson first became interested in the intersection between mental illness and violence when working at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston shortly after finishing graduate school. In 1991, he joined Duke as a medical center instructor. Since 2007, he has been a tenured professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences there.

Research

Swanson has co-authored over 250 articles and book chapters on subjects such as the epidemiology of violence and mental illness, the effectiveness of community-based interventions for people with serious psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, and causes of gun violence, as well as policies aimed at reducing it. In 1990, he led a study that found that, when excluding substance abusers, 33% of adults with mental illness reported having behaved violently at any time in the past, as compared with only 15 percent of non-mentally-ill people. The same study found that substance abuse was a strong predictor of violence. This study has been criticized for overstating the connection between serious mental illness and violence. In 2015, he led a study that found that 8.9% of those interviewed, which would equate to roughly 22 million Americans, had both impulsive anger issues—meaning they developed "explosive, uncontrollable rage" when provoked—and easy access to guns in their homes. In 2016, he led a study analyzing data from two Florida counties that found that 72% of mentally ill people who committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

with a gun purchased it legally. Later that year, he published a study evaluating a 1999 Connecticut law allowing police to remove guns from people believed to be at risk of suicide. The study found that one suicide was prevented for every 10 to 20 guns seized under the law.

Views

Shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Swanson told ''The New York Times'' that "Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.” The following January, he told ''The Washington Post'' that “there’s a modest relative risk” for violence among people with a serious mental illness.

Awards and honors

Swanson received the 2020 Isaac Ray Award from the American Psychiatric Association Foundation and the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law for outstanding contributions to the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence. He received the 2011

Carl Taube Carl Arvid Taube (1939–1989) was an American statistician known for his work in mental health economics and health services research. Biography Taube was born in New York City in 1939 to Count Arvid E. Taube and Alice N. Taube. After attending K ...

Award from the American Public Health Association and the 2010 Eugene C. Hargrove, MD Award from the North Carolina Psychiatric Foundation for his career in researching mental health. He was awarded a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation in 2013, and an Independent Research Scientist Career Award from the National Institute of Mental Health in 2004. Swanson delivered the P. Browning Hoffman Memorial Lecture in Law and Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Law in 2015 and the Raymond W. Waggoner Lecture on Ethics and Values in Medicine at the University of Michigan in 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swanson, Jeffrey Living people Duke University School of Medicine faculty American psychiatrists Westmont College alumni Yale University alumni Medical sociologists American sociologists American epidemiologists Gun violence researchers 1957 births