I'm a practicing psychiatrist and I think that I really believe in the advances of psychiatry. Our diagnoses are more precise.

I think President [Barack] Obama is exactly right, we need to combat [gun shoots] because this really can become the new normal, but that`s really what`s been happening.

Mental illness is a real thing. It has real material consequences for people who suffer from it and at the time even the most biological finding reflects social context in very important ways, and so I think psychiatry is better off looking both at biology and at social context and really trying to think of the relationship between these and I think doctors and patients are better off that way.

I think that one of the other lessons about what happened here is that open carry laws, even though many police, sheriff departments in Colorado support them, make it much harder for law enforcement to do their jobs.

Particularly with schizophrenia you see a lot of concern that these people could escape and kill people, or they could threaten our political order.

The issue of guns, as president [Barack] Obama mentioned, which is particularly assailant in Colorado, a very complicated gun story, and I think a political climate that urges people to take issues into their own hands.

I think that we're making a mistake if we don't see that there is a cultural basis to many illnesses, not just psychiatric ones. Breast cancer would be one prevalent example right now, different kind of cultures surrounding it. If you don't understand the cultural meaning of an illness like that you're going to miss the boat even if you're a great scientist.