> Easy access to guns and lack of mental health care has been a thing in the US for over a century, but curiously mass shootings only started happening a few decades ago, so maybe something else is the cause? Interestingly mass shootings started happening around the time that certain psychiatric medications came into widespread usage, medications for which homicidal ideation is a know but very rare side effect. It makes sense that even if a side effect is super rare, when millions of people start taking the drug you'd expect the rare effect to happen on a regular basis.
Except that these drugs are likely used in lots of places in the world, and that large school shootings often is a uniquely American concept.
Not to the same degree. The United States is a major outlier on this. Psychiatric medication, in general, are prescribed at much higher rates than in most other wealthy countries. And not by like 50% more, but like two times or even ten times more, depending on the drug class. In particular, putting children on antidepressants, benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, or stimulants is much less common in most places.
Similarly, among the general population, Americans use some 3x as much benzodiazepines per capita as Canadians. And the Canadians are drug crazed compared to the Australians, who use about half what the Canadians do.
Except that these drugs are likely used in lots of places in the world, and that large school shootings often is a uniquely American concept.