Thinking the unthinkable

http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html

by aaronbrethorst • 14 years ago

963 441 14 years ago

anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com

jerrya• 14 years ago

I think this woman's blog post is interesting, for all the obvious reasons as well as the consideration that Aspergers and other forms of autism are associated with Silicon Valley children.

LatterJohn• 14 years ago

As someone from her sons perspective.

Unfortunately, she doesn't deal with her son the way he needs to be dealt with. Stick him in-front a computer, surround him with electronics(DO NOT TAKE THEM AWAY, USE THEM AS THERAPY) and feed him. Nothing else... This is how your autist/aspy child becomes a brilliant geek. If you even attempt to program them in the NORMAL way, they will do nothing but, reject, and yes, call you a "stupid bitch"(as I have done to my own mother, apologies.)

In public school, and even private institutions(outside of those full of computer-savvy aspy/autistic) the social-structure environment is completely inappropriate for someone such as her son, and he may(probably will) experience a "rejection" from the greater majority of peers.

Social interaction from a terminal is not the same as true in-real-life social interaction, but it can be used as a bridge to safely communicate remotely, and also develop social-interactivity concepts for when he is in the real world.

This mom seems to be (insanely)attempting to program a NOT-Normal-Child into a Normal-Child. She needs to be as proactive as possible to seek alternative programming methods for a child with Autism/Aspy.

One thing she mentioned was that she would strip the electronic devices from him to institute punishment(THAT WILL GET YOU KILLED). Instead, use the electronic devices as an incentive to contribute to good things and when instructing punishment, have him USE the electronic devices to CONSTRUCT or, meditate in the cyber-environment)

Maybe, he'll be the next Steve or Bill. Perhaps, he'll be the next Gary Mckinnon.

Its all about the programming.

AVTizzle• 14 years ago

You're WAY over-simplifying an intense situation. You think this mother hasn't tried everything by this point? You think you know the simple, magic solution that could possibly reveal this kid to be the next Steve or Bill?

A mother is the LAST person to give up hope. A mother is the LAST person to deny alternatives to a fucking insane asylum and police force.

It's not as simple as shoving an iPad in the kids face. Respect the gravity.

mscarborough• 14 years ago

Instituting a mild punishment to a child "WILL GET YOU KILLED"? Really?

This parent is not "insane" for trying to help her own kid, even if that might mean an institution.

jff2• 14 years ago

This is a terrible idea. I'm sure it's an attractive idea, the childhood you wished you had, but really it sounds like a good way to let your child sink deeper into isolation.

jdale27• 14 years ago

Maybe, he'll be the next Steve or Bill. Perhaps, he'll be the next Gary Mckinnon.

Or the next Hans Reiser.

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

> "Maybe, he'll be the next Steve or Bill. Perhaps, he'll be the next Gary Mckinnon."

Or maybe something will trigger him at age 20 and he makes good on his threats.

> "This mom seems to be (insanely)attempting to program a NOT-Normal-Child into a Normal-Child."

Because the "not normal" side of the child is violent, cunningly manipulative, and possibly homicidal. There is a line at which we draw acceptable behavior - homicidal and violent intent seems pretty liberal.

This is not a typical aspie we're talking about. When a child has demonstrable, repeated, unpredictable, and extremely violent tendencies we can't just lock them in a room with a terminal and hope everything turns out ok.

dkarl3• 14 years ago

[Parent's account was created four hours ago, and this sounds like a troll. "It's all about the programming." Ha ha, very funny. But this is HN so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.]

First, the kid isn't necessarily autistic just because he's a smart kid with behavioral problems. FTA: Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around.... You're pretty eager to jump to a diagnosis of autism without giving the other possibilities due consideration.

Second, even if he is autistic, is there a single best way to treat every autistic kid? Certainly not every autistic kid has exactly the same condition he does. Having the savvy and self-control to apologize to try to get privileges back just minutes after throwing a screaming fit is not something that every thirteen-year-old autistic kid could do. Grabbing a knife and threatening murder-suicide because you've been told to do something is also not a universal feature of autism. Even if you're right that he's autistic, and even if that's his only problem, he may need different treatment than other autistic kids.

Third, autistic kids are not naturally born to be wired to a computer the way worker bees are born to gather food and drone bees are born to breed. Temple Grandin wrote that she was very lucky to grow up in a time when children were forced to socialize and kids spent a lot of time making things with their hands instead of watching TV and playing video games. She wrote, "Even today I don't have a computer at home because it can have a hypnotic effect on me. I can get caught up watching certain screen savers for hours." You assume that he would use the computer to learn, explore, and connect, but that isn't a given. Autistic people don't naturally know what to do with a computer the way an infant knows what to do with a nipple. He might just play COD all day.

Fourth, it sounds like the mom is just fine with him being different and only wants him to learn not to be violent and destructive so he can live a life outside institutions. The way the kid is behaving, he's headed to jail or a mental hospital. It also sounds like she's taken an interest in his condition, sought a lot of advice, and tried a lot of different things. FTA: ... various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. This is not a kid whose mom refuses to accept his difference. This is a kid whose mom taught his younger brothers a safety drill to execute when he picks up a weapon. She isn't aiming at "normal." She's aiming at "not a killer."

And that leads to the final and most important point: being a brilliant geek won't necessarily stop him from killing someone someday.

MartinCron8• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, she doesn't deal with her son the way he needs to be dealt with

I understand the urge to sympathize with her son's perspective, but it's very possible that a parent, who has worked with this kid every day of his life, might know a thing or two more about how to be a parent than you do.

msutherl• 14 years ago

This is incredibly important.

Every time I talk to people from outside of the country about the US, the first thing that comes up is the difficulty of obtaining proper healthcare.

richcollins• 14 years ago

Is there any evidence that healthcare would help with this situation?

justindocanto2• 14 years ago

As somebody who has dealt with the mental health care system without and with mental health care... absolutely yes.

sp3325• 14 years ago

Do you think he wasn't getting mental health care? It was reported that he was on medication.

philip1209• 14 years ago

Just relating it back to the article, seeing that the mother changed jobs in order to obtain healthcare and fund the care of her child scared me. Not everybody is in the position of being able to obtain such a job, and forcing a parent to fund emergency room trips without insurance could be preventing access to adequate treatment.

gwern• 14 years ago

> At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You’ll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.

If nothing else, she probably liked her career (else why hadn't she gone to the college in the first place?)

SeanA208• 14 years ago

Reading this nearly brought a tear to my eye. I can't imagine what it's like for a mother to fear her own barely-teenage son and worry about the implications of his condition for the remainder of her life. I agree it's important to discuss mental illness and how it should be handled, but what is she suggesting should be implemented to address situations like this?

javajosh7• 14 years ago

Does anyone know a) how often this sort of pattern presented itself historically, and b) what people did back in the good old days? For example, what would a small rural town have done to support someone like Michael? Would they have treated him somehow? Would they have assumed he was possessed by a demon and tried an exorcism? Or would they have found a way to get rid of him in a hunting accident, and had a dirty little town-wide secret? Or what? It's a really hard problem, obviously, and history might at least give us some ideas (possibly some very bad ones, granted).

Of course, since his outbursts are so episodic, it would be interesting to consider installing some sort of drug system in the kid, remote-controlled that either knocks him out or just sedates him when he gets belligerent, similar to how diabetics have insulin dispensers. It would be interesting to see if his "sweet, sunny" self would accept this leash on his evil twin, or even the particularly interesting possibility that he can be taught to observe the episode and trigger the device himself. It would also, of course, be interesting to get an fMRI of his brain before and after an episode - he could advance our knowledge of the biological basis of rage and hatred. Heck, if he's really that smart he'd probably do well to consider a neuroscience track so he can study himself, eventually.

jaggederest• 14 years ago

> Of course, since his outbursts are so episodic,

My suspicion is that they very specifically aren't episodic - lots of kids with this style of behavior problem are excellent manipulators. You can't discount the possibility that he's behaving well and poorly in order to extract what he wants out of other people.

javajosh7• 14 years ago

That doesn't sound consistent with the article at all. I mean, the kid seems to have uncontrolled outbursts which don't sound manipulative to me. I mean, he didn't want to go to the mental hospital but he repeated the behavior he knew would get him there. Perhaps it was a gamble to see if his mom would keep her word, but the way the article is written, it doesn't sound like that.

xyzzy1233• 14 years ago

I hope that clockwork-orange style behavior modification or remote "kill switches" in people are never socially acceptable answers to this problem :(

javajosh7• 14 years ago

That seems like the most humane way to go. I don't see anyone else in this thread doing anything more than throwing their hands up in the air saying that it's a problem too difficult to solve, including you. So, rather than poo-poo my ideas, how about offering up your own?

joonix4• 14 years ago

Well, I can imagine as humans evolved and were still quite tribal, this sort of anti-social behavior simply wouldn't be tolerated. If one was a threat to the tribe's safety and didn't fit in the social order, they were culled our ejected and eventually unable to survive on their own.

forrestthewoods• 14 years ago

Post like this terrify me. What if there isn't anything that can be done? It seems like there are some people that are just born broken or at some point they break.

Men who experience schizophrenia it often stars in their late teens or early 20s, and late 20s/early 30s for women [1]. I had a friend in high school who was completely normal in every way. During his first year in college he literally just went crazy. It wasn't a singular event but over 6 months he lost it and he's never been the same. He has access to mental health care and after several years his parents even had him committed for a few months. Nothing helps and even his parents have finally accepted that he will never be the same or even normal.

I don't know what we as a society are supposed to do in these cases and that's what terrifies me above all else.

[1] http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/ment...

joonix4• 14 years ago

This may be politically incorrect to say right now, but I think the genes associated with mental illnesses that have a tendency to lead to violence will be phased out by a future generation sometime within this century and the next.

We'll soon enough try gun control. That won't stop mass killings. Then we'll try increased mental healthcare access. That won't do much because we'll struggle with the Constitutionality of locking people up in mental hospitals when they aren't yet a threat to anyone.

By this point in the future, genetic screening will be ubiquitous and affordable, possibly mandatory. Cultural attitudes will shift with this, and it will be expected for people to study their genome and compare openly when dating. People will pass on mates due to a high risk of major issues occurring should they have children together (this already happens in the Jewish community with Tay Sachs). Eventually people will be a lot more picky and aware of heredity and we could see a lot of hereditary mental illnesses removed from the population.

(I want to make clear I'm not expressing an opinion on or endorsing this, merely trying to make a prediction)

brianchu• 14 years ago

I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea that one day people will try to optimize their genes, even if it's only self-selecting.

Yet:

1) Hereditary factors can only explain a small part of the picture. Eliminating hereditary factors that predispose people to developing mental illnesses would only eliminate a fraction of the problem. Environmental factors play a huge role.

2) The point at which what you describe happens is a long way off (if it ever happens), at least a couple of decades away. In that time, we need a viable solution.

Part of that solution should be better access to mental health care. I don't think there will be any constitutional issues with institutionalized treatment of a child who has threatened to kill someone. AFAIK, a child's parent has considerable legal control over that child and the decision to institutionalize/otherwise treat.

EDIT (reply to below):

> wasn't known to have any violent tendencies >What were the environmental factors behind Lanza and Holmes (Aurora)? Both came from upper-middle class backgrounds. Both grew up in idyllic environments with "normal" parents with careers and health insurance.

I'm afraid it's simply to early to say these kinds of things. We still do not have a complete picture of Adam Lanza's life. I don't think any of us can say anything about his personality until more facts emerge. A middle class existence is not the end-all be-all of mental stability. There are tons of other factors - family situations, bullying, school environment, the list goes on. And obviously, hereditary factors may very well have played a role in his case.

>Meanwhile, someone without a mental illness has a moment of rage and threatens to kill a guy at a bar. Do we lock him up and drug him too?

This is a straw man. Firstly, I was only talking about the case of children/adolescents whose parents have legal powers over them. In the case of an adult (whose parents obviously have no legal control), the problem is that those adults (incl. the guy who threatens another in your case) will get sent to jail and there won't even be an attempt to diagnose/treat a mental illness even once they are in jail. The guy in your example would not get diagnosed with something he doesn't have. He'll just be in jail. Expansion of access to mental health care should include expanded access to inmates.

fernly• 14 years ago

You haven't thought it through. Try to visualize how such a program would be implemented. You run into intractable problems. One: who defines what traits are undesirable? (Do you imagine this would ever be uncontroversial? Aggression, for example, is needed -- sometimes.) Two: who determines how future behavior is linked to genes; and how is it ever proved that future behavior is only and certainly genetically-based and in no part linked to upbringing? Three: what if a genetic pattern associated with unwanted behavior turns out to be linked with another trait that is desirable (e.g. the subject of this story is both violent and highly intelligent; what if both traits come from the same genes?). Four: by what means do you coerce parents into not breeding? Is deliberate breeding a crime? Punishable by what? Five: what do you do about accidental children? Execute them? And so on. No democracy would ever install such a scheme.

enoch_r• 14 years ago

I think this relies on an overestimation of the planning and foresight that goes into most pregnancies. About half of US pregnancies are unplanned, and it certainly seems like there are large segments of the population for whom even relatively short-term risks, like the propensity of the father to cheat--or never be involved at all--are basically ignored when choosing a mate.

draq2• 14 years ago

The truth is that humans, like all other animals, have been selective breeding all the time, it's called evolution. We select our mates based on their phenotypes (like aggression, intelligence etc). It was more so in the past than now. People used to abandon infants that are born "defective" (we now have abortions). Parents selected the mates for their children because they are believed to be better judges of "good" phenotypes. It was customary to ensure that the family of the respective mate has no members with mental illness. Yet, after millennia of selective breeding, we still have all the crazies among us. The fact that those "bad" genes still exist must mean that they confer some benefits to the carrier.

The interplay between genes, RNA, proteins and other macromolecules is so complex that I doubt we can pin down a mental illness to a single gene or safely remove a mutation that causes mental illness from the gene pool without reducing other collateral beneficial traits.

philwelch5• 14 years ago

I think gene therapy and possibly selective abortion would be common as well. People won't leave someone they love because of some simple genetic tests when there are other alternatives.

zekenie2• 14 years ago

Talk this over with a molecular biologist. Its never gonna happen. Some pathologies are (or have components that are) hereditary. Of those things, a handful are specific gene mutations or groups of mutations. These mental illnesses are so poorly understood... None (to my knowledge) have been shown to be genetic. And its not just that we haven't found the underlying genetic reason. There probably isn't an underlying genetic cause! These systems are so complex, and DNA is only one piece of the puzzle. Epigenetics is a field that isn't getting enough public attention. Its probably responsible for much of the more nuanced hereditary pathologies and patterns that people observe.

omGac0W2• 14 years ago

Is "wanting to kill people" really so far from the norm as to have a gene associated with it? What would the gene be responsible for, "Propensity to give a fuck about other living beings"? Because in my mind, the line between being "sane" and killing everyone in sight is pretty fine.

One's logic could go like this, "Man, everything sucks, and those kids down at the preschool are always so damn happy. Fuck Them. If I'm not happy no ones gets to be happy. Lock and load assholes." Suddenly you've got another tragedy. I would imagine people that are suicidal sometimes feel like this. Maybe it depends on how introverted or extroverted they are. The introverts disappear quietly in the dead of night, and the extroverts start mowing down pedestrians in the town square and then blow their brains out standing on the Mayor's statue.

If a gene could be isolated for "suicidal tendencies" and also for intro/extro we might be able to reduce future events like this. But just because someone is a suicidal extrovert that hates everyone it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to start killing people. Maybe the ones that don't are just pussies and the gene for "guts" or "courage" would also have to be isolated?

I don't know I'm just rambling. I ask myself why I don't kill my neighbors. Is it because I'm "sane"? Well I guess so, if "liking others" and not wanting them to be sad is a characteristic of sane people. But I firmly believe that there's a tiny slice of murderer in all sane people, and I like to think of people like Adam Lanza as having just a bigger slice, because putting them in a different category of "mentally ill" sort of feels like I'm denying a part of my own nature.

aw11603• 14 years ago

There is almost no mental illness with data that links it to genes. Schizophrenia, for instance, has no data showing a genetic cause and plenty data linking it to environment. Oliver James is lovely to read on this, if you fancy.

Mz8• 14 years ago

A few randomish thoughts:

The U.S. (and Australia, which was a penal colony) likely has a higher than average (at least for Europe) incidence of what I will call "maverick" traits -- gene based traits that make people less able to go along to get along, for some reason. They aren't necessarily bad traits, they just aren't very conducive to "domestication". The tend to be some of the same traits necessary for activities like exploration and other risky behaviors -- including founding a start up. One of the things YC asks about on its application is rule breaking behaviors. Folks who are too compliant are not well suited for doing groundbreaking work. So I don't personally think that breeding these traits out is necesarily a good thing.

The reason America has higher rates is because a lot of our ancestors left Europe (or other countries) when they just could not fit in. Many left to seek the right to worship as they saw fit -- in other words to think and believe as they wished. So it looks to me like Europe already tried to get rid of these genes and, instead of extinguishing them, mostly exported them, thereby concentrating them in a couple of countries. People with these genes tend to not "go quietly into the night". They tend to go kicking and screaming. So I do not think criminalizing people for having such traits is a good policy. It is better to find ways to help them live constructively with certain traits and to carefully distinguish between traits, which are value neutral, and outcomes or behaviors, which are not value neutral.

I usually do not say this publically, but if Joan of Arc were alive today, she would likely be in a psych ward having her meds adjusted, trying to make the voices stop, instead of playing midwife to the bloody birth of modern Fance. I have also read that Alexander the Great was likely bipolar. Again: I am not so sure that our desire to rid ourselves of people who aren't "normal"/adequately compliant or "cure" them of their differences is such a good thing. I think there are better ways to deal with peope like that than simply trying to break them. I think the goal of breaking them is likely a loss for both the individual being broken and for society. Take that too far and we lose important human traits, like adaptability.

I have a genetic disorder. It is more common in populations which historically were subjected to high death rates from a particular infectious disease (though I don't recall which disease). In other words, carrying at least one gene was likely protective against dying from this infection. Thus this deadly genetic disorder became more common in cases where it helped you survive in the face of worse things. The same is true of Sickle Cell disease, which is protective against malaria. Viewing genetic variations of that sort solely as defects and not as adaptations misses the big picture. If they weren't adaptive in some situations, they wouldn't be selected for by evolutionary pressure.

e12e4• 14 years ago

You realize the US will likely be waging wars for the foreseeable future, and that being a soldier will likely pay more than minimum wage, certainly up to past the age of procreation (I like to think of this as the event horizon for evolution; evolution only "sees" up your youngest child; if you then die, you gave still made the right evolutinary choices).

The military will have need of sociopaths and killers.

GuiA7• 14 years ago

Story time!

My brother (3 years younger) suffers from pretty much the same global disorder as described in the blog; the main difference is that we're in France (well, my family still is; I moved a few years ago).

Throughout childhood, he presented a mix of pretty much every single psychological disorder possible- bipolar, paranoia, kleptomania, depression, etc. He was extremely manipulative, and knew how to be perfectly sweet like the author describes. I always saw it as a very contrived act on his part, one in perhaps in lost himself at times- but I believe that when he presents this adorable facade, he is mostly in control of it. He has definitely threatened my parents or myself with a knife, and I'm glad we have decent gun control in France. I believe that if he hadn't grown up in a wealthy privileged environment, he'd be dead or roaming the streets today.

IQ tests put him in the ~120-130 range, and psychologists recommended a wide array of solutions, ranging from the behavioral (for example one determined that it was because he didn't feel secure and had enough privacy, and suggested that he should get locks for his room etc.- that led to an entire different set of complications, and that psychologist was abandoned promptly.) to the medical (although he was never subjected to the wide variety of antidepressants cited in the article- France in the 90s-early 00s seemed to avoid those sort of things).

Ultimately, nothing worked. Things got much, much worse with adolescence; he went to 4 schools, all very different (one public school, one catholic private school, one boarding school in the countryside, etc.), and got kicked out of all of them but one. My parents did find a few things that mitigated his conditions: for example, he was in the boy scouts for a few years, which helped.

Today he's 20, barely graduated high school; he now lives somewhere in the French mountains with his girlfriend, chopping wood and harvesting grapes. We haven't talked (other than "hey what's up" at family meals once a year) in 7 years or so.

I could probably write an entire book on the topic, but would rather avoid to do so for the moment; but if anyone has questions, I'll gladly answer them.

onnn2• 14 years ago

I'm adding this to my list of counter examples, for when some tries to tell me I have to get my life together before I'll find a girlfriend.

xyzzy1233• 14 years ago

Hi, thank you for sharing.

My question is, do you think your brother is better off now than he would have been had he been institutionalized?

mailshanx• 14 years ago

Thats intriguing. It seems like he has somewhat adjusted over time. Did you witness a general improvement in his personality as he grew up? Did things especially improve in his late teens perhaps?

dbyrd• 14 years ago

Glad to hear your brother could end up somewhere happy. My younger brother fits the same archetype but is only 17.

antman• 14 years ago

He is in the mountains chopping wood with his girlfrend?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Humans vs Dolphins “For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

― Douglas Adams

edj• 14 years ago

The West tried institutions (poorhouses, asylums). But forced institutionalization just isn't compatible with basic human rights. It was also expensive and failed to provide a venue for effective treatments.

Starting in the 1970s the West deinstitutionalized[1]. But at least in the US we never sufficiently funded community care, which was supposed to replace mental institutions. So the severely mentally ill end up living on the street (where they're often the victims of violence[2]) or in jails and prisons (which if you squint sort of resemble mental institutions, though without the emphasis on medical care).

Whatever we as a society try next, we need to recognize that with our current medical knowledge there are no cures for mental illnesses, only management. So our approaches need to be both humane and long-term. Returning full-circle to institutionalization in jails and prisons utterly fails those tests, offering brutal conditions, short-term containment, and usually insufficient medical care. We can do better.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prognosis_of_schizophrenia#Viol...

PeterisP2• 14 years ago

Are mass murders compatible with basic human rights?

I mean, if at some point we identify a set of mental diseases that (a) can be accurately diagnosed; (b) can't be cured; (c) make the patient a violent threat to society - then wouldn't forced medical institutionalization be a better option then both current options of street-life or jails?

peterhost• 14 years ago

I share your feeling. We are at a loss what to do as a society, and what's more, we're most likely more at a loss than people were in very structured societies of the past (not that I wish to live back then).

My first guess (being diagnosed, not self, with some weird neurotransmitter problem and very lucky to have found a cure which makes my life normal again) is that the medical/pharma world is not giving a shit at the moment. It's like financing research for rare diseases : no money to be made here.

Second guess is that (oh yeah, you'll like that) most psychologists are charlatans (the biggest of all being Freud, then Lacan imo) and they got traction after WWII, for obvious reasons : western societies at large were scared shitless of the Reich's positions as to all problems having only to do with genetics (jews, mentally ill people,...). So we got 60 years of this "be nice, try to understand" bullshit.

Third, what we learned with Aspergers is that something as radical as autism can be a continuum. This is quite a revolutionary discovery, and does not seem to have sunk in yet. We all know as programmers the difference between discrete and continuous, we live in a world built upon bits after all. There might be thousands, hell maybe quintillions of such continuums which chained together lead to a unique pathology each and every time : it's also called personality.

Roughly speaking, we are still apes (alas not) trying (hard enough) to further our scientific knowledge of psychic disorders.

My feeling is that until the human being, the individual, is placed at the center of all the fabric of our societies, the fact that each case in unique and requires a specific attention, we will get nowhere. Money has no personality, money is the key to almost anything as comes to survival in this world. This is the thing that has to change... Someday. Because money likes not diversity.

Crake3• 14 years ago

There are schizophrenia genes in my family. I can't wait until I'm past the typical time of onset, because thinking of losing my mind like your friend did is one of my deepest and most terrible fears.

HorizonXP2• 14 years ago

Mental health care isn't that easy to obtain north of the border either, here in Canada.

I had to wait nearly 1.5 years to get the help I needed. I've dealt with issues for over 25 years, and only recently have I identified them. I still struggle with them. During the last 1.5 years, I nearly failed out of my Master's program.

Here's hoping I can finish it.

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

I have two family members that were bipolar. One lived in the US and was diagnosed and treated for decades. She received free care due to Medicaid and Medicare. She was always poor.

Was it the best care? Perhaps not, but at least she could always get it when she acknowledged she needed it.

The other lived in the UK and went undiagnosed for decades. When he finally met his mom and realized he was also bipolar, he had to push the health service doctors hard to accept his diagnosis and finally treat him. He was successful engineer and even owned his own company.

It seems universal care sacrifices everybody's quality. Personally, I think 2 sensible people could sit down and design a better system than either approach.

Good luck with finishing your degree.

HorizonXP2• 14 years ago

Thanks!

Yeah, I'm not sure where to place the blame on our system here. The great thing is that I don't have to pay for my care, which was definitely a concern for me at first. However, I had to go through 3 different avenues before I was finally allowed into a group CBT session. I even went through my university's counselling services, only to be put onto a several month waiting list and then forgotten about; they never put me on the list.

I only got help because I kept pushing for it. I'm sure many others would have given up sooner. Heck, I gave up a couple of times too.

Mental health issues can be difficult to diagnose. If you have "obvious" symptoms, you can typically get help fairly quickly.

In my case, the signs are not obvious at all. If you met me, you wouldn't suspect anything was wrong with me. I can mostly function in my daily life. I have a wonderful fiancee, and I've been fairly successful with a solid undergraduate engineering degree, and good in-roads in my business-related work.

You would never suspect that I was physically and mentally abused throughout my childhood and undergraduate. Or that I second-guess everything that I do, and that I worry about every mistake I've ever made. Or that I cannot take joy in any of my successes. Or that my father has his own mental health issues, and that my uncle/his brother lost his battle with alcoholism, and that their father was institutionalized several times in their home country.

I'm a relatively normal guy with great ambitions. But my mental health issues, while hidden, are there, and if left unchecked will contribute to my future failures.

As a society, we do need to pay more attention to mental health and start to have conversations about it.

(Actually, it's one area where I think a non-profit startup using web technologies could actually make a meaningful contribution.)

ownagefool• 14 years ago

"It seems universal care sacrifices everybody's quality".

I don't think thats quite the case. I live in the UK and can't comment on the US system from personal experience, however what I hear most about over the pond is the many people who get screwed from not having health care or not actually having significant cover when the need arises. Its said that having a life threatening illness will pretty much bankrupt the majority of people.

Obviously if thats true, then all those people who aren't getting great service for whatever the reason would be better off with the UK system, but even with universal health care, I've had additional private health care for most of my working life, so theres nothing stopping you from getting the best care available despite the fact they'll send you to the same doctors and get you the same treatment in the vast majority of cases.

Personally I think our national health service is fantastic. The system isn't perfect and there are some advantages to private, like for non life threatening issues you can often get seen a lot sooner, and we should always be trying to strife to improve our situation. I'd never trade it for the American system though.

We also don't have a lot of massacres, but I'd wager thats a much more complicated discussion.

kcodey• 14 years ago

Thank god a post like this was brought up. This incident in CT has undoubtedly brought up a national debate about gun control, but I hope to God it sparks a debate about mental illness, the real cause behind all of these mass shootings.

aaronbrethorst• 14 years ago

Amen to that. Thanks for upvoting it (I assume), rather than flagging it. I had some doubts about posting this vis a vis the guidelines, but thought it was important, especially given the stridently political nature of all the discussion I've seen about the shooting in CT on here thus far.

diminish• 14 years ago

Thanks for bringing this case which shows the complexity of the issue.

antidoh3• 14 years ago

Outlaw guns, knives and rocks, and wink them out of existence, and these people are still there.

Treat them, and some of them will come back.

Outlawing guns doesn't solve this problem. But outlawing guns is the kind of "solution" we like, because a) there's a clear, specific action to argue over, and b) we can focus on it long enough to get the law through and then fool ourselves into thinking we've done something.

mpweiher16• 14 years ago

Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do.

A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed.

Degrees matter.

javajosh7• 14 years ago

Everyone reaches for answers at a time like this, and a sad majority reach for thoughtless answers like gun control, that ironically embody the very stupidity and carelessness that contributes to this violence. It's such a smug, pat answer that relegates responsibility to some higher authority. It's the same sentiment that makes people feel isolated, alone, unheard, helpless, and eventually, desperate. "Just shut up, get a job, go to church, watch football and pay your mortgage. And if that existence doesn't make you happy, then there's something wrong with you." If you hear this often enough, and if you don't manage to connect with others who are equally appalled by it, then you WILL go mad.

antidoh3• 14 years ago

It wasn't meant as a straw man, it was meant as a way to identify a boundary. The most restrictive regulation possible would be a total ban, and only a total and successful ban would prevent people from using guns in massacres. So "regulation" while well intentioned is practically meaningless. Those people would still be mentally ill, and outlawing guns or some lesser regulation would not have addressed the actual problem.

And yes, a knife in the situation is less dangerous. But the person is still mentally ill, a danger to themselves and those around them.

It's medical treatment that's needed, in the worst cases combined with confinement.

Gun regulation is not medical treatment. Gun regulation is a separate issue, admittedly related, just as knives and baseball bats are related.

smsm424• 14 years ago

Outlawing - at least if you are not police officer or soldier - is not a straw man at all. Only recently we got a SCOTUS decision that proclaimed US citizens have right to own guns, and that was a close one too. Before that, many places existed where private ownership of guns was essentially banned, and many still exist now, even though with the new decision they will be eventually phased out. However, people that instituted these bans are still in power in those places, and they very well intend to put a good fight and make obtaining legal guns as difficult as is could be without running afoul of the law, and probably more difficult just to see if they can get away with it.

Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing unless you ban possession of guns by healthy individuals without criminal record or any other problems - because you can not predict people going crazy, and you can not eliminate all sources of obtaining weapons by somebody very smart, very determined and having absolutely no moral problem to lie or commit any unethical or criminal behavior. In fact, even completely removing all guns from law-abiding citizens would not change that - criminals will still have guns. Only coordinated campaign of terror and totalitarian control from the state - something of Soviet or North Korean measures - can make guns relatively unavaliable to common person. If you doubt that, think about how much successful were governmental efforts to make illegal drugs unavailable.

Given that, I would rather live with relatively small threat of psychos than in a totalitarian state needed to get rid of the threat of psychos.

Daniel_Newby3• 14 years ago

> Regulating guns ... ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do.

No, it makes it much worse. We want the violent lunatics to have guns, because guns are not particularly fast or efficient at killing people. A lone gunman can kill at most a few hundred people before he is stopped.

You know those nightclub fires that kill hundreds of people in ten minutes? We want our nutjobs to have guns so they will not be forced to recreate a nightclub fire on a stadium scale, followed by decades of copycats.

MartinCron8• 14 years ago

"outlawing" is a straw man

I'm so glad that someone said this. So many otherwise reasonable people get seriously worried that someone with a badge is going to come to their home and pry their guns from their hands (which may or may not be cold and dead at the time)

The reality of gun control is far less dramatic, and make for far less compelling soundbites. "You can close the gun show loophole which allows people to sell handguns without background checks over my cold, dead, body" doesn't have the same ring.

jetti4• 14 years ago

I was reading this and it made me sad. Not because of the obvious content but because of the diagnosis being thrown around and how when reading them my immediate thought was "I hope it isn't a personality disorder". I say this knowing full well that many insurance companies will NOT cover anything related to personality disorders because they feel that they aren't curable.

I still remember when I called my insurance company at my first job after college to see if they would cover an exam to diagnose an autism spectrum disorder for myself. Their response was as follows: they would cover it if I was found not to have autism and they would not cover it if I did have autism. I remember taking time in the private room I was in at work and just crying. It was just so backwards. In fact, I have been putting off going back for further testing solely because the official diagnosis won't benefit me but could only harm me. At least now if I go see a therapist, the individual symptoms would be listed as reason for the visit instead of possibly something that no insurance company would cover.

commanda2• 14 years ago

My heart really goes out to you. Can you imagine replacing "autism" with "type 1 diabetes" in your story and any health insurance company acting that way? Unthinkable. I hope our culture gets to the point where it stops regarding some illnesses as unworthy of care.

jetti4• 14 years ago

Thank you. I am just baffled that an insurance company would pay for an unnecessary test instead of one that was deemed necessary. It seems completely contradictory to how they want to make money.

doctorpangloss• 14 years ago

Children are a severe puzzle. What can we tell mothers like this?

Is there a long-term self-care situation for a child that misbehaves, even if his IQ is "130"? Do we tell her to modify her expectations—that no test can change his disabilities?

Or do we embrace the neurotypical? At low expense the taxpayer can pay people to study kids like these and build an environment where their "high IQ" can thrive.

We are weird with children in this country. Our constitution does not establish any interest, state or federal, in them. We have gun rights and not children's livelihood rights. We abrogate responsibility of the hard question—treat like disabled or treat like special genius—to fallible and powerless parents.

The discussion is not, What do we do with moms or guns? It's what do we do with children.

alxp• 14 years ago

Angry white adult males don't go to the doctor. Get their guns.

elchief2• 14 years ago

Thinking the unthinkable: boys of single mothers have bad outcomes.

david927• 14 years ago

And they also become President of the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

elchief2• 14 years ago

Bubba too. Unfortunately, the plural of anecdote is not data. Statistically, children of single moms fare poorly. I am curious as to the degree that it is different beween single fathers and single moms.

jpeg_hero• 14 years ago

It's interesting to consider that if the mother, by keeping the troubled child "Michael" in the middle class artificially, she is some how enabling a possible shooter (but still unlikely).

If the child was shunned now, sure, he'd end up homeless in LA, but he would be so busy struggling with his daily existence that he wouldn't have the resources or time to go on a mass rampage.

The father seems to understand this.

dinkumthinkum13• 14 years ago

Because poor people don't commit violent crimes? ... ... Really ... ... ?

ojbyrne2• 14 years ago

This is the standard NRA line. It's not about guns, its about mental illness. But in fact its about the intersection of easy access to guns and mental illness. It's terrifically hard to screen for mental illness. It's stupidly easy to restrict access to guns.

icelancer• 14 years ago

>It's stupidly easy to restrict access to guns.

Yeah, the founders of the United States wrote the 2nd Amendment for exactly that reason.

philwelch5• 14 years ago

The view of Second Amendment advocates is that civilian access to firearms is a fundamental civil right that protects the people from their government. This makes it a fundamentally different question than the standard utilitarian arguments one could come up with. It's easy to imagine ways of making people safer by eliminating their civil rights. But we choose to maintain these civil rights despite the costs.

ojbyrne2• 14 years ago

And the fourth amendment says that protection against unreasonable search and seizure is also a fundamental right that protects the people from their government. But that was gone in a flash.

brown9-22• 14 years ago

The Supreme Court's recent decision in *District of Columbia v Heller" which found that the 2nd Amendment does give a fundamental right to own firearms might not be as expansive as you think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller#...

There is probably a lot of room in between what the courts would allow as far as limiting just what type of firearms one can keep in their home for lawful purposes (read: self-defense) and who can own them. A right to bear firearms does not necessarily mean a right to own fully-automatic assault rifles.

pmorici2• 14 years ago

Yeah, like with a locked cabinet. They shouldn't restrict gun rights they should hold people accountable who fail to reasonably secure their weapons as if they had committed the crime themselves. Kind of like the father in this post put all his knives in a container and kept them safe.

rdl• 14 years ago

This woman is saying she both doesn't have the ability to handle her son, and is afraid of him. He's repeatedly threatened to kill her, and is old enough to be a credible threat.

I'm all for individual rights, families taking care of their own members, etc., but it sounds like society would be better if there were a way for her to give him to the state or some specialized institution, rather than just waiting for him to be the next spree killer (or just run of the mill killer, or even just suicide).

This clearly falls in the "public health" category of expenses even most libertarians would be fine with taxes and the state covering.

ht_th4• 14 years ago

Her kid is also extremely intelligent and seems to have mastered sweetness as a way to get his way still. I wouldn't be surprised if he could behave "normally" for a long stretch of time to get out of whatever institution they put him in. Unless these diagnoses are for life and these institutions are basically a hotel Calofornia.

elteto• 14 years ago

But it would leave a paper trail, just like the social worker said, and this would prevent them later on from getting a firearm legally, which is the way most of the weapons used in mass murders are obtained.

dr_2• 14 years ago

I feel for the parent who has written the article, and whereas I agree we must do more to address the needs of kids with mental illness, I disagree with the stated premise of the article, that it's easy to talk about guns. It's actually not easy to talk about guns in this country, which has led to a lack of any serious gun control regulation. It borders on insanity when we look at the type of weaponry we allow our citizens to purchase, all in the name of an amendment written in a long gone era, where the survival of a fledgling democracy was still uncertain. Just as islamic extremists have hijacked the interpretation of their Koran to serve their purpose, so has the NRA hijacked our constitution to serve its own purpose. And so it's time to come and call out the NRA for exactly what it is - a terrorist organization. Despite whatever mental illness may be afflicting these young unfortunate individuals - the answer to preventing what happened in Connecticut from happening again is extremely strong gun control regulation. To the point where even those few who are allowed access cannot keep weapons at home. I know this does not make the lives of families of people with mental illness any easier - but at least it prevents tragedies of this sort from occurring.

Fumanchu• 14 years ago

I don't live in the States, I live in Europe. The blog post touched me deeply. However I grew up in a society where owning a gun is the exception. Almost nobody does. Reading the comments to the post, from people who have family experiencing same mental health problems, my heart goes out to them. But stating that guns isn't the problem, only the mental health system needs fixing, to me, sounds absurd. It reminds me of this comedy sketch by Eddie Izzard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsN0FCXw914

dr_2• 14 years ago

Agreed. Mental health problems are not limited to the United States. But widespread, poorly regulated, gun ownership is.

sgentle• 14 years ago

It's strange to watch the debates around gun control unfold in USA time and again. Here in Australia we did the same thing after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, one of the deadliest spree shootings in world history. After that, the government basically outlawed semi-automatic weapons and did a compulsory buyback.

In the 12 years since we've only had one incident. In 2002, a member of a sport shooting club (one of the few categories of people allowed to own handguns) opened fire in a Monash classroom. He killed two people and wounded five others, but since he could only manage to acquire handguns he had to switch weapons and was tackled to the ground. No doubt things would have been a lot worse if he'd had access to something with a larger magazine. We tightened laws on handguns after that as well.

I find myself surprised that an otherwise relatively pragmatic people get so blind to the consequences of readily available firearms. I don't have any ideological opposition to guns - in fact, I quite like them - but if someone told me that yoga was involved in every killing spree in the last decade it would be pretty silly not to take a serious look at whether ready access to yoga is worth the cost.

vandahm• 14 years ago

What worries me about a compulsory buyback here in the United States is the massive number of firearms for which the government would have to provide compensation. If the owners of each of the 300 million guns in the United States were compensated USD $750 -- which is probably pretty reasonable given current prices -- it comes to USD $225 billion, excluding the cost of administrative overheard. That's a staggering sum of money, even for the US government, and not something I think we're able to pay.

However infeasible, it's probably the only way that new gun control laws would be effective. Historically, gun bans in the US have applied only to newly manufactured guns, while older guns have been grandfathered in through various means. In fact, assault rifles like the Bushmaster used in the Connecticut shooting have already been banned in that state, which leads me to speculate that it was purchased before the ban and grandfathered in. Without addressing the vast supply of existing guns, it's hard to see how laws regulating new guns will achieve the impact their supporters desire.

Mz8• 14 years ago

I think foreigners routinely miss the fact that the U.S. still has wolves, wildcats, bears, 2000 lb moose, etc. I know that Australia has some of the most venomous spiders in the world but you aren't likely to defend yourself from them with a gun. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any really sizable predators in Australia. Europe also lacks any remaining really large, dangerous wild animals, having hunted them to extinction long ago.

I did insist my ex husband get rid of his stupid hand gun or I would leave him over it, but I do not think gun control is as simple a question in the U.S. as it is in more "civilized" countries whose only remaining serious predator is humankind because the rest have essentially been hunted to extinction (which is not necessarily the most virtuous and wise thing to do since predators play an important role in the ecosystem).

confusedNRA6• 14 years ago

"It borders on insanity when we look at the type of weaponry we allow our citizens to purchase..."

"The nra is a terrorist organization."

Wow. Just plain wow. It's probably pointless to respond to your post, considering the emotions you are displaying regarding this topic, you probably won't even listen to a single thing, no matter, at least others who see this reply might understand just how perturbed you really are.

It is a founding principal of america for individuals to maintain and own weapons. Let's just start right there. Since there are many countries with the kind of gun laws you apparently want, I'd suggest moving to them. Reason being, is owning your own weapon isn't a passing fad, it's a mentality that will not be broken by you or anybody else. The best course of action for you, might be to leave america for other countries that place safety above an individuals freedom.

" the answer to preventing what happened in Connecticut from happening again is extremely strong gun control regulation."

Well then I'm sure are glad you are here to tell us the answer. I really would like to hear this, because Connecticut has some of the strictest gun control regulation in the country. The guns the kid used in the shooting were stolen from his mother. Exactly what sort of legislation on the books, beside from a complete ban altogether, would have helped?

I'm personally insulted by your insinuations that the nra is a terrorist organization, and I'm insulted by your blanket statements regarding gun ownership.

"but at least it prevents tragedies of this sort from occurring."

Yes, lets impede on the freedom of a majority, because a minority are unable to handle something. That is possibly the worst logic a person could use. That somehow everybody should be punished because a statistical fraction of users are unstable.

You sir, are part of the problem.

xyz13• 14 years ago

>> I really would like to hear this, because Connecticut has some of the strictest gun control regulation in the country

How about this from op: >> >> To the point where even those few who are allowed access >> >> cannot keep weapons at home

e12e4• 14 years ago

> It is a founding principal of america for individuals to maintain and own weapons.

Are you referring to the second amendment? Because as far as I can tell, that is about state militia as opposed to a standing federal army - and after the Canadians burned down the white house that whole concept got scrapped in favour of a federal army.

Much as I sympathize with the idea of a People on the same footing as the government - you would have to be hopelessly naive to think that the right to own a semiautomatic hand gun will significantly help your fight against the current US Army -.should that be needed.

MartinCron8• 14 years ago

Since there are many countries with the kind of gun laws you apparently want, I'd suggest moving to them.

There are also many countries that are representative democracies where we, the people, work together to change laws when we feel that they can be better. The "if you don't like it here, then move!" argument is both cliche and vapid. You do the rest of your compelling argument a dis-service by bringing it out.

zybler• 14 years ago

Right now I can understand why it's a gun control problem rather than a health care problem. But what about when one day 3D printer is everywhere? Printing of firearms would be made possible by high-quality 3D printer and it would be next to impossible to control. Just as it is impossible to control piracy. We have to deal with this problem, before it is deemed too late.

tripa2• 14 years ago

There's still a bit of time before we can print ammo. Gun control could evolve into ammo control.

confusedNRA6• 14 years ago

I don't mean to come off as insulting, but you do understand how incredibly easy it is to make your own ammo right?

Dye casting lead is peanuts, considering the low boiling point of lead makes for easy casts.

There is so much ammo already out there, new brass probably won't even need to be created, simply reusing all old brass that's out there would more than suffice for the needs of even a large squad.

So we have lead, and we have brass covered. Next is the explosive primer. That would probably be the weakest link in the chain, in that your average basement redneck won't be creating his own primer anytime soon, but it is possible. The problem is how little primer is actually needed per round; and you have guys that have put away in storage literally pounds of primer.

It might be possible, but I'm sure if it ever got to that point, it would be trivial to order primer online, just like how one can order not-quite-legal-drugs online and have them delivered right to your front door.

In this modern world, I don't think it is possible to regulate things like it used to be. Anyway, anything can happen, and thanks for reading.

dinkumthinkum13• 14 years ago

That's a bit fantastic. Honestly, no disrespect to you, but it's an example of thinking that makes non-technical discussions on HN very odd. OK, if you had this magical 3D printer, probably we'd have Armageddon every other day. In fact, probably we'd only have them for a day because that's the day doomsday weapons would be created by anyone and everyone. I don't think we need to deal with that because it's just kind of crazy-talk. :)

eloisant• 14 years ago

It good to talk about mental illness, but the debate on guns is still relevant.

Here is a similar incident in a country with no easy access to gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_massacre

With a truck and a knife, it's 7 deaths instead of 28.

confusedNRA6• 14 years ago

Yes, and if there were no knives, maybe there would have been zero deaths. But for some reason a call to ban knives is never heard.

Calling for a ban on guns due to what is relatively a statistical anomaly, is kneejerk at best, and encroaching on individual rights at worst.

rpsw• 14 years ago

There is no call to blanket ban knives/blades because of their many basic and common uses.

However, many countries do have legislation knifes, sometimes outright banning certain blades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_legislation

clarky0730• 14 years ago

Surely its possible to kill more than 7 with a truck. Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it can't. There've also been plenty of other knife rampages that killed more than 7.

adrianhoward• 14 years ago

I always get rather nervous when I see posts like this. Things like this obviously happen. However - statistically - people with mental illness are no more likely to commit violence than anybody else.

See http://psychcentral.com/archives/violence.htm for example.

When people with mental illness are violent it's usually for the same reason everybody else is. It's usually aimed at family when it does occur - not the world in general.

The story that gets portrayed in the media of mentally ill people being a major danger to the general public is just that - a story. The facts don't back it up.

And those with mental illness have to deal with the bigotry and prejudice that results from this story.

DanBC5• 14 years ago

Thank you.

There is a big difference between saying that people need better access to diagnosis and treatment, and saying that people need to be locked away before they've done anything.

commanda2• 14 years ago

The author clearly fears for her safety and her other children's safety due to her 13-year-old's violent behavior. Her story isn't making blanket claims about all mental illnesses, only about her son's particular violent condition.

jamornh• 14 years ago

This blog post reminds me of a New York Times article about Child Psychopathy... I'm not sure if it is the same as Schizophrenia but if they are not the same, I would say the child in this article sound closer to being psychopathic rather than schizophrenic... There are certainly not much the system can do for you in either case.

If you're interested, here's the chilling article by the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-...

forgottenpaswrd• 14 years ago

We have a mother that is proud of being anarchist loving Che Guevara, a man that will kill those people he did not agree with.

She is having an anarchist child, he does not want someone else to tell him what to do, and reacts aggressively when forced to.

Probably that could be a good thing, Bill Gates had the same issue, as a child he wanted to be left on his own, his parents went to the doctor and the doctor said: leave him, if he wants to leave home or make a company while being a child let him, and they did. It took a lot of money from their family to find a phychologist with common sense.

Not all children are created equal, the round pegs in the square holes are just that. We designed standard schools that more or less work for 95% of the kids.

Those 5% that not, they could burn in hell. If someone is introvert, she must be healed of his disease staying with a majority of extroverts that wont understand him, will isolate and humiliate her because of their fear to what they don't understand.

pyre4• 14 years ago

Could you cite me where Bill Gates threatened his parents with a knife? I must have missed that article.

unimpressive4• 14 years ago

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said.

I remember doing that.

> He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

I remember that.

> A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me

I did that too.

She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.)

After a marathon of transfers, expulsions, and incidents, I was at the end of the line. My parents interrupted my electronic solipsism for a moment to tell me the truth. It was a long conversation, but it can be summed in a sentence.

"Son, you're out of options, if you want to have a future you need to play nice at this next school."

Maybe I'd been delivered that message in the past, if I was, I don't remember it. This time it clicked for me. I realized that I'd had my fun hurting the faculty of various schools, but if I wanted to see the day after tomorrow, I would need to stop hurting people.

Before I continue on with my story, I would like to share an anecdote about handwriting:

For the longest time my handwriting was awful. My whole life in fact. When I was learning, I had a mean, evil instructor. She would yell at me when I wrote the letters wrong, it really seemed to bother her. So I wrote the letters the wrong way on purpose, because making her mad was more important to me than drawing Latin runes. Eventually I had learned how to handwrite, entirely wrong, out of habit.

As the years passed by, the root of this badness became obscured in other peoples memory. My mom attributed it to mental illness, everyone else did too. But I knew better. I know better. A few months ago, I decided to improve my handwriting. I would pick a font and learn to write in it. There wouldn't be any tutorials of course, I'd just copy the symbols until they looked right.

At first it was just trial and error, I would try and write the symbol the way I saw it on my computer monitor. (The only one that eluded me is that weird 'a' that looks more like an '&'.) Then, once I figured out how to write the symbol, I would practice the motions over and over on paper. I eventually moved on to writing whole sentences, entirely in this new script. Then whole paragraphs. I stopped short of essays, because by then I had basically mastered the points where my current writing lacked.

Then at school I would apply it, even when it was slower than my normal note taking, I would slowly and methodically do my symbols the new way; the right way. Occasionally I would fall back into my old habits, but only for a moment. Slowly I got better, faster. Over the course of days it became a habit. Over the course of weeks it became second nature. Over the course of months it faded into the background.

Back to my story. I knew I couldn't do what I was doing anymore. So I sat myself down and listened to Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit, over and over, on repeat. The problem is that it's stupid easy to threaten to kill people. It's stupid easy to be a terrible person. I decided I didn't want to be that person anymore, partly because I couldn't be.

I got to school, and did the last overtly malicious thing I can think of. (At least, that can be characterized by my earlier behavior.) There was a boy, let's call him Jacob, Jacob had earned a reward for his good behavior. I knew this before he did, because I was in an introductory one on one with the instructor, to explain the rules. She told me to tell him she wanted to tell him something. But not to spoil it.

I went up to him and promptly relayed that he was in major trouble. He went into the head instructors office crying. I hadn't meant to do that. I figured when he heard that he had actually received an award it would lift his spirits even more. It was a pretty stupid idea.

He came out of her office drying his tears, but still sobbing a little. It hurt me to see this. He didn't deserve that, and it was all my fault. I'd ruined what should have been a happy moment in his life. Of course; the instructor had words for me, they were scalding as I remember them. But as I contemplated Jacob, they were just background noise. I cried.

And after that, things got better. I stopped lying, I stopped calling people names, or threatening to blow them up. Occasionally I would fall into my old habits, but I'd rebound. Eventually, I was so well behaved that they couldn't justify keeping me at a specialty school, I was filtered back into the public school system.

I often think about what my younger self would think of me now, I don't think he would like me very much; in fact he might even threaten to kill me. If he did, I'd probably laugh. I'd tell him the truth:

"You can kill me, but that won't solve your problems."

altcognito2• 14 years ago

I like this story because it illustrates that there are lots of ranges for normal and that parents often make the difference but I do want to make it clear that many mental health situations can't just simply be snapped out of.

unimpressive4• 14 years ago

I know.

chris123• 14 years ago

Upvoted primarily because "parents often make the difference" alludes to the wider context, the systems context, which includes the parents and other individuals and groups and society in general.

polyfractal4• 14 years ago

Re handwriting:

If you are still into improving your handwriting, buy yourself a fountain pen. It makes it a lot of fun to experiment with new characters and drastically alter your handwriting.

I've always had meh handwriting. Not horrible, but not pretty either. I've been slowly converting my scratchy characters over to smoother, more flowy characters with embelleshments, since fountain pens make it so easy to play. The process was identical to what you described. Pick a character, play with alternatives until I found one I liked, then slowly retrain myself to use it.

kamaal4• 14 years ago

Hand writing is a big thing here in India. And generally many super intelligent kids lose out to mug pots because of hand writing.

Coming to my case, I consider any one who boasts about great hand writing a loser.

The moment I stopped writing exams I started giving a damn about hand writing. Hand writing improvement initiatives were the biggest things I hated in school. It was a exercise in futility.

Looking back I feel like somebody was forcing a back end engineer into learning HTML.

bambax17• 14 years ago

I've very seldom used anything else than a fountain pen. It's so nice and pleasurable!

My older kid is 7 and learned to write last year with a fountain pen. His teacher said it prevents kids from pressing too hard on paper, and helps them develop a nicer writing.

grogs• 14 years ago

And copying characters as they appear on your monitor probably isn't a great idea. You want to see the flow, fonts generally are not cursive, and the letter aren't really how you'd want to write them (less loops and too many serifs). The 'a' in pretty much every font looks completely different to the 'a' I was taught to write.

It's gonna be super weird when we get a generation which has terrible handwriting - it'll probably be soon.

elpachuco2• 14 years ago

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too.

I wonder if a nice beating would have done you any good. I have one anecdotal story.

My older brother was uncontrollable at the age of 9. He threw a rock at my even older brother straight at his head. Nobody could tell him what to do. Once he run away from home on a bus heading to a big city. Had he not been spotted by some friends of the family we may never had seen him again.

When they returned him my grandfather advised my mom, who has a strong temper, not to scold him. So she did not. From there after he became even more uncontrollable. And now he would threaten my mother that he would run away if he didn't get his way.

Seeing the truth in his eyes my mom realized that one of this days he was going to run away and this time it might be for good. So this is what my mother decided to do as a last resort:

She tied him up from the feet to a branch of a tree. Basically he was hanging upside down. My mother told him that since he was going to run away she'd rather kill him so that at least that way she would know where he was. I believe at this moment my mom took out a belt, she might've hit him once or twice with it, and asked him if he was going to run away. My brother, as you can imagine, was terrified and crying and telling my mom that he would never do it again.

Outcome: The problem was fixed. He became more subdued and never threatened to run away.

Now my brother is a grown man, in his 40's. He has a family, a house and is a productive man of society. Overall he turned out pretty good.

Mind you that it wasn't like my mom would abuse her children with beatings every other day. But you could definitely expect a beating if you really misbehaved. Not once did I get a beating nor do I remember any of my sisters getting a beating. Just trying to establish that she was not an abusive mother.

All of this happened south of the USA border.

kamaal4• 14 years ago

In Urdu we have a proverb it translates to English as - "Treat your teachers beating, as a garland you could receive in the future".

I agree corporal punishment is cruelty. But some minimal beating must be allowed to put things in order. My mom is a teacher, and back here in the past and to some extent now. Beating kids in school in India was the norm. She tells me many parents would come ask the teachers to not beat their kids, some would come and ask teachers to be ask strict as they can.

Its all in the ideology. But my mom says, on an average my mom says a kid who has been corrected by beating has gone to do a lot well than the ones that hasn't.

Haven't you heard of the proverb- "Spare the stick and spoil the child"

Some times you have to get strict.

ForrestN6• 14 years ago

Physical abuse does not solve mental health issues. Ever. Submission is a terrible goal in raising children.

fatbird• 14 years ago

Another word for "beating" is simply "consequence". Establishing that there are negative consequences for particular behaviours is what's important (and that they're consistently applied and adhered to), and clearly the mother knows that--she punished him effectively by yanking his electronics for a day. There's nothing particular about beating a child that's more effective than other punishments. Show me a child who doesn't respond to punishment, and I'll show you a parent who is inconsistent with consequences, and gives in rather than establishing that consequences happen.

That said, I'm fucking horrified by your story. If your brother is a productive man of society, then your mother got lucky. But for every productive man of society, we have a hundred fathers who beat their children senselessly because "that's how I was raised."

Violence begets violence. Abuse begets abuse. Nothing about proper, strict discipline requires behaviour that would, under other circumstances, get you locked up.

konstruktor• 14 years ago

If a sudden moment of clarity would be a repeatable cure for mental illness, we would not need mental healthcare. Please read up on confirmation bias.

amorphid2• 14 years ago

It's more basic than that. You can't get someone to improve their own situation in a sustainable way if they don't want to put in the work. I think most people when confronted with a hard choice would like to pick the choice that will make them healthier in the long run.

I was confronted with facing my own ADHD a few years ago, which helped me stop making choices that were more comfortable in the moment but had suboptimal long term consequences. An example would be impulsively buying something on credit to make myself feel better, one of many little things I did to dig myself into a financial hole and, if I remember correctly, a very common ADHD thing to do. By opening my mind to the possibility that I had to face my issues, it opened the door to slowly chipping away at the core issue.

One thing to keep in mind is that mental health is a hard thing to work on. It takes several weeks in the best of cases just to figure out what's going on inside your head when working with a good mental health professional, and that's assuming your trying to get better and don't have ant major hang ups about being treated. Ask a psychologist at Kaiser Permanente, an HMO based here in California, how many sessions they can spend with most mental health patients. It's a very low number, something like 6 or 8 sessions.

leviathant• 14 years ago

Agreed. I'm a little taken aback by the parent post's "I was like that, but fixed myself with Linkin Park" attitude. It came off to me as rather dismissive, although I don't believe that was the intention at all.

My mother-in-law has bipolar, and is in the hospital pretty much every spring. She has the benefit of being in Australia, where the health care system is leaps and bounds better than what we have in America, at least. I also have a friend who's worked in the mental ward of two hospitals.

Sure, when you're young, it's fun to go down the DSM and think about how some of the symptoms of schizoid personality disorder feel like they kind of apply to you, and there are so many self-diagnosed aspies on the internet, but this leads to anecdotal trivialization of serious mental illness.

Go volunteer in your local mental ward. Spend a few long months with diagnosed, treated (as well as they can be) mentally ill people. It'll change your perspective on so many things, from tragedies like this to views on trends in modern humor.

illuminate2• 14 years ago

Right. Curing "being an asshole" is not curing mental illness.

unimpressive4• 14 years ago

I think it's possible there are some people who just need to "cut their shit" so to speak. But to try and say that's applicable to the majority of cases, on an anecdote, would be just plain irresponsible. I think it's pretty likely that I just matured the way most kids do, by growing up physically, which let me see that what I was doing wasn't alright.

I remember reading portions of a book on autism. (And before you ask, that was a real diagnosis from a real mental health professional.) Which had tons of statistics about people with autistic traits/on the spectrum. And I really wish I could source this, but the first chapter or such looked at what the chances of integration into society were without treatment. I think the number was either 1% or 10%. Either way the odds were stacked against you.

And so the thing that jumped out at me when I read that, was wondering what the difference is between someone who integrates, and someone who ends up in the institute. (I'm fairly sure the book was only covering HFA or Asperger's.) And the answer is: I've got no idea. "Wake up one day and 'cure yourself'." as the parent notes, probably isn't a repeatable strategy.

dkarl3• 14 years ago

I think for most people there's a lot of reflection, conscious or subconscious, that leads up to a "sudden moment of clarity" and a great deal of consolidation work that follows. It's hard to tell the complete story of accepting a simple fact that you've been resisting for a long time. When I read something like this, I don't think, "Yeah, right," I think, "How would this have played out for me?" The story would have been long, boring, pathetic, off-putting, and embarrassing. Which may be why these things are always presented as sudden moments of clarity, though I'm open to the possibility that other people actually experience them that way.

The point I take away is not the instantaneous nature of his insight but _what_ he realized: that the consequences of his vices would become more and more serious, and that he didn't want to pay the price. (The discovery of empathy, I think, was a side effect. People are generally emotionally blind to the side effects of behaviors they have no intention of stopping.)

detst• 14 years ago

Yes and his message is dangerous and counter-productive to people with real mental illness that can't be cured with simply wanting to be better.

The stigma of mental illness often leaves people to think it's just something they have to want to overcome (or that they're not mentally ill at all but just need to overcome whatever problems they have) and there are plenty of people that will be happy to help them reinforce that terribly destructive belief.

Millennium• 14 years ago

No one claims that a sudden moment of clarity is all that most mentally-ill people need. But there are a lot of people who need, more than anything else, to take a good hard look in the proverbial mirror. The effects of this have been noted throughout history, predating psychology as we know it but continuing even after the discovery of that science: it does not work for everyone, but it is too powerful a tool to ignore. That seems to have happened to the grandparent. What fixed him was not Linkin Park, but seeing the consequences of his malicious act. The music may very well have helped him get into the mindset that allowed to see himself in the mirror, but it was not the mirror itself.

But are a couple of problems with the mirror. One is that if you truly need to change, then really SEEING yourself is a traumatic experience, and like any trauma, it requires further care to make sure that it doesn't raise issues of its own. There's no way around this: the traumatic aspect of the mirror is what makes it a powerful tool for personal change. Another problem is the nigh-infinite variety in human psychology: different people need different mirrors, and while it might be possible to classify them broadly, what works for one person still might not work for another.

Put these together, and a major problem emerges with using the mirror therapeutically: namely, doing it in a humane manner. I truly don't think it's always possible to do this humanely; the grandparent's case had him seeing the consequences of his own act of cruelty, which implies that there was collateral damage. Another such case would be the reverse: someone who, like a puppy, can learn that biting hurts only by being bitten. That's someone who needs to experience a moment of cruelty from the opposite perspective, but that requires being cruel to the person. Clearly these are not cases where the mirror is humane.

But there are still open questions. Knowing the trauma that the mirror causes, can bringing it about deliberately ever be humane, even when the subject is not committing or experiencing cruelty? In cases where it can't -which might be all cases- might it be worth doing anyway?

astrodust• 14 years ago

It's not so much that as recognizing you can control your mental illness if you're in the fortunate position of being able to do that, or that you never will and learning to live with it instead of fighting it all the time.

As soon as you make the choice to either wrestle it into submission or surrender to it, you'll probably have an easier time. In this case it seems like taking charge.

Other people have no choice but to surrender and learn to live with the consequences. Maybe for you that means not having any sharp knives, or medication you can abuse, or alcohol in the house. We all have our issues. If we can't control them, we've got to mitigate them to the best of our ability.

amorphid2• 14 years ago

I'd love to see you change your handle from "unimpressive" to something like "awesomelikeyou".

e12e4• 14 years ago

This reads like something I'd expect to see on kuro5hin.org. I have no idea weather you're trolling or honest - and I have to admit I like that a lot; your comment should be (is) subject to interesting discussion.

The mental challenge of deciphering whether or not you're actually serious (thereby weighting if the reality you describe could be real; significantly your change of heart; also how anti/a-social you actually were before this) is in itself quite interesting.

Personally I did a few cruel things when I was younger, but at some point realized that trying to improve the world was much harder, and thereby ended up focusing on being nice. It is also much more rewarding. I still get some guilty pleasure from tearing down people that are acting cruel; knowing that it's not a very effective way of improving things - but it can be very satisfying at times.

unimpressive4• 14 years ago

I am 100% serious. Though I probably should have left out that aside about Linkin Park. It probably didn't give the right image. (I was already thinking about things, and it reminded me of the song, as I remember it.)

DenisM• 14 years ago

It's also posible that you simply got better for a natural reason, and then rationalized the outcome post-factum.

iandanforth• 14 years ago

I wonder if the mirror neurons underlying empathy were poorly developed for you and you were lucky enough that they got stronger over time.

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

> He came out of her office ... still sobbing a little. It hurt me to see this. He didn't deserve that, and it was all my fault.

You feel remorse and thus aren't a psychopath.

shanester• 14 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this post but it does make some good points. As someone who grew up with 2 mentally unstable brothers, a bi-polar single mom, and a con-artist dad I feel like I have seen a wide variation of mental conditions that range from genetic, to environment, to choice. I have never once seen a person "fixed" of their mental condition besides depression. One of my brothers went on to be a convicted rapist serving time in prison. My other brother was forced into a mental facility and is constantly sedated due to his considerable talent at making threats. My mother died of a sudden brain aneurism, which may or may not have attributed to her mood swings. My father is on the move enough to avoid most victims of his cons and we talk on the phone once or twice a year. The outcome for each of them has only one commonality, nothing changed. Sometimes the most difficult answer is to admit there is no answer and certain people are stuck with certain personality traits. Sometimes the only solution is to give them a peaceful environment that will keep them and others in the community safe.

bambax17• 14 years ago

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom.

There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons.

I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such an extent as in the US, BTW).

I think there are two main reasons why there are so many shootings in the US 1/ it's a behavior that has ceased to be "unthinkable" (and every reporting of every new incident adds to the problem) 2/ guns are everywhere

I know HN frowns upon any kind of "political" discussion, so I'll won't elaborate too much, but can someone please explain why a school teacher would have three guns in her house, one of them a Glock semi-automatic pistol??

- - -

Also, if I had had a "soccer mom" that told me I couldn't wear a this or that color of trousers when I was 13 (13!!), I would have called her names, too. I have three kids of my own. They can dress any way they please.

edanm• 14 years ago

"Also, if I had had a "soccer mom" that told me I couldn't wear a this or that color of trousers when I was 13 (13!!), I would have called her names, too."

Just an fyi, many countries have different levels of school uniforms. When I studied in England, I was wearing a full school uniform - button shirt, tie, trouses, sweater, etc. This from the first day of school, basically.

Here in Israel, some schools have a "school shirt" policy, some don't have anything.

jalada• 14 years ago

Adding to this. Many secondary (high) schools in England have a strict uniform policy. Dark blue trousers when black is the rule would get you sent home.

bambax17• 14 years ago

I went to a boarding school in Ireland for a year, and they had a uniform -- but it was a uniform, not a "policy". There was one pair of trousers, one shirt and one pullover allowed, and they were provided by the school.

This was fine with me; it was a very clear rule with only one interpretation possible, and it was completely external to my relation with my parents or in fact authority in general. You had to wear a uniform, you wore a uniform. I was quite rebellious but I never had a problem with that.

My guess is the OP's kid resents arbitrary rules and the way they are enforced. At what point does "dark blue" cease to be dark? And why does this woman feel the need to enforce the school's rules? Why doesn't she let him see for himself what happens when you go to that school with a red pair of pants? Does she fear it will reflect poorly on her?

I feel everything is about her, not him, and that's why he's so upset.

Alex3917• 14 years ago

"(nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such an extent as in the US, BTW)."

Virtually every single school shooter has been on SSRIs, and many people think these drugs have been the cause of the shootings. Already WaPo has reported that the CT shooter was on psychiatric medication, so we'll know for sure in a couple weeks when we get the tox screen back.

http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?p=school

It's perhaps also worth noting that these sorts of mass school shootings were non-existent until after 1988, the year that Prozac came out.

sp3325• 14 years ago

Gun laws are getting more strict in the US; violent assault in general (and gun violence in particular) are at their lowest levels in about 40 years or so. Yet mass shootings are on the rise, and on average getting more deadly.

Jach• 14 years ago

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons.

I guess you don't count child soldiers in Africa.

flyinRyan• 14 years ago

I hope you're not trying to argue in favor of the US with something like this. It's not a very favorable comparison!

gregsq2• 14 years ago

I hear that a lot, that most countries in the world have worse health care than the US. This is a highly contentious claim, and I think you might need to justify that, with reference to mental health in particular.

In a comment above, where I discuss the policy of the states in Australia, I suggested googling 'bendigo mental health'. If you do that you will see a degree of specialisation that far exceeds your presumptive normalcy.

Events such as these do appear to occur in clusters, and this leads to complicated questions. And of course it has to do with mental health, unless you honestly believe that such acts can be carried out by well balanced, psychologically stable individuals.

Inurement by familiarity I would agree is a factor, but it cuts both ways. There was a mass killing in Australia which followed only one month after a mass killing event in the UK, where I live. Isolated individuals also require social connections, and the strange self esteem accessible through active association with like minded others, even if unknown personally to them, seems to play a part. It's never a wise move to allow mentally damaged people to join a nervous uprising against the incumbent ideology, that often is seen as part of the reason for their repressed state. Though it might seem tortured logic on these actors parts, I think one of the reasons these shooting incidents are somewhat peculiar to the United States is because these actors see it as a right to bear arms against their oppressors.

On the other hand, the response of the rest of society is critical to developing ways to resolving ways to avoid these events. Either you exert enough pressure to put the uprisings back in their box, to be modified by planned action in due course, or you eek them out into a system of redress that has the capacity to control.

Either way it is indeed a mental health issue from a public health perspective. And their right to bear arms is guaranteed in defence of their freedom, through logic that is strange and barely comprehensible to most of us.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

When you comment on something as serious as this you should have your facts straight. Automatic weapons are highly regulated in the US, and no automatic weapon has ever been used in a school shooting to my knowledge.

bambax17• 14 years ago

You're right: automatic weapons are regulated in the US (but I did not claim otherwise) and they have indeed never been used in a school shooting (I misspoke; I meant semi-automatic weapons, not machine-guns).

But my point is that if you make weapons difficult to buy and difficult to own, then they are less likely to be used by crazy people to do harm. The situation about machine-guns verifies this.

What's more

- school shootings, including this last one, most often use "semi-automatic" weapons (because that's the most efficient weapon that's easily available)

- the number of fatalities is a direct consequence of the efficiency of the weapons used

See this Slate article "The faster the weapon, the higher the body count." http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/human_nature...

nmridul• 14 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASjfzG4mpyU

If you watch that video, you will understand how scary the situation is. If someone could easily get hold of such things, I'm not sure how they react on a moment of anger...

dinkumthinkum13• 14 years ago

I understand what you're saying but I think you're being a little too pedantic. Automatic, semi-automatic, whatever. Within a minute, one can fire many, many rounds with only a few pounds of pressure.

gyardley2• 14 years ago

She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do.

I cannot understand for the life of me why the focus here is on guns. Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history, but mass shootings are a comparatively new phenomena that are sadly becoming increasingly frequent, so 'ready access to guns' doesn't seem like a particularly compelling explanation. Neither does the influence of media reporting, since this reporting is worldwide but the mass shootings remain predominantly American.

As an immigrant to America, I wonder if the emphasis on individualism and dynamism that makes America so appealing also comes with costs. People here may be more likely to take bold action to solve their problems (or perceived problems), and this includes the segment of the population that's criminal, evil, or mentally ill.

Now if so, this is nothing new - America's been a dynamic culture of entrepreneurs and dreamers long before this outbreak of mass violence. However, America previously combined this dynamism with stronger forms of moral education and social control - primarily religious ones, but also bonds to local communities and extended families. The gradual weakening of these bonds has coincided with the rise of mass shootings.

To sum up, America's individualistic, energetic culture minus a strong moral foundation and community ties = very bad news.

Of course, this is just my own theory, and it's probably wrong. Societies are complicated things. But I do wish people would dig about a bit more under the cultural hood before reflexively pinning the blame on firearms.

bambax17• 14 years ago

> She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do.

She liked to go shooting with a Glock?? And she needed to keep the gun (and ammunition) in her home?

It isn't true that "Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history"; talking about the "Second Amendment" makes it seem that nothing has changed since the 18th century, but the truth is the current situation started no earlier than the 1960s.

And about media reporting:

1/ Media reporting abroad is nothing compared to the US -- as with most news, big events are talked about a lot in the country of origin, and are just a topic among others in all other nations; right now the five first articles on the front page of Slate is about this, for example, whereas here in France, it's hardly a topic of conversation (it did make the front page of Le Monde on paper, but not on the web where all news are in a section called "Americas")

2/ Where things happen matter a lot. If it happens in a distant country it will not influence you the same way as if it happens in your own neighborhood (or somewhere perceived as such).

jcromartie2• 14 years ago

I think it's quite simple: a bullet to the vital organs was just as deadly 200 years ago as it is today, but you could only shoot one at a time (for some non-negligible value of "a time"). Now, handguns and rifles with high rate of fire and replaceable magazines are plentiful and easy to get ahold of, and they just have a much higher potential for death on a large cape.

shirederby2• 14 years ago

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons.

I'm getting very tired of this. If you want to have an informed discussion about gun violence you need to acquire at least a modicum of information about firearms, especially but not limited to different actions, e.g., single-action, semi-automatic, and automatic.

Virginia Tech? 2 semi-automatic pistols. Sandy Hook? 1 semi-automatic rifle and 2 semi-automatic pistols. UT Austin? 1 semi-automatic shotgun, 2 bolt-action rifles, 1 pump-action rifle, 2 semi-automatic pistols, 1 revolver, 1 semi-automatic carbine Columbine? 1 pump-action shotgun, 1 break-action shotgun, 1 semi-automatic carbine, 1 semi-automatic pistol.

What do those have in common? No automatic weapons.

Almost no crimes are committed with legally owned automatic weapons. There are very few of them available and many are quite old, so those owned by non-LEAs are very expensive and largely collectors' items. And even with illegally owned automatic weapons, crimes committed with them barely even register. [1]

If you want to argue that semi-automatic weapons are "bad enough," fine. But please have some idea what you are talking about.

[1] http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html

shirederby2• 14 years ago

Wrote this before I saw InclinedPlane's comment.

bambax17• 14 years ago

This discussion about "semi-automatic" versus "automatic" weapons actually strengthens the case FOR regulation; automatic weapons are regulated => they're not used in mass-killings; semi-automatic weapons are not regulated => they are used in mass-killings.

How one can conclude from these facts that less regulation is better, I don't know.

All guns are bad, and the more automatic they are, the worse.

The NRA says "guns don't kill people, people do" but the truth is that guns help people who want to kill people, kill more people.

kamaal4• 14 years ago

Actually I never understood what is the true problem kids/people in the US have? Really what is it?

There are nations on this earth where people consider themselves fortunate if they can just eat 2-3 times a day. Probably send their kids to their school(Where education is just for names'sake), have some clothes to wear, not fall ill and live with minimal dignity.

The situation is far better in US, people is US probably don't even have an idea how bad things are for people outside. Most US citizens aren't even remotely likely to face such situations.

I guess at the end its too much luxury, and law of diminishing utility kicking in.

I think people in US should face some real hardships in their lives, what people else where face. May be when they see for themselves how fortunate they were with what they had before. They will learn the importance of things the hard way.

hammer_man• 14 years ago

" there are two main reasons why there are so many shootings in the US 1/ ... 2/ guns are everywhere"

Quite the contrary, there aren't enough guns. If the teachers were carrying, if the school had armed security guards, if the principal had a handgun, etc. then this "crazy" person would likely not have acted out. As Quannel X says, a person may be "crazy" but that doesn't mean they're crazy. That is, most persons who are classified as mentally ill don't act out in a situation where they will likely lose.

"...please explain why a school teacher would have three guns in her house, one of them a Glock semi-automatic pistol?"

Perhaps because it is allowed, because she enjoys target shooting, because she hunts and the .223 semi-auto AR-15 is one of the most popular hunting rifles in existence in the USA. Because the Glock is an OK and very popular handgun.

The question for the mother is not why she owned firearms but why she allowed her son unsupervised access to her firearms. She made a mistake and paid the price. Darwin rulez once again.

hmbg• 14 years ago

"Quite the contrary, there aren't enough guns"

I struggle to find an example of a country with more guns and lower murder rate. Care to help?

maurits• 14 years ago

Sobering read, reminds me of this rather depressing NY Times article: "Can you call a 9-year old a psychopath".

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-...

f1codz• 14 years ago

> In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

I think it becomes all the more important to talk about weapons when you have a mentally inflicted person in your family.

> methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me

This is exactly what i'm talking about.

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9...

This is an article i just read after reading this post. According to it: Lanza's mother was a big fan of guns. And taught her son how to shoot. And they had lot of weaponry at home.

I do not know of mental history of Lanza. Assuming if there was a bad side to it, it is obviously very inconsiderate to have such a child being introduced or even be in periphery of any kind of weaponry.

> God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.

Amen. Also, in retrospect, it is really important to regulate access to weapons, especially in a case where there is a bad mental history.

geden• 14 years ago

which came first - the controlling mother or the breakaway child?

zlotty• 14 years ago

This is a useful article http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_...

xinliang• 14 years ago

Well, the boy is indeed very naughty. But his behaviour or temperament is very likely to be caused by the environment he is livening in (ie. his family and social background). One obvious inappropriate thing his mom has done is that the mom chooses to threaten the son when he did anything wrong. Threatening only creates fear. And fear is no good, because it will most likely make the son more rebellious. An alternative would be love and care. To have a deep talk with the son, to find out what the root cause of his rebellious reaction is and to help the son cope with the society better may be a bette method. When America has an alarmingly high psychiatric problem rate, it is clear that most of them are not caused by genetics, meaning, they can be changed for good. Surely, the mom has tried to talk to the son. But the depth of the talk is questionable, simply because when the mom finds it urgent to have a serious conversation with the son, the son may have already developed a distrust against the mom, and the talk can be very difficult. When the mom gives up to call the police, even the 13-year old son may yet to have a serious mental problem, he will develop one.

newobj• 14 years ago

Armchair Doctoring on Hacker News, my favorite kind of thread.

markpercival• 14 years ago

Don't be so flippant. Some of us have our doctorates from the prestigious WebMD.

DanBC5• 14 years ago

Here are some numbers from Gloucestershire, a rural county in England.

In a population of about 800,000 people there are about 4,000 people on the books of specialist MH treatment services at any time.

There are about 2,000 people with a diagnosis of psychotic illness (eg, schizophrenia). There are about 3,000 people with a diagnosis of mood disorder (eg, depression).

There are about 60 beds for 'adults of working age'[1] with a MH problem. Most treatment is successfully provided in the community by community and home treatment teams. Staff visit people in their homes daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, whatever. Treatment is not just medical and drugs, it involves therapy, but it also involves occupational stuff. (Occupational stuff does not just mean 'work' (although that's important and there are specialist teams focussed on 'place and train' return to work) but includes meaningful social activity, education, exercise, family and friend networks, etc.)

There are no beds in county for children. Children with a need for a psychiatric in-patient stay are sent out of county. (Apart from a short time each year when adult drug and alcohol re-hab is used for children.)

There are a small number of beds in a low-secure forensic unit.

There is an estimated 30,000 (thirty thousand) (high end) or 22,000 (twenty two thousand) (low end) people with a probable diagnosis of one of the personality disorders.

PD is a difficult diagnosis. It used to be a diagnosis of exclusion. Someone with a diagnosis of PD would not be committed to MH hospital, because PD was thought to be not treatable. PD is no longer a diagnosis of exclusion. Someone with a diagnosis can be committed to a MH hospital. But they are much more likely to find themselves involved in the criminal justice system.

Gloucestershire has had a well known incident where someone with a mental illness has killed - (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1182902.stm) (etc).

The serial killers Fred and Rosemary West lived in Gloucestershire. They killed maybe 13 people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_West)

We hear a great deal about these significant murders. We hear very little about the every day murders - the murders by the sane. Very many children are raped or abused or murdered by their sane parents; very many people are murdered by their sane spouses; very many sane people commit acts of violence every day. We don't hear too much about the number of ill people killing themselves. (UK: about 1000 murders a year, about 4000 suicides per year.)

People with a mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime than to be the perpetrators of violent crime.

The US does have serious problem with terrible care for people with mental illness. Do you really need a spree killing to start that discussion? Do you walk past the homeless and think it's okay so long as they're not killing anyone?

[1] Historically services have been split between "old people"; "adults of working age"; "children and adolescents"; and "people with an IQ < X". There are problems with these arbitrary divisions, and modern services are moving away from them.

jcromartie2• 14 years ago

You should be thankful that you have 1000 murders a year. We have 3X as many per capita in the US.

DanBC5• 14 years ago

Well, I'm really just comparing rates of murder to rates of completed suicide. From a very quick bit of web searching I find that rate of completed suicide in US is about 11.3 per 100,000 while rate of homicide is 5.5 per 100,000 people. Completed suicide numbers are roughly double homicide numbers.

Here's my sources:

(http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-u...)

NIMH (national institute of mental health) say about suicide in the US:

> In 2007, it was the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 34,598 deaths. The overall rate was 11.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people.

(Suicide statistics can be tricky and there are normally a bunch of caveats.)

(http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm)

For 2009:

> Number of deaths: 16,799

> Deaths per 100,000 population: 5.5

> Cause of death rank: 15

agotterer• 14 years ago

Thank you for sharing your story. I agree with many of the points you made. But I have some questions. Knowing what you know about yours sons condition, would you ever consider taking him out and teaching him to shoot a gun? You said you lock up all the sharp objects around the house, but do you leave out your pistols and semi-automatic guns?

We definitely need to do and learn more about mental illness. But in the case of Adam Lanza, his mother shouldn't have owned guns and should have never been able to purchase one with a child that's unstable and has a history/record.

bjm1• 14 years ago

After reading the story, one big glaring question. Where is the father? He's not around. Boys need fathers. If you want to screw up a child, take away the father.

dreamdu5t• 14 years ago

Sorry, but what is "society" supposed to do exactly? Last time I checked, mental health professionals don't know how to cure or fix kids like this. What exactly does it mean to say we don't have enough mental healthcare? This article did nothing to help me understand that.

gridaphobe• 14 years ago

Why is it so hard for people to conceive of the possibility that there may be multiple issues contributing to tragedies like Friday's? Mental illness is certainly an issue that does not get enough attention in the US. Gun control is also an issue that does not get enough (real) attention. These /two/ issues, and likely others, are together responsible for the shooting.

We need to address both.

alvaromuir• 14 years ago

I'm sorry. Im a parent. This lady needs to control her kid. Vote it down if you want, but when 'Michael' snaps and shoots up a school then everyone will say shouldve couldve woudldve. She is clearly ALLOWING this behavior. Funny, no mention of a father.

From experience, mothers are way more tolerant of out of control kids.

This is a tragedy waiting to happen.

ralish• 14 years ago

Considering she explains in detail how she has had to take him to hospital multiple times with the assistance of police to restrain him, and further admits that pressing charges against him is perhaps the only last remaining option (which she indicates she is understandably reluctant to do), I'm having a hard time seeing what she isn't doing?

Could you perhaps elaborate as to what you would do to control a mentally ill child such as her own?

dusing• 14 years ago

Press charges.

dinkumthinkum13• 14 years ago

I kind of agree with you but on the father, issue ... We have no idea what the situation is. She seems to like the idea of having a mentally ill child, maybe that is too harsh. But some things strike me as a little weird. OK, so this kid is in a constant state of rage but yet he has an in-depth knowledge of quantum physics and so on and so forth, where does he find the time? I don't know, something doesn't seem right.

TimGebhardt2• 14 years ago

We do know what happened to the father according to previous blog posts: http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/07/news-from-war... tl;dr; he left her for some woman he met online and married her six weeks after his divorce was complete. And now he doesn't pay the soccer mom child support and is engaging her in a grueling custody battle.

Funny, not much of a father to mention.

patrickgzill• 14 years ago

Divorced 4 years ago, children angry, this kid probably needs discipline more than he needs drugs, many of which aren't even properly tested on developing brains.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

Right there, is why we needed health care reform. (And still need more.) I'd like to meet one middle class person who's not on a big company's premium plan tell me otherwise.

pfedor2• 14 years ago

I'd like to meet one middle class person who's not on a big company's premium plan tell me otherwise.

Happy to oblige. I recently looked into this before I quit my job four months ago to spend some time working on hobby projects. So here's the situation as I understood it: (a) There is a law called COBRA which says after you've quit your job the insurance company has to keep you on the same plan you had for the next 18 months (36 months in California), with the same rates your employer was paying, (b) There is a law called HIPAA which says that after you've used up all COBRA the insurance company has to give you coverage regardless of any preexisting conditions, as long as the gap in your coverage was below (I think) 60 days. So someone in my situation (middle class person not on a big company's plan, as you asked) there is no gain from the healthcare reform. Also, while this was not immediately relevant to my situation, I think that (in CA at least) the insurance company cannot deny you coverage based on the preexisting condition if you're below certain age (19 years old I think?). So as long as you've either gotten the coverage below that age or had a job with a group plan at any point later in your life, and had no gaps in coverage since, you are fine.

I'm not at all against the healthcare reform, but I suspect that most of the time when people complain about the healthcare situation in the US they just don't know the facts. I also suspect that in many cases when people share their health insurance horror stories, there is something they're not telling you. Like that they had a gap in coverage. Or that they had to take a job because they needed steady income, and saying it was because of health coverage has a better ring to it.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

> Happy to oblige. I recently looked into this before I quit my job four months ago to spend some time working on hobby projects.

I should simply extend this to, "one middle class person who's not had the benefit of being on a big company's premium plan tell me otherwise." If it wasn't for COPBRA and HIPAA, you'd be in a much different situation.

> So as long as you've either gotten the coverage below that age or had a job with a group plan at any point later in your life, and had no gaps in coverage since, you are fine.

That's a whole lot of stipulations. I think it should just be reduced to the last 3 words.

> I also suspect that in many cases when people share their health insurance horror stories, there is something they're not telling you.

I see lots of people roll their eyes when I mention my sister's healthcare horror stories. How is it that people know a priori that, "there is something they're not telling you?" There is some clear prejudice operating here -- without exception, people who have that axe to grind don't even let me finish the sentence before their eyes roll. Incidentally, my sister is covered under the plan for the New York City Ballet. She's a dance educator and takes the same classes as the company as enrichment for her job. Even she has a healthcare horror story.

She blew out her hamstring during one of those classes. She was scheduled to go in for an MRI to see if she needed surgery, but there was a traffic accident involving a toddler, and they had to MRI the kid first, so she couldn't get her MRI, so the doctors have her stay overnight at the hospital to get her MRI first thing in the morning. Well, it turns out she didn't need surgery, so the insurance company sticks her with over $4000 for the hospital stay! There is nothing I'm not telling you about that.

pmorici2• 14 years ago

"And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off."

If I had to go to a school that had such ridiculous rules as having to wear black or tan pants I would probably be pretty ticked off too on a regular basis.

shanev• 14 years ago

I never see diet mentioned in articles dealing with mental disorders. Research[1] shows that eating a natural foods ancestral diet free of gluten and casein can reduce symptoms of ADHD and autism. The recent rise in mental disorders seems to be correlated with the rise in diabetes. Could it be all the sugar and processed food we are feeding our children now? Why are we so quick to prescribe drugs with fatal side effects without looking at diet first?

[1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120229105128.ht...

guard-of-terra4• 14 years ago

"can reduce symptoms of ADHD and autism" Both positive and negative or just negative?

_feda_• 14 years ago

I live in northern ireland where the state of mental health institutions is probably closer to eastern europe than it is to other western institutions (at least it is in my limited experience). Patients are usually prescribed a bunch of vague, cure all drugs and left to rot. There arent any activities or things to do for patients. Patients tend to get worse rather than better because of effect of the drugs and the general malaise and hopelessness of the place.

Mental hospitals are more or less the lowest common denominator when it comes to treatment of mentally ill people. It takes more money in the short term to do house calls, and to support people in normal life, but in thelong term it is more beneficial to keep these people in the mainstream of society, and not artificially compartmentalized and ostracized.

tempoman• 14 years ago

Nobody wants to consider the fact that there are children that are unwell. Regardless of whether it is physical (leukemia, bone cancer, any one of a whole host of really nasty immune system related and quite deadly genetic predispositions) or psychological. Schizophrenics have been cute little babies too, with parents that love them very much and want the same wonderful life for there children as anyone else. And that goes for all of the people who have any kind of autism spectrum issue, borderline, bipolar disorder, chronic depression and so on. They exist. Their parents exist and many of those parents are in hell. In absolute hell. You would do well to remember that, one day you might be the father or mother who is crying themselves to sleep every night wondering what will become of your child or whether they will survive their next suicide attempt. Whether they will ever be able to make it on their own. When the next call from school will come because they've hurt someone. Blaming them accomplishes nothing. It's just a sign that you are lacking in empathy or have never loved something so much that the thought of them suffering is physically painful.

imperialdrive• 14 years ago

As some point, as a loving parent, shouldn't you possess the right to have your son/daughter peacefully put to sleep for the sake of Everyone, and for the Love of God? It's almost too painful to imagine the combined heartache that resonates from the 1 in a million that simply need to be reborn instead of suffer through their glitch.

tribe• 14 years ago

This article [1] seems to highlight a number of issues with the original.

[1] http://thegirlwhowasthursday.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/you-ar...

Zak• 14 years ago

There have been suggestions that this woman's son has issues in part due to abuse at the hands of his parents: http://sarahkendzior.com/2012/12/16/want-the-truth-behind-i-...

I don't know enough about the situation to make a claim one way or the other, but it's worth taking note.

jijji• 14 years ago

Where is the father? Boys need a father growing up.

pyre4• 14 years ago

I'll agree that you get better outcomes with two parents, but the idea that two-parent families are the solution is ludicrous. As a counter-point, a boy grows up in a two-parent family, but his dad consistently rapes him from an early age.

TimGebhardt2• 14 years ago

He's with another woman that he met online and married six weeks after his divorce was final. Now he's not paying any child support. http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/07/news-from-war...

jasongaya• 14 years ago

agree.

Acumulator• 14 years ago

C'mon guys... The kid is not ill. He is angry and pissed of at the world. He has established different society norms for himself and his behaviour is off limits, but he is still in control of his brain and his body. And he understands what he's doing. He is not brain damaged. Don't treat him as one, cuz it would piss me off to.

debacle2• 14 years ago

I feel very similarly. I knew kids who threatened to kill themselves and swore at their parents. They were bad kids, but not mentally ill.

Discipline is something that needs to be taught from a young age. I've seen it do wonders for autistic children (but definitely not cure them), and I have no doubt that learning to live with and manage a mental illness is better than attempting to treat it. Psychiatry is still a very ham-fisted science.

Thinking the unthinkable

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