MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Alot has been talked of mental illness in the wake of all these tragedies. Obviously the culprits are mentally ill themselves and the way to contain such individuals is on every one's mind.
However, think about this: These acts create more mental illness in the form of PTSD. PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder.
My whole hell experience with SSRI withdrawal and then coming back home taught me empathy with two groups of people I never even thought about: people with PTSD and drug addicts. PTSD is such a weird term - we give it to soldiers who experience war but never really seem to realize that anyone who experiences traumatic stress in which they legitimately felt their life was threatened can have PTSD. These shootings have left wakes of people with PTSD - no doubt the 58 hurt in that Aurora shooting have a bad case of it. They may actually have a worse case of it than most soldiers - soldiers are trained and prepared for warfare, these poor people only thought they would see a movie or, in the case of the Sandy Hill massacre, go to school.
Your mind goes in a strange dark place due to both drugs and traumatic stress. Thoughts of suicide will invade your mind when they never had before. Your mental well being and the well being of the world around you is suddenly in question when it never had been before. It is a fundamentally disturbing experience.
People aren't bad but people with PTSD often end up neglected - homeless, forgotten. They end up like that not because society is sick at its core (though it often seems that way) but because the average person doesn't know what to do. The average person does not know what it is like to experience the threat of death up close and personal or to experience situations in which things felt quite literally out of control. The experience of such people is so out of the realm of the ordinary (for most people) that even the most well-intentioned don't know how to respond and often respond in silence.
So the trauma just keeps lingering. There is a website called Mad In America that explores mental health issues and they go in to that pretty well in a recent article with an example relating to a patient:
“My daddy, he molested me from when I was 6 until I left home. ‘Said he gonna kill me if I tell anyone and ain’t nobody gonna believe me anyway.” She pauses again. “I never told nobody, not my mamma, not my girlfriends, not nobody.” Monique felt a sense of relief, her secret unburdened, her experiences hitherto deemed ‘ununderstandable’ and all the more frightening for it, were now understandable to her. Yet in the 18 years that Monique had been a psychiatric patient, these facets of her mental life were not explored at all. I’m sure she had been asked about trauma in the perfunctory way that characterizes modern psychiatric assessment, but never in a way where she may have made any meaningful connections with her past experiences and the current distress she lived with. For contemporary psychiatry recognizes in diagnostics only one outcome for traumatic experiences, and that is posttraumatic stress disorder.
The article goes on with interesting stuff - all of which I think will show in the lives of the people effected by the shootings:
When a patient attending for psychiatric evaluation today discloses a history of trauma, be this childhood physical or sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, kidnapping, attempted murder, or combat exposure, the line of questioning takes a predictable turn. The patient will be bombarded with questions about whether they have nightmares or flashbacks, whether there always feel on edge, or whether there are any situations or people they avoid. It is as if these are the only types of symptoms that could possibly occur following traumatic events. This not only flies in the face of the clinical experience, it also flies in the face of epidemiological studies which show individuals are just as likely to experience depression or anxiety following a traumatic event than they are PTSD. My own clinical experience is that even more common than the traditional symptoms of PTSD are physical symptoms – chronic unexplained pains, unexplained neurological symptoms, gastrointestinal disturbance and so on. The effects of trauma are not so much embedded in a fractured mind, but a fractured body.
I didn't realize this until I read this. Experiencing withdrawal in a strange land with abusive family members gave me a sort of PTSD that I can only imagine many of the people caught in these tragedies will feel. I passed a kidney stone after I came back - my body usually processed food and vitamins very well. My on edge anxiety got out of control - I started seeing death and disaster in everything around me. Friends say that I'm gotten better but I know I must have been horrific to be around when it was at its worst (many posts here have been taken down because of that).
Your body reacts to your mind. You get sick when your mind is sick. I can only imagine the survivors of Aurora experiencing pain when they go by the Red Box booth at 711 and see a copy of Dark Knight Rises on display. The actual disturbances caused by their trauma might not be obvious to put them in the hospital, their family may not even detect them but they could leave the victim haunted with pains they never would have had otherwise.
Oh, by the way - Thank you all for reading. This website and its sophisticated readers have helped me go from the depths of depression and darkness in to writing in a way much more sophisticated than before. You all helped me literally work the kinks out.
Comments
This is an excellent essay. You cover a lot of ground efficiently; I would like to focus on this point:
I can only imagine many of the people caught in these tragedies will feel.
They have the worst symptoms, but the people that are relatives and friends of those people also have symptoms, and the people who are relatives and friends of that circle of people also have lesser symptoms, and the people who have been in the same movie theatre or in a school nearby, and some people who watched the coverage on TV, especially children, have symptoms, etc......
Joe Biden was trying to get it across, I think, when he talked about the horror of seeing "little bodies" not just killed but "riddled, riddled." It's partly the emotional and psychic reaction to symbolic impact (I think of the Col Kurtz character in Apocalypse Now muttering the horror, the horror)
Lot of New Yorkers get it because of 9/11. The argument that we shouldn't react to terrorism but live with the risk because it's only logical because of a law of averages doesn't address the societal "PTSD" issue. Yeah, it's not logical, to react is to give the terrorist what he wants, but most humans are not very Vulcan-like and I would turn it around and say it's not logical to think all humans can be like Vulcans!
I once had a long debate argument on forum like this one with a citizen of London about the DC Beltway shooters, I said that they were practicing terrorism on the people of DC as surely as Bin Laden did on NYC, the nation and the global economy.. He felt strongly that me characterizing it like that was confusing things, was the wrong way to approach it. And I felt they should be prosecuted under terrorism laws because they didn't just murder but terrorized a whole population, whether they were insane or not. That to do that is an extra crime beyond the homicide of the actual homicide victims. I do not remember his argument, maybe I never understood it, but it was something about learning to live with this like they long did in London with IRA bombings and not give the perps the benefit of having terrorized..
Anyhow, I still feel that actors like the DC shooters, Columbine shooters or James Holmes are thinking terrorist thoughts, exactly the same as Osama bin Laden, they want to terrorize a much larger group than they are attacking, terrorism is the crime they want to commit.. Osama bin Laden with a political purpose behind it, the others with other purposes in mind, like revenge, fame, or a chance to feel the high of power over population of people. Insane or not, it's the very same terrorism. And it terrorizes a much bigger circle than the people physically harmed..
This makes them different from mass or spree killings of a guy who "goes postal," acting in anger against an employer, co-workers or a spouse.
Why is it that people do not fear going into a post office or into work the morning after a "gone postal" incident, while there are wide lingering feelings of fear after a 9/11, or a mass movie theater shooting or a sniper who hasn't been caught attacking a geographic area? Because there is a feeling that society cannot protect against in the latter cases but can usually do so in the former? Because people can see clearly see that the "gone postal" cases have motive that is not to terrorize a huge number, that they are targeted at a relatively specific grievance, one that couldn't include them?
It's also about how successful a perp is at terrorizing if that is his intent, and it is about the illusion of security, you have to have an illusion of security, you can't have the authorities looking like they don't know how to handle it or think that they won't even try to handle it. Maybe my debate pal from London was right, maybe recognition of this as terrorism encourages more, I dunno.. Just pointing some thoughts out for consideration because they go with what you are saying.
It also has to do with the psychology and dyanmics of suicide attacks in general, a whole 'nothe topic. (For just one example: we love death more than you love life is an anti-earthly-civilization message, announcing that you have no intent to go along with the whole civilization project, but value only some post-life world.)
P.S. Just comes to mind that "wilding" gangs of teens in NYC was another example of terrorizing a population in a certain area, done mainly for the feelings of power it gave.
by artappraiser on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 4:29am
I do not know why it never occurred to me before that Spock was not just half-human but most likely half-British. After all, Vulcans exhibited all the characteristics most admired by Victorian stoics as cataloged best by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, If—.
Your debate with that Londoner reminded me of reading Josh Trevino's disappointment at the non-observances of 7/7's first anniversary. I remember wondering if he had ever heard of the Blitz or the Troubles
As a coping strategy, the famous British stiff upper lip may have some maladaptive aspects but it is definitely preferable to the media circuses contemporary tragedies are being turned into.
Remember:
evolved into
by EmmaZahn on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 1:36pm
For 9/11, I think that the cause of that was that the terrorists involved purposefully wanted to make what they did theatrical and wanted to intimidate. They wanted to horrify and put fear in to people's minds. At least thousands of people have been in side of the World Trade Center.
Thank you for the positive feedback by the way, Art Appraiser. I really appreciate it. I have been trying immensely to fine tune my writing and take the horrible habits I created out of it. Your feedback especially is very significant. =D Honestly, a comment like you left is enough for an article unto itself, I think.
by Orion on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 3:22am
Thank you for the kind words, Orion; it's nice to know my input (and criticism at times,) has been of value to you!
This kind of interaction, where people share thoughts and input to hone their own knowledge, is what feeds my addiction to a forum like this! Nonetheless, sometimes I wonder if it's a good addiction, especially because I despise the debate side of it, and despise the talking points/political activism side of it, both sometimes depress me very much. When I find people that I can interact with like this, to each other's benefit, it always draws me back in, it's good. One can disagree on things without arguing, that's when disagreement becomes valuable! Many minds trying to figure something out together, that's what keeps me coming back for more interaction....
by artappraiser on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 4:23pm
Well Genghis tends to have a liberal take on how he runs this site. No pun intended LOL. I was personally in the twilight zone for a long time and this site helped me out of it.
by Orion on Tue, 01/22/2013 - 11:48pm
As regards your postscript, and your points about depression in society, I think you will very much like reading the second half of a short essay I just read, over at the New York Review of Books, The Death of Aaron Swartz by Peter Singer and Agata Sagan, starting at midway with this paragraph:
by artappraiser on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 3:25am
Thanks.
by Orion on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 11:17pm
A psychiatrist friend who specializes in forensic psychiatry notes that most psychiatric drugs are administered by non-psychiatrists. If someone presents with depression, these physicians reach for the drug "appropriate" for the clinical presentation. Asking the patient why they think they feel a certain way or even how they feel. He also feels that current psychiatric residents are being trained in pharmacology and not in traditional psychiatry.Pill administration is quick and easy. Actually talking to a patient and getting them to deal with their emotions is labor intensive.
Popular culture also sends a message that psychiatry is not important. Oprah asked Lance Armstrong some probing questions during the interview. She asked Lance hoe he felt and got stock answer. The truth is that Lance, in all likelihood, doesn't know how he feels about the trauma he inflicted or the depression is is currently experiencing. It can takes a very long time to get through the layers of mental protection the brain sets up to keep us from really dealing with why we have certain behavior patterns.
Modern psychiatry may to have to change it's focus to really impact mental illness.
by rmrd0000 on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 11:42am
I agree that we have a problem with lack of resources for mental health care. But I'm not ready to let Armstrong off the hook so easily. When he says he's sorry I wonder if he's saying in his head, that I got caught.
It reminds me of Brook Shields, who admitted as an adult that she hasn't been a virgin for years. She lied because she felt she had to set an example for other young girls. It was actually a campaign for celibacy she waged for years. All based on a lie. Heroes like Shields and Armstrong set standards based on lies that many honest people can't live up to. Its not good for the development of teens and young adults.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 3:14pm
One frustrating thing about the Brooke shields phenomenon is that Britney Spears and Bristol palin picked up right where Brooke left off.
by Erica (not verified) on Sat, 01/19/2013 - 4:25pm
That is interesting. My breakdown was bad enough that I saw a psychiatrist at a clinic designed for serious mental illness like schizophrenia. He was very careful about the meds he dished out and didn't prescribe alot of the antidepressants that are handed out like candy by other doctors. His drug portfolio was much more limited.
by Orion on Sun, 01/20/2013 - 4:34pm
Hey, all - Genghis doesn't like me posting more than one news story on this site in a day so please check out this story in Variety, of all places for it to be published, about the tie between antidepressants and extreme violence.
by Orion on Mon, 01/21/2013 - 8:12pm