Patterico's Pontifications

1/15/2011

Was Loughner Seen by Mental Health Professionals?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:38 am



Big Media appears to assume the answer is no.

But I’m hearing he was.

Are we assuming he wasn’t because people are denying it? OK. And this is believable … why?

I am sure we will hear more in coming weeks and months. If and when we do, remember this post.

59 Responses to “Was Loughner Seen by Mental Health Professionals?”

  1. the operative term here is “professional”…

    they couldn’t possibly make a mistake, could they?

    face it Pay, you’re just a H8r.

    redc1c4 (fb8750)

  2. If they made a mistake, I’m sure they would rush to admit they had treated him.

    Patterico (1b0bdd)

  3. Now this is what nuts sounds like (Loughner’s video)

    I can see why people were uncomfortable around him, I would be, but would have I done anything about it? Probably not. In today’s world of political correctness, I would be scared of being sued for offending someone. We don’t dare have real conversations or voice opinions on controversial subjects anymore. Sure, it happens online, where even though we know better, we feel protected by being in our own homes with a computer screen, but in public, not often anymore.

    Try disciplining a child who takes a tantrum and starts kicking and screaming in the middle of a grocery store and see how fast some do-gooder has child services and/or police on the scene. How many times were the police called out to the Loughner’s, 10 wasn’t it? Do we know whether they were there to go after the parents for trying to control a mentally disturbed son, or to protect the parents from him?

    Someone my son grew up with is in jail (no bail) on suspicion of murdering his wife. Not Calif. Everyone who knew this kid, including me, knew he had a screw loose and was subject to violent outbursts in a flash. I saw it once and it scared the hell out of me and he was the only kid I ever told me son to stay away from, and that was 20 years ago. And like Loughner, he had a drinking problem by the time he got into high school. His sister has called the DA and told him his whole family is afraid of him. He has multiple domestic abuse charges from his first marriage and his kids were taken away because of the danger. His ex-wife has called with even more info. The wife he is under suspicion for killing tried to get a restraining order the day before and according to her neighbor who went with her, she was turned down and told they couldn’t do anything until he did something overt. Well he did. Yet they arrested him over a month ago and they still haven’t decided if they are going to charge him, so he sits in jail on no bail, but really on some rinky dink outstanding warrant from Calif that is a couple years old.

    Sometimes getting help or getting someone else to help falls on deaf ears.

    Sara (Pal2Pal) (4d3f49)

  4. I’m not sure I follow what the post appears to be implying.

    If the guy was in fact seen or treated in a mental health setting, other than that adding evidence to the presumption of insanity, what do you think this would imply about the case?

    (My assumption in asking about this is that your chief interest is in the overall political context, not the clinical case history.)

    d. in c. (4acae7)

  5. OK, my last psychiatric rotation was 1987 in 3rd year Med School, but that doesnt stop other idiots from commenting…And in residency we did anesthesia for Electro-Shock Therapy, which is more accurately called “Electro-Convulsive Therapy” and its really a let down, cause its nothing like on “One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest”, cause you put a tourniquet on, and there unconscious and the only thing that convulses is a finger…
    Its still probably the most effective treatment for Depression…
    But anyway, if I remember right (BIG if) Schizophrenics aren’t anymore violent than the “Normal” population, if anything, probably a little better behaved.
    It takes a sharp mind to carry out really evil and nasty acts, like leaving a young woman to asphyxiate(not drown, theres a difference)in an upside down Oldsmobile.
    Now I’m not sayin I want Sybil doin my Angioplasty or pilotin a 777, but the guy who does my taxes, Hal, and thats not his real name, but he takes enough Haldol you can get secondhand EPS if you get too close, makes Loughner look like Friggin Steve Hawkins, and wouldnt hurt a fly.
    Probably because he believes there his reincarnated ancestors,
    And you know who goes into Psychiatry???
    Umm I’d say there the ones who couldn’t put the round peg in a round hole, but that wouldnt be fair.
    I’d say there the ones who are so stupid they give the bizarre ramblings of a 19th century Vienese Cocaine addict respect.
    Basically, if you can’t do anything else in medicine, you do Psychiatry.
    I know, I almost went into it…
    Thought it’d be cool if I could treat myself..

    Frank

    Frank Drackman (550e6d)

  6. The question I have is where were his parents through all this? My guess is that they are marginal people themselves and when he became too much to handle they withdrew any support or contact. I read a report that his father hasn’t worked in years and that he was considered by neighbors to be aggressive at times himself. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

    It would be very difficult living with someone as aggressive and as psychotic as Louchner under the best of circumstances–however it would be the parent’s duty to see to it that he got treatment. My guess is that even if he did he repeatedly quit taking his meds. People who are as delusional as Louchner think that they are fine–it’s everybody else that is screwed up. The only way to treat someone like that is through involuntary hospitalization–something that from my understanding is not available any longer in this country. I worked many years ago in the mental health field so my understanding of how current hospitalizations are handled is not timely.

    Rahmrocks (74cbec)

  7. Sorry I forgot to change my handle back. My bad.

    BT (74cbec)

  8. I’m wondering why anyone would want to imply that a mental health care professional would want to let a dangerous person back onto the street.

    Psychology and psychiatry aren’t exact sciences. I know the people in that field wish that they were, and that they could predict every person who could become violent with 100% accuracy.

    JEA (a03570)

  9. Well the sheriff is clearly O’s pal and that university guy is another one sucking on the koolaid. Naps got a streisand style embrace from the audience, so expect any mistakes or omissions to work in zero’s favor.

    ABC radio had a report last night on Giffords’ progress. They made sure to say that she opened her eyes on her own, which sounded somewhat defensive. I’ve only read one piece so far which implied maybe the O people tweaked had her meds tweaked (or had the staff agree to agree), coveniently ahead of the big lightworker speech. Don’t know where Patterico’s going.. but any attempt to suppress records wouldn’t be a surprise.

    And off topic. Have never seen a surgeon wearing a backwards baseball cap, until the O presser.

    vermont neighbor (a30317)

  10. * As in, she opened her eyes on her own and without assistance.

    vermont neighbor (6ca166)

  11. Everything that could go wrong did, and it was in spite of Arizona’s rather lax standards on civil
    committment,

    narciso (6075d0)

  12. I don’t assume anything, other than whatever help he received was not successful, and that would not necessarily be the fault of the parents, mental health professionals, friends, school, police, etc.

    Tou cannot commit a person to psych care against their will in the US unless they are an imminent threat to themselves or others. Typically, even when this criteria is met the person is hospitalized and treated as long as it takes to no longer be an imminent threat, which often mnay be a few days on medication. Once discharged from the hospital, the main obstacle to treatment is the willingness of the patient.

    A person needs to be lucid enough to realize they are not in a good situation and that treatment would help, not always a situation easily achieved.

    Giving a shot of a long acting antipsychotic against a person’s will is assault or some such.

    In the best of all worlds, a person will at some moment realize care would be a good thing or is mandated to care for a time, treatment is started, and the person keeps up on their meds, perhaps by an every two week injection, and so is maintained “well enough” to have perspective to keep taking meds. But even in that perfect scenario, after a long period of stability a person often gets the idea, “Maybe I don’t need the medication anymore”, in part because of the stigma of mental illness; so they go off of their meds, decompensate, and back to where you were.

    When someone is already paranoid and concerned about mind control, how easy is it to convince them to take a medication that affects their thinking? Even if paranoid, there is a logic to refuse to take medicine if you’re obsessed with the idea of people controlling your mind.

    Prior to the mid 50’s or so, the majority of hospital beds in the US were for people with serious and/or chronic mental illness. The first antipsychotics came out and some treatment was available, patient’s rights advocates and cost cutters wanted the hospitals emptied and overdid it, and did not commit enough resources to keep people doing well out of the hospital.

    If you’ve known someone with schizophrenia, Bipolar Type I, or depression that proceeds to psychosis, you know how much it can be like “Humpty Dumpty”, all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men can be called in, but can’t solve the problem.

    This is totally different than someone who is considered a “sociopath”, which generally refers to a person with anti-social personality disorder. Those people are not so much irrational in their thinking, but lack normal emotional bonding/empathy. At least that’s a first approximation of how it would be explained.

    I haven’t looked into it further, but I believe i saw that Arizone has a “Guilty but insane” category. This means (I think) one could be found guilty of murder, given life without parole, but spend time (at least initially) in a forensic/guarded psych facility. This allows the person to be kept off of the street, as is appropriate, and obtain care to make existence as normal as possible.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  13. The question I have is where were his parents through all this?

    In their house smoking weed with their kid, getting more and more paranoid about the outside world?

    Do I get a prize?

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  14. 13 daleyrocks- did not someone who ran into the family at the store on occasion, say that there was always a 30 pack of beer on their cart? When I worked in a mental hospital long ago, often the parents of the patients seemed just as nuts or nuttier than their offspring or you could see where the insanity came from. At that time mere psych aides administered meds. In time rules changed and it had to be RNs. And of course some RNs thought they were overworked and had doctors make the meds and doses more convenient or even declare drug holidays. In any case things went downhill when the feds got more and more involved and insisted on treatment plans and “progress” reports with added layers of pencil pushing bureaucrats and mountains of required paperwork. Plus it seemed the state system got the worst excuses for shrinks possible.
    Today we are reading more and more about local homeless problems here in South Florida. Before it was Bush’s fault, but now nary a word is said about the Obama economy. Interesting that the homeless often have enough money for booze, drugs and cigarettes. Not that there are not plenty of people with legitimate needs now. I note that over half million residents of Dade (Miami) are on EBT assistant. Instead of jobs, Obama’s minions seem to tout the availability of unemployment insurance and food stamps. Let’s make them more dependent on gummint. And I read somewhere that twice as high a percentage of blacks are optimistic about the Obama economy’s future than do those racist whites.

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (798aba)

  15. Mr. Calypso – Somebody once told me that beer goes well with weed, although I have absolutely no experience in such matters myself.

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  16. That video is incredible. I think that teacher is probably lucky that Giffords came to town. I bet he was on the list.

    He keeps talking about being kicked out of class for his “First Amendment Rights”. The right to interrupt class, I guess. His hatred of the Constitution seems not in evidence here.

    MayBee (081489)

  17. Thought it’d be cool if I could treat myself..

    Frank

    ColonelHaiku (5430d1)

  18. Thought it’d be cool if I could treat myself..

    Frank

    On that note, we can agree…

    ColonelHaiku (5430d1)

  19. From his video I think he revered, not hated, the Constitution.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  20. _____________________________________________

    You cannot commit a person to psych care against their will in the US unless they are an imminent threat to themselves or others

    I recall reading a commentary piece in the LA Times several years ago of the observations of a psychologist (or psychiatrist). He noted the average, typical patient of his often displayed — and suffered from — signs of repressed behavior back in the 1960s. That was around the time when society was transitioning away from an ethos of fuddy-duddy pro-conformity to hip, cool, do-your-own-thang-ism.

    In the decades since, he noted his typical patient now was more likely to exhibit problems associated with — to paraphrase — shameless, self-indulgent, who-gives-a-damn behavior.

    Not too dissimilar from this, decades ago the word of the public-school teacher was first and foremost, while the word of his or her student was secondary. Moreover, most parents accepted that pecking order. Nowadays, I’ve read that far more parents will value the word of their precious little Johnny or Susie over that of the mean ol’ teacher.

    Also, decades ago people who were overtly wild, deranged or disruptive in public were vulnerable to anti-loitering laws and incarceration for insobriety and mental illness. Nowadays, they’re coddled by political correctness run amok and the gross naivete of pro-ACLU feel-goodism.

    If people want to point to aspects of modern culture that make it ripe for people like Loughner, it’s a joke when they — living in the middle of an era influenced by decades of socio-cultural liberalism — have the gall to point to the rhetoric and mindset of talk-show conservatism.

    I won’t even mention that back in the early 1960s, when rightist (if not ultra-conservative) politics and culture were far more pervasive and noticeable, that one of the two most infamous assassinations in US history (ie, of JFK) was carried out by an ultra-liberal.

    Mark (411533)

  21. From his video, I see he was not only nuts, but quite stupid and self-involved. As I watched, I thought: Look at this nice campus. It must have cost a lot of money to build and operate. How futile to spend such resources on an ignorant ingrate who, even if he were unencumbered by mental illness, was probably too stupid to benefit from it. He should never have been admitted in the first place.

    gp (72be5d)

  22. My local paper very recently had a feature article about a woman whose mentally unstable son just got kicked out of the residential mental health facility in which he had lived for many years. He turned 22 and the state, in terrible fiscal trouble, is no longer legally mandated to keep him and monitor him. He is now back living in his old childhood room at home. He is unemployable. The woman is desperate, scared to death for herself and other family members, and cannot keep him on his meds without which he has a violent temper. The young man can not be left alone. This mother, IMO was not only issuing a cry for help but was subtly telling the world, “be warned–my son’s gonna end up killing somebody”. I cannot imagine trying to live in that situation. Maybe we should be a little more careful about demonizing Loughner’s parents until we have all the facts.

    elissa (6ea906)

  23. “From his video I think he revered, not hated, the Constitution.”

    Well, he does seem very concerned with Constitutional issues.

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  24. I am not sure that I would call it revered, as his version seems to bear little resemblance to the Constitution as we know it.

    JD (109425)

  25. I’m guessing that Patterico is saying what a lot of other bloggers are hinting at. That Jareds act was the result not of being ignored by society but of society behaving exactly as the good folks of Pima County want it to.

    glenn (2a84e9)

  26. Even if he saw a shrink, what exactly would that prove? Maybe he was all happy happy joy joy for that 45 minute period.

    JD (109425)

  27. The Department of Education should investigate that genocidal community college is Jared’s parting message I think.

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  28. It may be quite a while before we have anything like the complete backstory on Loughner.

    I want to know why, if it is true that there were multiple reports of his making death threats against college officials AND public figures, he was never charged. And why no one ever asked for a 72-hour psych eval hold on him. Or did they, and were refused?

    Many questions, but not many answers yet.

    Tully (62151d)

  29. __________________________________________

    Now this is what nuts sounds like (Loughner’s video)

    I notice he mentions “genocide” and becoming “homeless” on a few occasions and seems obsessed about freedom of speech and the failings of his fellow students, educators and campus police. He’s truly deranged, regardless of any other facet of his mindset. But there is a hint of that peculiar form of self-entitled leftism that some of his peers observed in him a few years ago.

    Mark (411533)

  30. Why hasn’t this been mentioned? Pima County, Arizona has seen more than 45 percent of its mental health service recipients forced off the public rolls. Mental health services are seen as just more “entitlements” to the the tea partiers.

    DFL (17d695)

  31. F@ck off, DFL. These leftist clowns are truly ghouls.

    JD (d4bbf1)

  32. Thanks for giving us the teabagger response to this issue, JD.

    DFL (017d51)

  33. FU, William Yelverton, Professor of hate speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

    JD (d4bbf1)

  34. If Loughner was seen by any MH pro’s, they had better damn well hope that there are no written records of such (and they will deny ever meeting with him unless, and until, proof is found that they did), as then they will have to answer to why he was never committed for his delusions – and they will be opening themselves to some serious civil damages from the families of those he injured.

    AD-RtR/OS! (322946)

  35. I googled the same question today- was Loughner ever hospitalized, and found that he WAS 7 years earlier, after drinking a bunch of vodka, at 15. The meaning is this: everyone who goes to a psych hospital gets treated with drugs, with very few exceptions. Therefore, it would be very likely that he WAS drugged. And the psych meds MAKE PEOPLE CRAZY. that would explain everything else since, really. all drugs are openings for demonic oppression, and that is what really causes mental illness, according to the new testament. These drugs include caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, pot, lsd, etc and all psych meds. this is WHY the anti-depressants like Prozac and anti-psychotics often make people violent. the drug handbooks admit that common side effects of these drugs IS psychosis. They Cause mental illness, they don’t help at all. all of the school shooters- columbine, va tech, etc were taking psych meds! the only ones who benefit from them are the drug cos, making $, and the hospitals, who hold people involuntarily and treat them to get the insurance money. This is a violation of the anti-slavery amendment, since it uses patients as involuntary medical experiment guinea pigs, which is involuntary servitude, or slavery.

    Psychiatry is atheism masquerading as science. They claim that mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances, but this is a lie to sell drugs. They are whores of the Big Pharma. Read Dr Peter Breggin’s books about toxic psych meds. and the CCHR has good research about psychiatric abuse. NAMI is funded by big pharma, as Chas Grassley exposed.

    The only solution to real mental illness is prayer in Jesus name. Jesus healed demoniacs, by casting out demonic spirits, and gave his followers authority to do the same. I have done it; it works and has worked for 2000 years.

    All diseases are caused, on a spiritual level, by spirits who have “assignments” of those diseases. You can rebuke them in Jesus name and be healed. I speak from experience, not theory. Since Loughner’s family was Jewish and belonged to the SAME congregation as Giffords, it is safe to assume they were NOT also Messianic Jews, born again Christians, so they did NOT know that what he needed was Jesus and prayer in his name. This is the tragedy of mentally ill Jews. Their families look to atheistic mental health people instead of to Christ, who heals. And all the jewish shrinks are also mostly ignorant of New Testament theology, so they don’t help. In fact, they are the problem for many christians, who they deem to be falsely psychotic (schizophrenic). a shrink’s 2nd question is always “do you hear voices?” and anyone who says they hear God or demons, is thought ot have auditory hallucinations, thereofre psychotic. they get called schizophrenic, schizoaffective or even bipolar. Every christian would get this label, by them, because it is NORMAL christian theology to hear God and demons! Jesus said “my sheep hear my voice” John 10:27. The truth is that EVERYONE hears voices, as thoughts in our heads. They come from the spiritual realm. The word “inspiration” means “a spirit goes into it”. THe book of James ch 3 (NT) says there is “wisdom from above and wisdom from below”. There are many Jewish patients who hear God or Jesus speak to them, or demons, and their families think they are crazy and commit them. It is all based on theological ignorance. 90% of patients in psych hospitals are NOT psychotic; they are Christians, and 90% of shrinks are atheists. The problem is really theological, not medical at all. And it is a violation of the first amendment for religious freedom; the whole legal/mental health system is unconstitutional. FOr 50 years psychiatry has been slandering christians. GOD MADE ME A WITNESS TO THE ATHEISTIC PSYCH SYSTEM & their toxic drugs, and had me write a book about it. It is FREE on my website 1prophetspeaks.com. “MANUAL FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL HEALING-GOD’S ANSWER TO PSYCHIATRYT”. THe book also talks about healing of mental/physical illness thru prayer in Jesus name.

    David Berkowitz, known as the “son of sam” who killed a bunch of people in NYC years ago, became a born again Christian 11 years ago. He is no longer crazy. he says that he WAS crazy because he had dabbled in the occult as a kid. Not only are drugs an opening for demonic oppression; so is heavy metal music (which Loughner supposedly favored), bad books, videos, art, occult paraphernalia. Loughner had an altar with a skull; he was obviously into something demonic spiritually. What people with mentally ill family members NEED to do is take them to a pentacostal or charismatic church for prayer. They CAN help, and God is free, makes no mistakes and has no side effects.
    Read my article “Danger of healthcare – look to God” on my website.

    One other point; Loughner may be telling us something true about mind control thru government grammar. maybe he was brainwashed, in the hospital to do something like this. Anyone who has been in a psych hospital is a possible patsy this way. First, the drugs are all hypnotic; they put people into a hypnotic trance. and they may have used ‘trigger words’ to program him to be violent so that they could use him to further their anti-gun control agenda. THe CIA MKULTRA program definitely existed, and they programmed assassins for political purposes. Other examples of this were Mark Chapman, who killed Lennon )(who was a political threat and was being surveiled by the CIA, Chapman had been hospitalizedP; Sirhan Sirhan (RFK) was said to have seemed hypnotized, maybe Oswald (JFK), and others. All those assassinations had CIA connections, if you research it.

    May be Loughner’s rants that the college had something to do with genocide had some basis in reality; perhaps a course he was taking. Columbine students were required to take a “death education class” ; one of the 2 shooters said he then had nightmares about killing people. He was on psych meds and they WERe BRAINWASHED TO CREATE DEATH. WAS IT DELIBERATE OR JUST STUPID?

    There is definitely an agenda of the government to pass gun control legislation, and they use violence as a reason to do it. Don’t think they won’t use patsies to provoke this to further their agenda. You can read my prophetic articles & my free book on mental health at 1prophetspeaks.com

    1prophetspeaks.com (241688)

  36. Thanks for giving us the teabagger response to this issue, JD.

    Comment by DFL — 1/15/2011 @ 9:37 am

    Considering that “this issue” in this context means, “my accusation that (a) conservatives don’t care about the mentally ill and (b) “teabaggers” (conservatives) are responsible for Loughner’s mental state and therefore indirectly the shooting”, I’d say, to quote Enchanted April, that “I thought [the language] most appropriate in the cirumstances.”

    Sorry to be a plodder when fisking your comments. I know it’s annoying to those who don’t, you know, actually care about the truth. 😉

    no one you know (a8b794)

  37. Question:
    How can a County being controlled by the cruel, heartless VRWC elect a looney-left Sheriff, and a Dem Congresswoman.
    Someone is unable to connect dots, but I bet he colors exactly within the lines.

    AD-RtR/OS! (322946)

  38. “Psychiatry is atheism masquerading as science.” Perhaps. I am very skeptical of talking cures. But the psychiatrist also has a powerful pharmacopeia in his bag of tricks. If, by whatever means, Loughner had been properly medicated, this particular atrocity might have been avoided.

    It might also have been avoided, or at least made less devastating, if there had been armed guards at the event. I suspect that if Loughner had seen a uniformed guard carrying an AR-15 at the event, he might have been deterred.

    gp (72be5d)

  39. AD – does that not assume that he necessarily would have presented as crazy?

    JD (d4bbf1)

  40. William Yelverton likes teabagger balls in his mouth.

    JD (d4bbf1)

  41. If DFL somehow thinks that Pima County is some kind of conservative enclave, then he/she/it is highly mistaken.

    Icy Texan (d40c08)

  42. Why hasn’t this been mentioned? Pima County, Arizona has seen more than 45 percent of its mental health service recipients forced off the public rolls. Mental health services are seen as just more “entitlements” to the the tea partiers.

    Comment by DFL

    Actually, Arizona, I understand, has some of the best laws on mental illness in the country. Arizona is also in deep financial trouble and has had to cut Medicaid, which is probably what this idiot is referring to.

    @Frank, the only violent schizophrenics are the paranoid type. Never get between a paranoid schizophrenic and the door. That is an ironclad rule in mental health professions. A PSW in Santa Monica forgot that a few years ago and was killed by a panicked Paranoid Shizo.

    Some paranoids can be very well organized but this kid doesn’t sound like one. We had one on the ward a couple of years ago. He was Korean and had this delusion that he was going to Korea on a $5 million business deal and had his plane tickets on KAL. The family had had to put a letter in the chart describing why he was in the psych ward. He had attacked his mother and trashed the house but, to talk to him, he was a misunderstood successful businessman. It was very educational for the students.

    Mike K (8f3f19)

  43. JD, I believe that in a non-PC, more judgemental environment, the annotated actions of Loughner would have been enough to get him into a program to treat his problems, and would have prevented him from legally acquiring firearms.
    It is unfortunate that we do not currently reside in that environment.

    AD-RtR/OS! (322946)

  44. TheGreatPiniter

    marylinloughner (48fc64)

  45. From his video I think he revered, not hated, the Constitution.

    Though apparently not a big fan of the Declaration of Independence…

    ColonelHaiku (5430d1)

  46. “Mental health services are seen as just more “entitlements” to the the tea partiers”

    I predicted the emergence of this lefty meme a couple of days ago. When it became apparent to all that the Climate of Hate meme failed, the new meme was substituted: “TeaBaggers are scapegoating the mentally ill, at the same time that they are starving the mental-health system of resources.” I’m rather proud to see my predictive powers vindicated.

    gp (72be5d)

  47. DFL when you
    look in the mirror do you
    this staring at you?

    http://www.blogcdn.com/www.spinner.com/media/2007/03/charles-manson-mugshot.jpg

    ColonelHaiku (5430d1)

  48. If cops in AZ can ask anyone for their papers based on how they look, maybe they should have started with this guy.

    DFL (771c3a)

  49. I’ll again say that I would not jump to any conclusions. In one way it will be interesting and maybe/maybe not useful to know more details of his contact with medical/MH professionals over the years. The short version is given by narciso at #11.

    He could have been seen by psychiatry, he could have been taken in every week by his parents, he could have been involuntarily committed for 72 hours multiple times, and he still could have committed this crime.

    Stashiu3 or others out there, add in please. Obviously this is one small clip, but you will notice:
    – he is alert, not sounding like he is drugged (still could be on something)
    – he jumps from topic to topic
    – his emotional tone and the content of his thoughts do not coincide real well (flippant comments about genocide)
    – he talks about students not being able to see “the outside universe” hence will not be able to see “the inside universe”. Now, you might hear someone who is not mentally ill talk in a “poetical new-agey” way, but I would expect such a person to have more of a “meaningful” train of thought and logic, not as haphazard as he is
    – at one point he repeats himself multiple times with no apparent purpose.
    – he does not sound sad or depressed

    Now, all of that is shooting from the hip off the top of my head and trying to interpret it as “pathologic” as possible.

    Imagine yourself walking with him as he does this, how does he make you feel? “He’s truly deranged” Mark says, and I think that is what you think. You don’t want to be with him, not so much because you don’t like him, but because he is so bizarre you don’t know what to expect. If you are with a person with a personality disorder, such as the self-centered narcissist or anti-social person, you don’t want to be around the person because you don’t like them, you have a feeling for what they are like, and they are a kind of person you don’t want to be with.

    I had a patient once who was suicidal and homicidal who at my direction (over the phone) took herself ASAP to the nearest psych crisis center. (Are you sitting down and not drinking anything?) They took the gun away from her, and since she “no longer had a method of carrying out” her thoughts, they let her go…
    Thankfully, again at my direction over the phone, she presented herself to another crisis center where she was admitted (sans pistol).

    On another occasion, when I called another psych crisis center in town to inform them about a patient I was sending over, the phone was literally answered with, “And what the hell do you want?!”

    I’ve known several families over the years who have struggled trying to keep a family member safe, more often than keep others safe, from one of these diseases.

    Schizophrenia and Bipolar have some genetic basis, so parents may not be doing well, not so much as in their being “bad” people and “bad” parents, but that they are afflicted to some degree as well.

    When people have a disorder of the brain that causes seizures or Parkinson’s it seems easy to appreciate the person has little volitional control over their illness (other than the choice to take their meds, etc.). When the disorder has to do with behavioral and emotional issues it is easier for the public to hold the person accountable for things they cannot control, and more difficult for the medical folk to know what can be treated with medication and what needs to be asked of the patient of their own volition.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  50. So, William Yelverton Professor of Hate at Middle Tennessee State University admits that he is a liar and a totalitarian fascist.

    JD (d4bbf1)

  51. DFL-

    I am politically conservative and I’ve been face to face taking care of many a person who couldn’t afford to pay a dime. Get lost.

    I’m ignoring the prophet at #35, except to say that last I heard, Berkowitz did become a Christian, requested that he not be considered for parole, and volunteers to help the prison chaplaincy.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  52. My understanding is that once upon a time hospitals, nursing, and even social work were primarily the efforts of people of religious conviction working out of the call to “love one’s neighbor as oneself”. In that context a person might go out of their way to track down somebody who needs help. Turn those tasks into professional jobs and you have people constrained by regulations, policies, job descriptions, liability coverage for job descriptions (and nothing more), employers and financial resources, and you have people fulfilling their technical/legal responsibilities and no neighbor’s being adequately cared for.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  53. Please don’t feed the delusional, cross – dressing, gender – bending, stalkerish skin flute player.

    Dmac (498ece)

  54. “If cops in AZ can ask anyone for their papers based on how they look”

    DFL – Did a law just pass that says they can do this? Why has it received no publicity?

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  55. Coming soon to a bookstore near you, Jared Loughner Coloring Books For Children, sponsored by Mike Farrell. Pre-order now.

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  56. cross – dressing, gender – bending, stalkerish skin flute player

    Yeah the stalking part is really scary..the rest, not so much.

    Horatio (55069c)

  57. Frank,
    From another old doc:
    And it sure seems lie 1987was a long time ago.although my 3rd yr rotation was in ’86.
    My belief-abetted by a brother who is the only sane,non dork shrink I’ve ever met-is paranoid schizos are a lot more violent than the population in general
    I’ve found this post shooting discussion in the general media fascinating for several reasons.irst,the attempt by the left to make accusation equivalent to proof Secondly,the ascribing to Gov Palin mind control poweres only Karl Rove has,and finally ,I can’t understand why no one (like cops ) had the guy hospitalized for a 72 hour eval.

    corwin (35b5f0)


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