A mentally ill young male kills innocents. He had struggled with — fill in the blank mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia) — and did not receive treatment, or did not agree to treatment, or did not respond to treatment. He and his family tried to get help, but failed, and eventually his family gave up. The young man became a loner, living quietly on the margins of society, until, one day, he had enough and decided to kill himself.
The Podium
Comments
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
Mrs. Lanza was a right-wing nut. I'd like to see her bookshelves. I'll bet they were filled with Michael "Savage" (his real name is Weiner) and Sean Hannity and other Nobel Laureates. She collected the guns in order to protect herself and her family from the upcoming economic collapse and the madness and lawlessness that are inevitably to come. But she was wrong. And she caused this with her stupidity. To all you "survivalists" and tough guys out there take it all in. To every right wing nut-job television personality and radio personality selling this BS, take it all in. Own it.
You're right that some of her friends said she believed she needed the firepower to protect herself from social upheaval that would be coming. It kind of reminds me of the Charles Manson. How much did her views affect her son? We'll never know, but I doubt that Dr. Ghaemi factored than into calculations.
This is pure stereotype, drivel and nonsense. The paragraph which reads:
"Many will even deny that these mental illnesses are “real.” The blogs are full of critics of psychiatry and drugs and the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. It’s all made up, they say. These are “socially constructed” illnesses, whereby the psychiatric profession can exert its power-hunger and the pharmaceutical industry will profit."
is more accurate than the author ever imagined. Congratulations on painting yourself into a corner, Dr. Ghaemi!
Thank you.
I do believe that psychologists and psychiatrists who aren't arrogant know-it-alls can be helpful to people with problems, but Ghaemi is not one of those.
Anyone familiar with criminal trials knows that often multiple psychiatrists testify for both sides, each giving sometimes vastly different opinions. It is far from an exacting science.
Dr Ghaemi is a crackpot. Pray I never have to deal with this incompetent. He thinks he can diagnose mental illness in someone he's never met using scanty newspaper information and stereotypes.
He states, "When both extremes oppose an idea, it must be right." What kind of logic is that? It's no logic at all and totally devoid in intellectual rigor. It could just as easily reflect a situation where everybody agrees it's wrong because it is. Both extremes oppose murder, but by his logic that makes murder okay.
Dr. Ghaemi is a good example of what's wrong with psychiatry. He's cocksure that he's right, but I guarantee that a large number of psychiatrists would disagree.
In any case, we don't just lock people up in this country. We have to have laws that don't depend on the opinion of a cocamaime person like Dr. Ghaemi. There would have to be rules about exactly what symtoms would cause us to lock someone away. Before we can do that, we have to find out how many people have, for instance, the same symptoms as Lanza, but never hurt anyone. We can't be incarcerating thousands on based on speculation of what one or two of them *might* do at some future date.
Dr. Ghaemi is dangerous to a free society. Maybe he should be the first to be locked away.
One of the worst columns I've ever read. The concluding paragraph is pure, unfounded, BS. Liberals don't want to admit mental health issues exist? And how is forcing people to undergo treatment remotely simnilar to raising taxes? Utter garbage.
"The radical libertarian right will hate it, but so will the radical left, who can’t accept the idea of mental illness as real rather than social fiction. And many liberals, who have no problem with forcing people to pay money in higher taxes, will refuse to force people to get their diseases treated."