President Bush designated the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain: “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research” through “appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.” Thirteen years after the decade of the brain, the public is now aware that brain function is impaired in mental illness (including psychopathy) and addiction. Research has uncovered the brain regions involved in mental illnesses (including psychopathy) and addiction and the mechanism of action of many helpful medications.
[youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/zqqsxoFsFtw]Now this may still be difficult for some people to comprehend but, I say categorically that, “a 20 year old male who kills his mother, several other women and 20 five year old children does not have a normal brain.” I also ask, “when are our laws regarding mental illness going to catch up with our scientific knowledge of same?”
In the wake of the Newtown elementary school shootings, news commentators are talking about gun control and I claim no specific expertise in that matter. However it would be terrible if we didn’t take this time to also think about the problem of “civil rights” and mental illness. We need to institute “people control” in addition to gun control.
Many mental illnesses start in early adulthood, a time when young people are still financially and emotionally dependent on their families. Parents have no real power to compel a teenager into treatment much less a dependent young adult. The most parents can do is to expel the mentally ill teen or adult child from the home. What good does that do? Parents are rendered powerless by the government to help society and their children.
Doesn’t it seem logical that a dependent young person who has a brain problem severe enough to prevent self-care should be required to adhere to the decision making of parents who provide care? As current law stands, family members are not even allowed information about the dependent’s condition if they are in treatment. Does that make sense?
Empowering families also means accountability and education. If you have a mentally ill family member and you own weapons it is your responsibility to keep those weapons away from the mentally ill person.
Clearly the realities of family life no longer dictate that an individual member’s rights be considered in a vacuum. Sure “the right to refuse treatment” sounds good in theory but in practice it leads to suicide, murder and homelessness. Speaking of the homeless, many receive SSI or Social Security Disability. They are dependents of the state. Shouldn’t we all then have an interest in their treatment and possible return to productivity? Does it make sense for us to pay them to remain mentally ill, addicted and homeless?
Psychopathy is a mental illness that may manifest at any point from childhood through emergent adulthood. Furthermore, the individual symptoms of psychopathy as described by the psychopathy checklist contribute to crime and all forms of aggression. It is time we tackle psychopathy at all levels of severity as a mental health issue. Tackling it means treatment, public education and the empowerment of families to intervene. There is emerging evidence that treatment can lessen the severity of the condition. Supervision does reduce aggression and crime.
I have repeatedly said that psychopathic individuals could not do what they do without the help of their families. The Newtown school shooting is no exception to this because although the perpetrator killed his mother, the guns he used to kill legally belonged to her. He clearly should not have had access to weapons. We have yet to know the full extent of the mother’s lack of judgement when it came to her son’s disorder. But our laws and attitudes toward mentally ill individuals including those with psychopathy do not facilitate family education or responsibility.
In summary, since mental illness including psychopathy impairs judgement, creates dependency and predisposes to violence, mentally ill individuals should not have a blanket right to refuse treatment. The current criteria for compelled treatment are too restrictive. Families should be empowered to take both control and responsibility for the problems caused by mental illnesses including psychopathy.
See also Civil Commitment of Sociopaths, an article I wrote in 2010.
Why is it so hard for people to spot a psychopath/sociopath?
I am interested in learning facts about this shooter’s life. Because I firmly believe that there are always signs and red flags in the case of sociopaths or psychopaths. I don’t believe a person could live a normal life for 20 years and then suddenly turn into a psychopath (personality disorder).
I’m interested in the brother’s remark reported by the media that his brother had a “personality disorder.” Details, please.
Did he torture animals? play with explosives? taunt people? lie and then lie about the lying?
Did he exhibit genuine empathy or just fake empathy? Remorse?
I guess I’m just saying, what type of personality disorder (if so), and was he formally diagnosed? Will we ever know?
And the history (if any) of pharmaceutical or other drug use? Will we get any report from the autopsy about drugs in his bloodstream at the time?
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In the case of my ex (spath) husband, now that I have the perspective of years, I am able to piece together the red flags from his boyhood. His personality did not alter when he married me (in our late 20s). He was always that way. I just didn’t believe, so I didn’t see the red flags for what they were.
I do not know enough yet about this case, to be able to understand the relationship of the guns in the household, the mother, the son. If there never were any red flags to begin with so there was little reason to believe her son was a danger to her or society. Or if there were red flags, but the mother didn’t see them because she didn’t know about psychopathy and red flags. Or if her son’s doctor failed to warn her or invalidated her concerns, brushing them aside. Or if there was a diagnosed personality disorder and psychiatric medication, was that not an indication that the mother should make a supreme effort to ensure the guns should be secured at all times? Or not own guns at all, or keep them elsewhere (like at the shooting range)? How did the guns get unsecured so that he could get them while she slept? I ask these questions because most gun owners are very serious about safety and securing their firearms, particularly around children (and I would put a special needs, not independent young adult in this category).
I hope we get some answers. And less knee-jerk emotion. More old fashioned, truth-seeking detective work.
20years:
I doubt if this kid was really a liar. From everything I have read, he barely ever even TALKED to anyone. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t lie about things, but it sounded like he communicated very little with ANYONE. I think he was just a very odd, disturbed child (with some kind of obvious disorder probably along with Asperger’s) who eventually snapped for whatever reasons. Only he and God will know.
The fact that this mother was “home schooling” a kid at age 20 is odd in itself.
According to her face book posts, she was looking for a school for him a place for her to move so that he could go to some kind of school.
With the father and the brother going NC with this kid, there was OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING TOXIC ABOUT HIM but the mother hung in there with the MALIGNANT HOPE that she could save the son from whatever demons he had.
Also,, the mother had recently found out she had a half sister via her dad that she did not know ANYTHING about…the father had left that and her mother and then married Adam’s grandmother and that previous marriage and chihld were a BIG FAMILY secret.
Why did grandpa leave this previous woman and child? Was HE a psychopath? Was the child’s mother a psychopath?
Adam’s mother had expressed an interest in solving this family secret and getting to know her half sister.
I am sure that every “secret” thing about this family will be dug out, down to the last 100 years. Emotional and mental autopsies done over and over. May be made public may not be made public, but I feel for the father and the brother that lived…and for the sister that Adam’s mother never got to know.
I think there have just been too many contradictory assertions released in this case, it is all very confusing and I don’t know what is fact and what is fiction or opinion or conjecture. Believe me, I’ve been trying. you think you know something, then the next day the news release a correction or contradiction. First she’s a kindergarten teacher and shot in her classroom. Then just a substitute. Then no connection with the school. The father is killed. The father is not killed. He was on drugs. he was not on drugs. This drug. No, this other drug. He’s being homeschooled. No, he *was* homeschooled but went to a local high school and was attending college classes part-time. The mother was looking for a new school for him. No, she was going to have him committed to a mental facility. He plays video games. Violent ones. No, just Mario Bros. He was a loner. No, he had friends. He was troubled. No, he was just odd. The children were killed with an AR-15. No, a bushmaster. No, that was in the trunk; he used pistols. All of the children’s bodies were identified from photographs. ??? (excuse me, but I would want to see my child’s body, no matter what.)
I really hope to know the truth at some point. At this point, I cannot say that I do. I’ve never seen a more confused presentation of any serious event. I cannot understand why it is so hard to consistently report the facts and be clear on what is merely speculation, and not confuse the two.
All I can say right now is that I cannot separate the facts from the stories.
20years,
that is the most suspicious part of all, the false reporting.
I’ve never seen so much false information go out on any story. The media would not have reported falsely if they hadn’t been fed false information. Who did that? Who does that? I can just imagine some spathy law enforcement officer doing it. My spath had all the cops around here in his pocket and they had no problem manipulating me just for laughs.
There is one thing that is consistently reported, the kid never looked at anyone in the face. He was always looking at the floor. That is an obvious expression of shame. He was suffering from a severe case of shame. Pinpointing when that started would be helpful.
Who are the people providing this information to the media? Are these the people who interact with this family? I think this confusing amalgamation of contradiction is a reflection of the world this kid lived in. Just a thought. It sounds like no one really knew much of anything…..it sounds like this dysfunctional family might have been wearing a spath mask.
The talking heads are saying anything just to get on the air FIRST. I get more truthful news from the London tabloids than from MSNBC, Fox or any other US news source.
But Oxy, they aren’t making this stuff up. Someone is feeding them. They said the father was shot in the home.
You know what? This reminds me of the last con by my spath. He called me and told me he was going to tell the crazy husband stealing neighbor that I had killed myself and he had cut my body up and put it in plastic garbage bags. He said he was going to ask her to help him move the bags.
Then the story changed. Apparently, he told her that he had killed me, chopped me up and put me down the well, so she called the cops.
Then he told the cops that it was all a joke. But they were calling me demanding that I show up and stop wasting precious police resources. 😯
See the pattern?
I’m not so sure they are not taking half stories and embellishing them….or just reporting rumors as facts. Someone outside thhe school who knew nothing might have said “wasn’t his mother a teacher there”? so they reported it as fact.
Someone somewhere else is dead, and of course mother is inside the school dead, so it must be daddy is dead…report dad is dead.
Those reporters should be fired.
Honestly, as Skylar said in a different thread (I think), I have wondered, am I becoming a “paranoid nutjob?”
However, this spath education I’ve received over the past 2 years on Lovefraud, especially, has opened my eyes pretty wide.
I think I certainly must still have a lot to learn. I continue to be open.
My ability to think critically is increasing dramatically, I think as a result of the experience of betrayal by deception of the spaths in my life, and the process of dissecting THEIR motivations and modus operandi.
This ability translates to other things — like discerning truth/lies in just about everything.
Believe me, in many ways life seemed much easier when I was still a gullible person. Is the opposite of gullible a “paranoid nutjob?” Or is is this realistic? Or is it just a step along the way in my process of learning to discern truth/lies, and developing my own compass to navigate a world where evil and spaths exist — no, not around every corner, not in every person, but certainly it is there, pervasive, like a sticky, dirty film covering almost everything.
And I never saw it before. Because I didn’t know such a thing existed.
Right now, I’m not feeling like a “nutjob.” I’m not even feeling particularly paranoid because to me that word implies fear. I don’t really feel fear.
I do feel some impatience, irritation and a bit of moral outrage against the liars and weak people who are knowingly allowing themselves to be manipulated by this situation. And people who are sleepwalking through it, being manipulated without their knowledge…. I feel pity and also some impatience and frustration, because they don’t see what I see. Yet, for the first 48 years of my life, I wouldn’t have seen it either, and I would have thought someone like myself (now) to be a paranoid nutjob.
At this point, all I can say for certain is that we are being manipulated and lied to, and that makes me angry. Especially because I can see that so many people are being fooled by it.
These inconsistencies in reporting, whatever the cause, are outrageous and inexcusable. If someone is misled and misreports, then that person should issue a correction and an apology, with an explanation of how the error occurred.
We cannot afford to not know the truth — whatever it is. Something simple, something a bit more complex, something sinister or not.
What is happening in the media is NOT reporting. Even the very fact that our media is NOT REPORTING (you know, like they used to do?) is not being spoken about. It is as though we have all collectively forgotten what good reporting is, and we just passively accept this mix of lies and truth being fed to us.
Hey, does that sound familiar? A mix of lies and truth?
I have to ask, why, and what might that mean.
I am open to discovering the truth. I would welcome hearing some real reporters frankly admitting to and explaining how this mix of truth and lies has been allowed to stand, especially in this case which is SO IMPORTANT and significant, affecting all of us in very fundamental ways.
We all feel the impact, and we will all feel the impact of any government action taken to “prevent future mass killings.”
So these decisions had better be based in truth and reality, and not some pathological mix of manipulative truth and lies.
That’s all I’m saying. I see the pattern.