dagblog - Comments for "Sheriff: Student plotted TX college attack, fantasized about stabbings"

Orion, I read both your

artappraiser — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:45:30 +0000

In reply to The people on the "homicial

Orion, I read both your replies before you deleted them and I admired your willingness in them to consider other thoughts. (I don't know why you deleted them, I think it would be a tragedy if everyone considered discussion comments to be completed edited essays set in stone.)

Speaking of essays, I was referred to this very short Joan Didion essay earlier today:

http://www.idiom.com/~rick/html/the_white_album.htm

and it made me think of some of our discussions. Note it's from 1969 (it's the anthology that it's in that was published in 1979.) I'm sharing it with you because I think you might get something out of it; even if not, it's a beautiful piece of writing. Don't feel you have to reply.

Edit to add: I checked up on the news on the Guam case of Chad Ryan DeSoto. He has plead not guility by reason of mental illness; the judge has sealed his psychological evaluation until the trial starts:

http://japandailypress.com/guam-stabbing-suspect-claims-mental-illness-p...

http://japandailypress.com/guam-court-sets-another-pretrial-date-for-mur...

The people on the "homicial

artappraiser — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:38:16 +0000

In reply to

The people on the "homicial ideation" thread I linked to do not seem schizophrenic, either.

Neither do these guys on the PSTD Forum, "Coping with Homicidal Ideation":

https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/threads/coping-with-homicidal-ideation.28707/

Interesting, to say the least, that there they do not at all find their homicidal ideation pleasurable as in the previously cited thread, but that it has to deal with anger and rage management issues that they feel are making them ill, they want it to go away.

And from what I have read on PSTD, the anger, rage and homicial ideation come before they seek any treatment. (This is not to deny that there is a serious problem right now with the Pentagon trying to drug active soldiers into oblivion where certain actions will no longer bother them. But that is different from the PSTD problem, it's actually mostly an ill-advised, maybe disastrous, attempt to pre-empt it.)

The NYPD example does not convince me at all. That has a "chicken and egg" problem attached. I.E., of course they are going to want to limit access to firearms by anyone taking anti-depressants, because they want to limit the access to firearms by depressed persons. Likewise, they would limit access to driving by anyone in a bar if they could.

I do most certainly agree that there is the pharmaceutical industry has managed to drug a lot of the population unnecessarily, I'm a strong advocate of that position. All kinds of drugs and other medical interventions like surgery, not just psychoactive ones. I think we are in an epidemic of physician-caused illness. I do not think we are in an epidemic of physician-caused violence, I think the cause of that lie elsewhere. What they cause is misery and suffering for their patients, and a lot more expense for us all, not just wasted money but money spent to get misery and worse health.

I don't see much of a link between that and mass shootings, I'm sorry. You haven't proved it to me; actually quite the opposite, as you're willlingness to attribute it to every situation that comes up even when there is no evidence at all makes me unlikely to trust your analysis of any case.

Ialso think that if psychiatrists knew more than an alchemist about the human mind's workigns, they could help reduce violence in the form of crimes of passion with drug treatment. But they can't, because they don't know shit yet.

If we could make it so you had your way tommorrow, I don't think there would be but a tiny dent in the mass shooting rate. As a matter of fact, I think I could be more easily convinced that if more troubled young men were drugged into passivity, we would see a drop in violence. )(Possibly even a drop in wars.) Not that I think that would be a good thing, because the current pyschiatric drugs that we have are lousy, make most of the people who take them just as miserable.as before they started taking them.

You are confusing the attempt to medicate human sadness and other personality quirks with the problem of violence. I don't see them as the same thing at all, far from it. It's like apples and oranges. The PSTD forum brought up this point clearly: anger, rage, jealousy and thoughts of revenge are what cause most crimes of passion, which are quite different from mass shootings. Apples and oranges, one size does not fit all. In a lot of those cases, some tranquilizer drugs at the right time might actually have saved lives, they certainly do when it's a wild animal that's attacking.

P.S. Did you ever think that you believe violent crime is getting worse because you pay attention to the news on it now and didn't before? You seem to gloss over or ignore anything like stats showing that it has gone down and that mass shootings are not more common than in recent decades but that they do come in copycat bunches, partly because homicidal ideators, ideating for whatever reason, also follow the news of them.

Orion — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:00:37 +0000

In reply to Yes, since he was in

This comment has been deleted.

P.S. I am reminded by that

artappraiser — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:19:46 +0000

In reply to Yes, since he was in

P.S. I am reminded by that thread I linked to that on June 19 this ex-police officer will be sentenced to prison for his homicidal ideation.

Yes, since he was in

artappraiser — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:56:04 +0000

In reply to Homicidal ideation.

Yes, since he was in elementary school.

I did a quick google. Here's a thread of people talking about experiencing it and enjoying it:

http://www.psychforums.com/antisocial-personality/topic80167.html

Even a guy who says

I've had homicidal thoughts since I was a child, not in anywhere as much detail as I started having them as a late teen/early adult. I was never exposed to violence as a child, including TV/Movies and video games and I still had thoughts of harming others.

There is no discussion of any kinds of drugs, at least on the first page there. Sounds like they have this "naturally."

Herein lies the fault in you trying to convince that it's always drugs causing it: everyone is not born with a perfectly "healthy" mind as society at large would judge that. And some of those people are going to react to things like guns, video games, violent entertainment, new or old, non-prescription and prescription drugs and alcohol differently than most people, and in ways that are criminal.

You seem to want to offer the simple solution that getting rid of certain drugs will solve things. I think those people will still be there and some of them will still act out bad things. I think you're avoiding the real problem: that we used to institutionalize mentally ill people in large quantities and this keep the criminally inclined ones from doing things. Those people are now instead either a significant part of our prison population (which helps make prisons much more hellish than they naturally are,) or are in society by virtue of pharmaceutical treatment that doesn't work that well and is in the infancy of its development. I think your argument of just quit giving out these pharmaceuticals means having to go back to locking a lot more people up in institutions, taking a lot more freedom away from people who have "homicidal" or other violent ideation. Taking them away from their parents and families, like they did in the "good old days." At the very least, your theory ends up advocating for not giving out psychiatric pharmaceuticals except under extended institutionalization, to interpret their effects before letting people "out on the streets." It's a very troubling situation no matter which way you go and it's not all about the drugs, it's about mental illness.

Homicidal ideation.

Orion — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:17:46 +0000

In reply to Sheriff: Student plotted TX college attack, fantasized about stabbings

Homicidal ideation.