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It's incredible:
I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.Number one, I personally would put police officers in schools.
A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.
[snip]
According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son's social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. "If he's back in the system, they'll create a paper trail," he said. "That's the only way you're ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you've got charges."
I don't believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael's sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn't deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.
With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation's largest treatment centers in 2011.
No one wants to send a 13-year-old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, "Something must be done."
I agree that something must be done. It's time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health.
I am Adam Lanza's Mother by Liza Long
Number two, I have no idea whether some form of gun control -- or ammunition control -- would prevent mass killings, or at least reduce the carnage. (I've always been intrigued by Pat Moynihan's scheme to impose a 10,000% tax on ammunition.)
But number three, the mental health system, to the extent that we can be said to have a mental health system, is not working, and I'm grateful to Gawker for publishing this mother's account.
For parents like me, who have children with classic developmental disabilities, there is a pretty well-developed system in place. Obviously, that system has its problems in the form of abusive aides and very low funding, but that's not the issue here. The system exists, and the assumptions that undergird it are rational, at least in my experience.
The situation is radically different for children and adults with mental illnesses -- or, even worse -- dual diagnoses, which is what I'm going to guess we're talking about with Adam Lanza. Individuals with dual diagnoses are a very challenging population.
Speaking of ---- we're just back from the Christmas party at Jimmy's group home. The head of the house is leaving to work with women aged 40 to 60 who have dual diagnoses.
As he put it: These are people who are independent enough to go out in the community on their own, but not make good decisions.
Here is E. Fuller Torrey:
A Predictable Tragedy in Arizona
Bureacratic Insanity
14 comments:
I loved that piece. Sadly, Ms. Long is already getting flack on the internets from some who feel she hasn't expressed her personal experience correctly.
Here's another eloquent testimony that makes my heart go out to these parents - “No one is sympathetic to the mother of a psychopath.” See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Hi! - Thanks for posting that link - I was thinking of getting it up myself. I found that story amazing.
btw, I think I'll just say here in the comments that the Secret Service report is **very** worth reading.
I'm going to put up 3 more posts, I think, which should cover the most important and/or surprising points from my perspective.
But the full report is worth reading. It's powerful & clarifying (and not as upsetting as you might expect).
I just realized "dual diagnosis" may not be a familiar term to everyone.
I normally see it used to describe people with diagnosed mental illnesses who also abuse alcohol or drugs.
But in the wake of the Newtown killings, I'm seeing it used to describe people with developmental disabilities who also have psychiatric illnesses.
Adam Lanza's brother is said to have told police that his brother had a personality disorder and also may have been autistic. If that report is true, it implies to me that Adam was in that category of people (maybe children especially?) who have an array of difficulties that defy easy classification or diagnosis.
As to that, I just found a nice & brief discussion of which DSM terms may apply and what we're actually talking about: Diagnosing Adam Lanza.
The combination of a flat affect, analgesia, social avoidance, autism-like features, and premeditated violence defies obvious categorization. Like so many out there with unknowable illnesses, Lanza may have had a case of the NOS, or "not otherwise specified," psychiatric shorthand for an undiagnosable illness. Undiagnosable, however, is not tantamount to untreatable -- which, ultimately, is why any of this diagnostic speculation even matters. The hope is that Lanza's doctors and treatment records can help shed light on what might have gone wrong, and what we can do to prevent future massacres.
Catherine, I'm not sure what you mean about putting police officers in the schools. Do you mean an officer in every school? My county has 88 K-12 public schools. The county sheriff's office has 189 patrol officers, and the city in the county seat has many fewer. We have far more crimes -- including shooting deaths -- happening outside of schools than inside schools. It would harm public safety to reassign officers to the schools; if we were to hire more officers, there would be details other than school security where they could cause a greater improvement in public safety.
You'd be better off asking each school to have 1-2 employees go through a rigorous course to be trained as a "school marshal."
You'd be better off asking each school to have 1-2 employees go through a rigorous course to be trained as a "school marshal."
Hi anonymous - thanks for the comment!
I haven't remotely thought this through & have no 'lay' expertise in this realm (apart from the certain knowledge that my own district's 'security' is clearly designed to keep parents out, not killers).
If training staff to serve as marshalls would work, GREAT!
I do think - and I may well be wrong - but I do think that someone **besides** the killer needs to be armed.
Would that be a trained person in the school?
I guess it could----?
As to funding police officers for schools, in my view the teacher & administrator unions will need to underwrite that additional cost.
When you look at changes to school personnel in the decades leading to the crash you see an enormous run-up both in number of personnel and in compensation.
We can add one more person to the payroll and keep the payroll the same.
I would rather that one person be a psychologist, instead of an officer, in the elementary. Then restore the gifted program--the one meant for children whose mental and emotional ages are so asynchronus that they cant cope with the heightened sensitivity or their classmates or their emotions. An effective psych and g teacher can help the child learn to control those emotions and thrive.
Given the quality (not!) of most training programs offered to educators, I would rather not have school personnel "trained" as marshals to be carrying guns in school. It would be far more likely to end in a kid getting hold of a gun and killing himself or a friend by accident, or a concealed gun going off by accident. Police who deal with shooter incidents are given a lot of training, far more, I am sure than would be offered to educators - and for a reason. It takes good, extensive training to know when to shoot your gun and when not to. And of course, to hit the right person. No, "training" educators to carry gun inside schools is NOT what I want to see happen
lgm - Then restore the gifted program--the one meant for children whose mental and emotional ages are so asynchronus that they cant cope with the heightened sensitivity or their classmates or their emotions. An effective psych and g teacher can help the child learn to control those emotions and thrive.
I just found an article from September on the bullying level for Asperger kids ---- it is HORRIFYING.
The high-functioning kids are the ones who get bullied; it's specific to them.
Kids like mine (classic autism) are in protected environments.
It's the mainstreamed smart-but-weird kids who get clobbered.
No, "training" educators to carry gun inside schools is NOT what I want to see happen
Well you said it, not me!
Actually .... I'm not sure that weapons training is a great fit for most school psychologists. I've known many school psychologists, and sat on a hiring committee that interviewed candidates ....
None of the school psychologists I've known would be obvious candidates for weapons training -- it's not 'who they are.' (Speaking of the people I've known as individuals, obviously....)
"It's the mainstreamed smart-but-weird kids who get clobbered."
Is this really a surprise? It was certainly the norm back when I was in school, and if you read anti-homeschooling threads, it is pretty clear that part of the point of "socialization" is to bully these kids into more normal behavior.
Heck, anti-bullying programs often wind up targeting these kids, and this kind of incident will just put more of them under the microscope.
For that matter, when people talk about "expanding mental health access", what they mean often is making it easier to involuntarily commit someone who makes them nervous but hasn't exactly done anything yet. And maybe we need to do that (although I'm not sure that's what the mother who wrote this article wants), but let's not pretend it has no costs.
It is also worth noting that Connecticut has some of the tightest gun control laws in the nation but also makes it harder than most states to have someone involuntarily committed.
Is this really a surprise? It was certainly the norm back when I was in school, and if you read anti-homeschooling threads, it is pretty clear that part of the point of "socialization" is to bully these kids into more normal behavior.
No, it really shouldn't be a surprise.
But it was. The statistic they cited (I'll have to find it...I think it was up around 70%).
For that matter, when people talk about "expanding mental health access", what they mean often is making it easier to involuntarily commit someone who makes them nervous but hasn't exactly done anything yet.
Yes, that's what I'm talking about. We need to be able to involuntarily commit people who haven't done anything yet.
I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this (or reading E. Fuller Torrey's books), so I have nothing intelligent to say about how this might be done. It ***appears*** to me that there have been successful programs for people with paranoid delusions (I think that's the category) where the person is free and on his own as long as s/he takes his meds, confined to his/her program if s/he is off meds.
Obviously that wouldn't work for everyone, but there does seem to be a category of potentially dangerous people this approach **does** work for.
btw, as far as I can tell parents absolutely do want the power to commit their mentally ill children to good programs/group homes.
As things stand, parents like me, whose children have developmental disabilities, retain control over their lives and the decisions they make.
If Jimmy were severely bipolar or schizophrenic instead of severely autistic, he would have had full decision making power the instant he turned 18.
If he wanted to go off his meds, he could.
It is also worth noting that Connecticut has some of the tightest gun control laws in the nation but also makes it harder than most states to have someone involuntarily committed.
Absolutely. The politics are extremely difficult.
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