Trying to understand...

[escafandro]

Another shooting today... I saw a video the other day where a police officer fired a dog?????

I understand the kind of violence that I see every day where I live in Southamerica: coming from poverty, drugs, the combination of both, gender violence of macho countries, etc, etc...

But I really cant understand this rare kind of violence that you have in U.S. Here we tend to think that is racial or for the facility to acquire weapons but I am sure its a oversimplification.

What is your vision as Americans of this kind of events?

[Pointedstick]

The common thread with most of these killings is that the perpetrators are mentally ill. Undiagnosed and untreated mental illness is an absolutely rampant problem.

[MediumTex]

Alienation, boredom, and lack of access to mental health services.

[Pointedstick]

Alienation, boredom, and lack of access to mental health services.

Sometimes it's not even about lack of access, it's about all the people around them failing to help them. Jared Loughner, for example, was witnessed by his friends, family, and school begin to sink into a schizophrenic spiral, but none of them did anything about it! His family and friends were nowhere to be seen, his school kicked him out but didn't let anyone know, and the army found him mentally unfit to enlist but kept it to themselves. We have a legal system for getting people the mental health services they need to avoid becoming a danger to themselves or others, but it can't work if nobody steps up and sets the wheels in motion! Same thing with James Holmes; people witnessed his condition worsen, but nobody friggin' did anything. He was even seeing a psychiatrist, and apparently even she didn't do anything! It boggles my mind. If I ever turn loony you bet I want those I'm closest to asking questions and getting me hauled off for care and treatment.

That said, for every mentally ill person who eventually snaps and shoots people, I like to believe that there are 1,000 whose friends or family get them the help they need and who recover without turning violent. These are quiet stories that don't make the headlines, though.

[doodle]

The common thread with most of these killings is that the perpetrators are mentally ill. Undiagnosed and untreated mental illness is an absolutely rampant problem.

And have easy access to any almost any type of firearm they desire...

[MediumTex]

The common thread with most of these killings is that the perpetrators are mentally ill. Undiagnosed and untreated mental illness is an absolutely rampant problem.

And have easy access to any almost any type of firearm they desire...

With these cases, the question is always whether guns are the underlying problem, or are simply a symptom of the actual underlying problem.

There have been guns in America since day one, but these terrible mass shootings are of much more recent vintage.

I think that the mental health treatment delivery system consisting of a 15 minute visit with a psychiatrist followed by a prescription for the antidepressant medication with the prettiest sales rep is not functioning well for patients (though it is functioning very well for the drug companies).

[stone]

I think that the mental health treatment delivery system consisting of a 15 minute visit with a psychiatrist followed by a prescription for the antidepressant medication with the prettiest sales rep is not functioning well for patients (though it is functioning very well for the drug companies).

If you turn up to an emergency room in the US with florid psychosis is this really what happens?

[MediumTex]

I think that the mental health treatment delivery system consisting of a 15 minute visit with a psychiatrist followed by a prescription for the antidepressant medication with the prettiest sales rep is not functioning well for patients (though it is functioning very well for the drug companies).

If you turn up to an emergency room in the US with florid psychosis is this really what happens?

They will give you a tranquilizer shot and when you regain consciousness they will give you the card of the on-call psychiatrist, who will see you for 15 minutes and give you a prescription for the antidepressant medication with the prettiest sales rep.

This seems to be the protocol that is being used for troops returning from war with severe PTSD as well, which is very sad.  It's no accident that there are so many suicides in this group.

[Storm]

It seems like we could solve a lot of these shooting problems by simply not allowing mentally ill people to buy guns.  Most of the mentally ill people purchased them legally, unlike criminals.

This hits a little close to home for me because over 10 years ago, before I was married, I dated a girl that had depression.  After we broke up she sent me a scary letter and I was sure her mental illness had taken a turn for the worse.  In the letter she told me "did you know that even though I am mentally unstable I was able to go buy a handgun with no waiting period?"  Then she proceeded to start threatening to show up at my home or work with the gun and kill me.  I was pretty nervous for a while that she would carry through with her threats.  I knew she had been institutionalized years before we dated, so an accurate database would have prevented her from getting access to a gun legally.

Seriously, it can't be that hard for them to tie mental health records into the databases used by gun shops.  I heard that most states still have not done this because either A. they have legislatures that have made this illegal because they are in the NRA's pocket, or B. they are too inefficient and bureaucratic to go about setting this up.

[Pointedstick]

It seems like we could solve a lot of these shooting problems by simply not allowing mentally ill people to buy guns.  Most of the mentally ill people purchased them legally, unlike criminals.

Okay, done. Seriously. The mentally ill are already prohibited from buying guns, and there is a federal database of mentally ill people. The problem is how are you going to get someone with an active mental illness to show up as such when they take the background check. Unless somebody checks them into a psych ward, they're not going to make it into the database and there's not going to be a record of it. Which gets back to my point that the people who observe their friends or family members sinking into mental illness need to take more of an active role in getting them help.

The problem with your girlfriend sounds like a data-sharing issue, and the NRA is not against this at all. In fact, after the Virginia Tech shootings, the NRA applauded and supported a bill to improve information-sharing among state mental health databases, which would have prevented Cho from legally purchasing his firearms.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 3876.story

WASHINGTON -- A rare piece of gun legislation finds the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence on the same side, and President Bush signed such a bill Tuesday.

The measure, Congress' response to last year's Virginia Tech shootings, is the first significant federal legislation in years aimed at tightening gun laws. It seeks to expand the federal database used to screen gun buyers to include the estimated 2 million-plus people, including felons and mentally ill individuals, who are ineligible to buy firearms.

[Tortoise]

For those of you who think the root cause for most of these mass killings is untreated mental illness, what would you say is the cause of the apparently higher incidence of mental illness in recent decades?

In other words, what if we peel back one more layer on this onion and consider the possibility that the increased rate of untreated mental illness is yet another symptom but not the ultimate cause?

Maybe there is something fundamental changing within modern societies that is driving people to become mentally ill in the first place. It may even be spiritual in nature. And maybe that is the root cause.

[MediumTex]

For those of you who think the root cause for most of these mass killings is untreated mental illness, what would you say is the cause of the apparently higher incidence of mental illness in recent decades?

In other words, what if we peel back one more layer on this onion and consider the possibility that the increased rate of untreated mental illness is yet another symptom but not the ultimate cause?

Maybe there is something fundamental changing within modern societies that is driving people to become mentally ill in the first place. It may even be spiritual in nature. And maybe that is the root cause.

I would say REASON #1 is children growing up in fatherless households.

That factor alone will give you a tremendous increase in adult mental illness.

A much faster pace of life and change is also not good for people who are borderline mentally ill.  Life simply moves faster than their ability to assimilate it (IMHO).

[Pointedstick]

I would say REASON #1 is children growing up in fatherless households.

That factor alone will give you a tremendous increase in adult mental illness.

A much faster pace of life and change is also not good for people who are borderline mentally ill.  Life simply moves faster than their ability to assimilate it (IMHO).

Interestingly enough, most of the recent mass shooters (Seung-Hui Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes) did not grow up in broken families. Wade Michael Page kind of did (mother divorced father at age 12), though. Not saying you're wrong since I also feel that fatherless families are a huge problem, but it's interesting to note that a lot of these lunatics came from apparently normal-ish families. Like Tortiose, I also wonder what the deeper cause is. Is there just more mental illness, or is it instead going untreated in more cases? Clayton Cramer has an interesting book out that argues for the latter: http://www.amazon.com/My-Brother-Ron-Pe ... 530&sr=1-1

I haven't read it, but it looks like a very relevant work.

Also, today's NYC tragedy hardly counts as a mass shooting, as the perp only killed one person before being gunned down. It looks like most of the casualties came from the police! 

[MediumTex]

I would say REASON #1 is children growing up in fatherless households.

That factor alone will give you a tremendous increase in adult mental illness.

A much faster pace of life and change is also not good for people who are borderline mentally ill.  Life simply moves faster than their ability to assimilate it (IMHO).

Interestingly enough, most of the recent mass shooters (Seung-Hui Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes) did not grow up in broken families. Wade Michael Page kind of did (mother divorced father at age 12), though. Not saying you're wrong since I also feel that fatherless families are a huge problem, but it's interesting to note that a lot of these lunatics came from apparently normal-ish families. Like Tortiose, I also wonder what the deeper cause is. Is there just more mental illness, or is it instead going untreated in more cases? Clayton Cramer has an interesting book out that argues for the latter: http://www.amazon.com/My-Brother-Ron-Pe ... 530&sr=1-1

I haven't read it, but it looks like a very relevant work.

Also, today's NYC tragedy hardly counts as a mass shooting, as the perp only killed one person before being gunned down. It looks like most of the casualties came from the police! 

If you visit a prison and interview 100 inmates, a HUGE number will say they came from single parent (or no-parent) homes. 

I believe that the absence of a father makes it much harder for boys to learn how to cope with the violent tendencies that all males have.

That's all JMHO of course.

[MediumTex]

I also think that the amount of corn-based products in our diet is also not good for us.

If you feed anyone enough corn-based fried food I think it will make them crazy.

***

I also think that antidepressant medications are not good for people who are mentally ill. 

They seem to trigger violent reactions more often than people would like to admit.

[Pointedstick]

I agree with you completely, but we're not talking about violent criminals here, we're talking about lunatics, many of whose mental illness only manifested in their 20s. I know Loughner was on marijuana, and it remains to be seen if that was a trigger. I don't know about Cho or Holmes. But yes, I'm with you on boys needing to learn an outlet for their violent impulses.

[Lonestar]

While it does appear that there has been a rampant increase in mental illness, I really wonder if it is actually more prevalent than 50 years ago, a time when these mass shootings were almost unheard of.

I don't know about other states, but up until the mid-eighties we had quite a few large state mental hospitals in Texas.  Folks could walk in off the street, admit themselves, and spend the rest of their lives there being taken care of.  I was in the pharmaceutical business and I can assure you they were heavily medicated and never cured.  The hospitals used few psychiatrist, and were mainly staffed by Cuban physicians (all specialties) trying to get reciprocity to practice in the U.S.  You can get the picture.

As poor as this treatment for mental illness was, it kept these folks off the streets.  Immediately after the State of Texas closed these facilities, we began to see the chronic homeless people roaming the streets.  Their numbers have increased every year.

My point:  it may not be as easy as you think to get quality psychiatric help.  Most people can't afford it.  Sure, Medicaid may get you an anxiolytic or anti-psychotic drug in the E.R. but then you are tossed back on the street, maybe only to kill a few folks.

[MediumTex]

While it does appear that there has been a rampant increase in mental illness, I really wonder if it is actually more prevalent than 50 years ago, a time when these mass shootings were almost unheard of.

I know that correlation does not equal causation, but in the period that these mass shootings started to occur on a regular basis we have seen an explosion in the amount of antidepressant medication being prescribed as well as the number of single parent households.

I think that those two factors have probably contributed to quite a few violent episodes from people with mental illness.

I don't think that violent video games cause any of this bad stuff, but I'm pretty sure they don't help either.  Between violent video games and violent movies and television, violence begins to seem like a normal way of expressing oneself, rather than the taboo that it should be in a civilized society.

[MachineGhost]

Maybe there is something fundamental changing within modern societies that is driving people to become mentally ill in the first place. It may even be spiritual in nature. And maybe that is the root cause.

Most of society is chronically malnourished from overprocessed junk food and in response, overtreated with drugs that have a multitude of negative side effects (including shooting rampages).  The mentally-deranged are the fat tails of that bell curve.  There's studies showing how prisoners become less aggressive and mentally stable when fed supplemental nutrition, especially Essential Fatty Acids.

There is no greater example of the bleak reality and vision that government imposes upon society than the school lunch.  Orwell could not top that horror show.

[Lonestar]

MT, I tend to agree with you but like Pointedstick brings out many of these mass killers don't meet that profile.  Now, among the gang members and street criminals, I'll bet 95% meet that profile, and I feel most of those factors of violence you mentioned are part of their taking up that lifestyle.

I recently read where 25% of the American population takes anti-depressant drugs.  They are finding blood levels in trout, so our streams are seeing the benefits of an overmedicated nation.  So, makes you wonder if lots of docs can't treat the major psychiatric disorders but they sure can prescribe the anti-depressant du jour?

[Storm]

It seems like we could solve a lot of these shooting problems by simply not allowing mentally ill people to buy guns.  Most of the mentally ill people purchased them legally, unlike criminals.

Okay, done. Seriously. The mentally ill are already prohibited from buying guns, and there is a federal database of mentally ill people.

No, they're not - http://www.npr.org/2012/08/16/158932528 ... n-database

And also, http://www.demandaplan.org/fatalgaps

The fact is that states are under-reporting those with mental illnesses, creating huge gaps in the system.  How do you think the Colorado shooter was able to buy thousands of dollars worth of guns and ammo when he clearly had diagnosed mental illness and had made threats previously?  The system is broken.  Let's fix the system first, and then see if we need more gun laws.

Personally, I think the 2nd amendment is just fine.  Everyone should have the right to bear arms (or arm bears, if that's what floats your boat ;-)  But, I don't think we should give mentally unstable people the right to buy a literal truckload of death-dealing weapons.

[Pointedstick]

Okay, the information in both of those links is from MAIG, a known anti-gun organization started and bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg. They should be about as convincing to you as an NRA press release or a study funded by Smith & Wesson.

In the Colorado shooter's case, the system isn't broken, it went unused! Nobody went through the steps to get him added to the database! His psychiatrist knew he was a nut, and he had made threats before, yet nobody took him before a judge to get him adjudicated as a mental defective. Nobody checked him into a hospital. Nobody did anything! The system can't work if the people responsible for operating it don't do their parts.

But still, I can see what you're saying, and I agree. I don't think anybody is fond of the idea of nutcases buying weapons for a massacre their damaged brains tell them to commit! It's quite true that there are gaps, but these gaps aren't about guns, they're about what we as a society should do about the mentally ill to begin with. Right now, in order for somebody to be institutionalized (and get their firearm rights taken away), you have to bring them before a judge to get them adjudicated as a mental defective, providing evidence that can be refuted and challenged. This is a strong due process check on what used to happen, which was that people could be thrown into state mental hospitals with little evidence and few rights to challenge their incarceration.

But is today's system too lenient? It's clearly a difficult task to get the paperwork done and jump through the hoops. Should it be easier? Should the standards be lower? Should an accusation result in the presumption of guilt for 48 hours, after which point innocence is presumed if insanity can't be proven? Is it working just fine, and people need to take more initiative to use the system already in place?

These are hard questions we as a society have to ask ourselves.

[stone]

I think it is important not to equate suffering from psychosis with being violent. Most violent people are sane (but perhaps drunk) and most psychotic people are not violent. BUT I agree that whenever psychosis and violence coincide, then it is especially terrible.

I think a very effective way to help people with psychosis is to have a psychiatric nurse give them brief home visits every couple of days to see how they are doing and keep an eye on things.

[BearBones]

The problem is obviously multifactorial. Although I do not think that we should await the eradication of mental illness from society before we address our freedom to individually stockpile unlimited weapons of mass distraction, I certainly would agree that a gun control without addressing mental illness is foolish.

Mental illness is rampant increasing (it has now surpassed physical illness, including asthma, in children), and it is obviously not solely do to poor diet or overprescription of antidepressants. I'd ask you to look at your own lives (or those around you whom you love) for the answer. Do you spend more time at peace or stressed? More time connected or isolated? More time secure or insecure? More time fulfilled or more time craving? If you are astute enough to find the rudiments of mental illness in your own lives (and anyone spending more than 20 minutes a day on this forum shouldn't have to look far), why? You are likely at the positive "fat tail of the bell curve" (to quote MG above). The murders are at the other.

[stone]

I heard an interesting radio program about how schizophrenia is massively more prevalent  amoungst Afro/Caribbean british people than amongst either white british people or people in the Caribbean or Africa. The suggestion was that a sense of alienation makes people much more likely to develop schizophrenia.