Go ahead finger waggers. I'm not 'better than that' today.

[Ineeda]

When the excuse of mental illness, genuine or not, is trotted out on days like this, I find it impossible to find empathy. If you're suicidal, as is probable in a case like this, just freaking do it already. Go out into the woods or an empty parking lot with your precious gun and pull the damn trigger. Don't traumatize a law enforcement officer by forcing him or her to do it for you. And in the name of everything we hold sacred, don't take innocents with you on your journey of despair. Not kids, not anyone. If you're expecting love or sympathy or understanding about how miserable and hopeless your life was, don't look here. I don't care how horrific is was. Rot in hell.

[morningfog]

1. If they didn't have easy access to weapons of mass murder and the ammo,

they would not be able to inflict such carnage. And, yes we do need better mental illness treatment.

[Live and Learn]

2. You are asking the irrational to think rationally.

Good luck with that. We need to demand better solutions for the mentally ill, their families and society.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. You're clueless as to the various types of mental illness.

It's not as if there is only one and it stretches to encompass all the various mental issues a person can experience. A person who commits a mass murder then kills their self is not merely suicidal.

[DirkGently]

7. Even with mental illness though, cultural norms play a role, yes?

We have a new norm where the truly aggrieved / disturbed / put-upon, who, it is true, are often not given the help we absolutely should afford them, dress in black, make a video, go out in a blaze of (cowardly slaughter posturing as) glory.

I've had the same thoughts as the OP, although I don't think we need to throw out empathy toward the mentally ill.

We DO, maybe, need to find a way to signal that mass killers do not receive the attention and empowerment and concern they sought in life based on how many innocents they destroy.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

9. Before I answer this I'm going to say I am not assuming what may have motivated the killer today.

Last edited Fri Dec 14, 2012, 11:37 PM - Edit history (2)

It depends on the type of mental illness.

For example, if the person was a delusional paranoid schizophrenic they're not living in the reality you and I know. Sometimes that particular type of mental illness leads a person to believe they're some great historic figure from the past. Other times it makes a person paranoid, thinking people they know are conspiring against them, or the government is out to get them. Their thought process is not, in any way, linear. You know the quirky homeless person always going on about how the end is coming, and how they know this because god has been warning them? That's one example of this type of mental illness. Another is when someone decides there's a threat to them from some person(s) who they for whatever reasons have created in their minds. In extreme cases a fraction of these people will then proceed to eliminate the threat their mind has created. How they come up with the method is arbitrary, really. They could read about a swat standoff in the newspaper, they could have seen a car blown up on a television series, or they could have gotten the idea from the old Rambo movies. The point is their minds don't connect the dots the way a normal person's does, so what we perceive isn't necessarily what they do.

There are also psychopaths who just don't feel remorse. These types often have significant anger issues and have a long history of violence. I read once where a significant percentage of hate group members are thought to be psychopaths. When a psychopath commits an act of violence against another, they usually know it's against the law, but lacking the ability to feel remorse, coupled with the anger issues, they still commit the crimes they do.

That's just a couple of examples. I'd like to point out I'm not in the mental health field. I, like many other people, have had people with mental illness in my life.

[DirkGently]

10. Good information. I suspect spree killers

may fall more into certain areas of mental disturbance. I don't know enough to guess which ones.

[GeorgeGist]

4. You might have empathy ...

If you were mentally ill.

[Ineeda]

11. Please don't make assumptions.

And BTW, I'm normally as empathetic as all get-out towards the mentally ill. Today, I'm enraged. And grief-stricken. And my targets for those emotions are legion.

[DevonRex]

5. I look at it differently.

I think it demonizes people with mental illness. Unfairly.

And I get really, really pissed off when families can't get help for their loved ones who desperately need intervention before something like this happens.

And I get even angrier when a family has a mentally ill person in it and has guns and does not bother to fucking lock the goddamn guns UP so that they can NOT be gotten at. There is NO motherfucking excuse for it.

[spanone]

6. days like this are because of mental illness of some form. 'trotted out'?

[kestrel91316]

8. If this kid was just a sociopath, then fine, he gets no sympathy from me.

IF, and it's unlikely from what I have heard, but IF he were a psychotic, delusional paranoid schizophrenic (that is an actual organic brain disease and not a personal choice or character defect), then I would just feel sorry for him AND his victims AND his family, because untreated or inadequately treated schizophrenia is a tragedy for all involved.

But it sounds like he was just a miscreant.

[KG]

12. when mentally ill people attempt mass murders with patio furniture, then i'll blame

mental illness.

the problem, as ever, is gun proliferation.