Ugh. Stop. I have a friend who has a kid with similar issues, and while she doesn’t have a blog and hasn’t written publicly about her struggles, they’re extremely similar to what this person wrote about. It sucks. It sucks a lot. She feels trapped, like she has very few options in dealing with this very difficult and sometimes dangerous situation, and she spends most of her time trying to take care of her son without becoming suicidally depressed.
If this person’s blog entry results in more awareness and better options available to people struggling with children that have these issues, I’m willing to give her a pass on having a stupid screen name and going on “teevee” to talk about it.
And in Indiana a older fellow with an arsenal threatened to enter a neighbouring elementary school and kill as many people as he could before police could stop him. His wife had called in the police when he threatened to set her on fire after she fell asleep. Man charged with threatening massacre at Indiana elementary school | Toronto Sun
If I believed for one second that she was putting her son’s story and photograph out there for the entire world to see solely in order to help educate and inform others, instead of to get herself a much coveted 15 minutes of sympathy, attention or notoriety, I would probably be inclined to agree with you.
Any normal mother would do anything to protect her troubled 13 year-old son’s identity, but this repulsive attention whore can’t wait to broadcast his personal, private information to anyone vapid enough to give her an audience, despite the harm it may cause him in the future.
Put him in a mental institution. I imagine he would qualify for Social Security to help defray the cost. I know there’s not exactly mental institutions on every corner, but they exist.
I can imagine things too. Do you have any actual evidence to support your thesis that there’s an available mental institution that his family could afford to put him into?
That town is directly north of me. I could be at that school in five minutes. I have two coworkers with children at that school.
Trouble is a-brewing, and I can’t see how we deal with this without touching The Gun Subject on a nationwide basis.
I’m no Obama supporter, but I was glad that, while he didn’t say it by name, he didn’t shy away from stating that something needs to be done, that this is unacceptable.
Well, since I don’t know what their income is, I really couldn’t say. But I will say that I would support government mental institutions, much like VA nursing homes.
The friend I mentioned has been desperate to find an inpatient program for her son for years now. Nothing is available. Wait lists are long, and costs are high even if you make it through the wait list. Your scenario of “just find a mental institution and Social Security will pay for it” is not realistic.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was saying, too. He needed help and perhaps hospitalization prior to his mental state getting this bad, but as Michael’s mom knows, it’s near-impossible to find a way to actually do that.
As far as I know long-term hospitalization still exists, somewhere, it’s just not nearly as prevalent, and no one seems to know how to find it.
in the current case he was over 18 so it’s not likely that he would agree to an inpatient program.
From an observer POV I’ve seen a kid sent to such a program and he managed to poison that well just as he did with every other outreach program. I honestly don’t know what a parent can do with a child like that. They turn 18 and it just gets worse after that.
That’s kind of the point, dude. Her BEST resources told her that her only option was to put her kid in jail. (She also explained why putting him in jail would make him worse, not better.) She has mental health professionals working with her – presumably people who would have this information – who can’t point her to an institution. She can’t FIND a solution.
Well, the ideal would have been not to wait that long. His issues have been noticeable for years, from what I’ve read. And if he was still a danger at 18 even after years of treatment, involuntary commitment.
And what do you do with someone like the Newtown shooter? Smart enough to attend college at 16. No arrest record. Functional but weird. Until he killed 26 people I would have never considered that he needed to be institutionalized. There are a lot of socially-maladjusted people who make great contributions to the arts and sciences.
I know virtually nothing about this kid and can’t trust what I’ve read to be accurate. But I feel there’s a need to fill the middle ground between poor socialization and mental institution.
From situations that I’ve seen, many mentally ill persons know there’s a problem brewing and want to avoid it boiling over but they have nowhere to turn except back to the people that have been unsuccessful at helping them in the past. At 20, it’s hard to give up your newfound independence once you’ve developed a strategy to eke out a spot in society.
how do you involuntarily commit someone? Seriously. You can’t just stamp “sociopath” on someone’s forehead and lock them up. And kids don’t just turn 18 and go off the deep end. that’s just where the train stops and they get off because you no longer have any control over them.
Why? I know it’s a total mess of regulation and liberty and all sorts of things, but do we have a way to determine, through testing and whatnot, who may be a risk? We have decades of good research, but I don’t know if that has led to a good way to try to predict these kinds of things. Certainly someone knew in the Joker case, but they didn’t do anything about it. In this case, the mom seemed a little off the rails as well - is there any way to sort through these things?
What if, when he was turned down for a gun last week, the gun seller was a mandated reporter of someone who refused a background check/waiting period? (For the sake of argument, let’s say that’s what happened here). Maybe then a cop could have paid him a visit to see what the deal was?
I know there aren’t enough resources for kids with these kind of severe problems, so that is where we should focus our attention. I just sick thinking that allow this is going to be put out of focus as everyone yells about guns.
As far as I’m aware, involuntary commitment is already a thing. I’m not suggesting they change their current standards.
I’m not sure what you mean by “turn 18 and go off the deep end.” I’m talking about a kid with a history, having already been placed in an institution, and the docs don’t just cut him loose on his 18th birthday just because it’s his 18th birthday, but continue to apply the standard of “is he a danger to himself or others?” If the answer is yes, keep him there. And if the intensive therapy gets him to the point where he’s NOT a danger, it shouldn’t matter if he’s younger or older than 18 in terms of earning his release. His ability to function in society should be the only standard.
It’s not foolproof, no, but it would be better than what we currently have, which is not a hell of a lot.
I suspect that the immediate family had a reasonably clear picture of him. If not, part of the mental health reform I’d like to see is MUCH better eduction and resources for people in the position to notice these things, to know what things might be red flags, and to know where to go and what to do should they see them.
It’s not that I don’t want it to happen but what often seems to be the case with these killing sprees is a kid who is a smart sociopath. They know right from wrong but don’t care. It’s not hard to skate past a psychiatrist. “that ink blot looks like a fuzzy bunny curing cancer”.
I know of one kid who wouldn’t stay on his meds. I say kid but he’s probably around 30 now. he once attacked a cop when off his meds. Guess where he’s not at the moment? People like this stay on their meds long enough to walk out the door. And lets not even go into the subject of hard drugs. Crazy with a twist of lemon.
There’s a whole slew of people I think should be knitting wallets right now but they’re out in the real world making a ticking sound and their families don’t know what to do about it.
I can see where you’re coming from, but respectfully, I also think that the “keep the problem secret and hidden” attitude could be a reflection of at least part of the problem.
Maybe it could cause the kid problems in the future, but by bringing it out in the open not only does he have a much better chance of getting the kind of help he needs now, but even if those efforts prove unsuccessful, maybe the people around him will be more aware of the problem and be on the lookout for the signs of more serious trouble. At least they have a *chance *at some kind of warning before it’s too late.
It’s the shame and denial in the hopes that the problem will just go away if you ignore it enough that leads to eventual psychotic breaks that catch everyone by surprise. It sounds like our recent mass-murderer’s mother took that approach and didn’t even do the bare minimum to prevent her unstable son from hurting others.
I prefer the approach of the mother that’s kicking and screaming to bring attention to her son’s problem, myself.
ETA: If you lived next door, or your kids went to school with a child whose own mother thinks he could be a danger to others, wouldn’t you want to know? Shouldn’t you even have the right to know?
I absolutely agree 100% that the son’s violent behavior should certainly be made known to his teachers, counselors, juvenile probation officers, and maybe even to the family’s neighbors—People like you and me, not so fucking much…
If this kid and his family eventually get the help they so clearly need, a vivid, lurid, detailed record of his outbursts will still follow him around (freely available to any and all potential employers, universities and peers who know what Google is) for the rest of his life, thanks to good ol’ “Anarchist Soccer-Mom’s” chronic attention seeking, which I am still convinced is at the root of all the publicity we are discussing.
There is a HUGE difference between covering something up, ignoring it or even excusing it and blithely trumpeting it to every random person who you possibly can, right?
I dunno, I guess I’m not all that confident in the permanent effectiveness of the possible treatments. If people who are prone to be a danger to others aren’t going to be locked away in institutions, maybe they should at least have some sort of “scarlet letter” on their permanent record in case they go off their meds or start to breakdown again.
You agree that everyone around him should know, so what big difference does it make if people who aren’t going to be around him know? His whole world will consist of people who know, and IMO, until they discover some silver bullet for permanently curing such serious psychological problems, that info absolutely should be available to people everywhere he goes in the future.
I think that’s at least vastly preferable to the alternative of locking such people away in institutions where they have no chance at leading a normal life.