Mental Illness.....Interesting Perspective

[papajohn428]

The author is a single parent with four kids, and one of them is more than a handful. A good read.

I Am Adam Lanza's Mother | Slog

 

[Raider]

My heart goes out to the mother; all mothers with severely disturbed children. Hopefully, the terrible incidents of the last few months/years will encourage lawmakers to release more funds for studies and treatment of mentally ill individuals. In truth though, I am afraid that they will rely on quickie bandaid fixes such as gun bans like they always do. Blame the instrument and ignore helping sick people.

Charlie

 

[duppie]

My heart goes out to the mother; all mothers with severely disturbed children. Hopefully, the terrible incidents of the last few months/years will encourage lawmakers to release more funds for studies and treatment of mentally ill individuals. In truth though, I am afraid that they will rely on quickie bandaid fixes such as gun bans like they always do. Blame the instrument and ignore helping sick people.

Charlie

I am of the opinion that we here in America are all too quick to medicate our youth at the first sign of individualism or divergent thought in order for them to fit into some conformance mold of the perfect child.This I believe stifles them and instead of learning to cope in our fast paced environment they instead retreat or rebel, sometimes violently.
If time allows I urge you to look up Sir Ken Robinson and a TED lecture called "Do schools kill creativity?" on youtube.
He make a very compelling argument on the trials our children and grandchildren are going through today in our schools and what the consequences are and will be in the future.

 

[gdauth]

As a society we abandoned the mentally ill in the 1980s. States closed their mental hospitals, our health care system ignores them. We reap what we have sown. Many with mental illness are on their own and homeless. County jails have taken the place of mental hospitals, but without treatment. We allow our kids to bully them. The mentally ill are shunned, whispered about, and demeaned. They may not be able to relate, but they can and do experience the primitive emotions of anger, rage and fear. Not all, but some react by striking out at society.

As a society we need to have compassion for these people, we need to protect them and treat their illness. We abandon them and their families at our peril.

 

[Onomea]

I think this is the third time on the forum in the last couple of days the link to that essay has been posted.

It is a good essay.

I wish more people would read it.

 

[JJEH]

They don't need pity, they need help!!

I don't think we medicate too quick and we don't look for a perfect child. BUT; if obvious signs occur these people need an evaluation!

 

[feralmerril]

Its getting to where no family is untouched. If you are lucky enough to say mine isnt, hang around. As noted above and on other threads just in the last 30 years the entire country has been closeing shop on them probley due to both new laws and bad economy. As I stated elsewhere here I have experiance with them as nephews and a ex brother in law.
I also had a close friend that worked as a tech (glorified name for guard) with the criminaly insane. He actualy quit his career early as he claimed the state of california put restrictions on how he done his job putting his own life in danger as he was locked in with them every night.
The result is they are loose on the streets. They arent all slobering idiots. Some are brilliant and when on their meds appear normal. However thats when the system kicks them loose. Probley without exception most at one point or another get screwed up under doseing or overdoseing and flip out. I have handeled some. Soceitys dream fix is to make guns unavailable to everyone. We know that doesnt work and the result will be no house will be safe. It doesnt stop there. Weather by world destiney or master conspiracy it follows we will be weakend and unable to defend ourselves or oust a out of control evil dictatorship.
I like the new idea of haveing "grandpas" patroling the schools armed.
It would be costly to hire guards for 117,000 schools. For instance there are several small towns around me that have trouble paying one officer much less hireing guards for their schools. Qualified retired leo, military and gun savy civilians could get a roster up and patrol the schools. I visualise a local group doing maybe a few half shifts or several days a week. I would have them in sport coats packing concealed and haveing long arms well locked up available in a central location.
Back in the mid 1950s in wisconsin we had a volinteer civilian observation corp. Our area was considered a hole in "the dew line". A gap in the radar warning system. We lived on the highest hill in the area and the grade school was across the road. People volenteered their time, we were given a book of photographs of certain aircraft and would just sit in your car and when a plane come over anything bigger than a puddle jumper, go into the school entry and phone in what it looked like, heigth and direction. It seemed enough people enjoyed doing a shift apiece.
I like the way isreal handels their security. They are surrounded by countrys that are sworn to annialate them. Someone here showed a female school teacher with a rifle on her back!

 

[Hayden]

I see a fatal mistake here. A mom shot by her own gun in her home by her own mentally questionable kid. What? Had money to buy guns but not a safe to keep them out of the hands of your own questionable kid? Hummmm. If only he didnt have access to them?

Hayden.

 

[feralmerril]

Hayden, I agree with you. To start with the first thing I had heard on it , it was reported she bought the guns just a couple days before the shooting. Then we here she was "a collector". Smells to me.
Now if this guy didnt have a record he could have legaly bought them himself, couldnt he? We dont know the facts on this one, and maybe may never know. Nothing adds up on this one.

 

[nipster]

I blame this on the parents of the 80's and 90's and the complete breakdown of the family. It may even go further to the whole "womens rights" movement. Women wanted to work. Fine. As a result, their kids were unparented and raised by someone else, be it the TV, day care, themselves, etc. Throw in the staggering number of single parent households, parents who refuse to punish their kids physically (spanking) and you have kids who learned zero discipline and grew up thinking they were the center of the universe and always right.

Maybe moms should stay home and raise kids and this stuff wouldnt happen.

 

[GaryS]

If he was only 20 I don't think he could have bought handguns legally, could he?

Hayden, I agree with you. To start with the first thing I had heard on it , it was reported she bought the guns just a couple days before the shooting. Then we here she was "a collector". Smells to me.
Now if this guy didnt have a record he could have legaly bought them himself, couldnt he? We dont know the facts on this one, and maybe may never know. Nothing adds up on this one.

 

[feralmerril]

Probley I goofed on that one. How about the AR?

 

[doublesharp]

The background story on the mom is pretty screwy. She was getting $200k per year from her ex husband, she'd been in a ladies dice game group for 15 years and never hosted the party at her house even though it was a 4000 sq ft mansion and the other members of the group took turns hosting at their homes. She was consumed with economic collapse scenarios and considered herself to be a prepper. Neighbors say they never saw the inside of the house, that she would come outside to talk. Sounds pretty odd to me.

Nancy Lanza: Did paranoid, gun-crazed mother trigger Sandy Hook, Connecticut killing spree? | Mail Online

 

[cussedemgun]

Judge not least you be judged

I see a fatal mistake here. A mom shot by her own gun in her home by her own mentally questionable kid. What? Had money to buy guns but not a safe to keep them out of the hands of your own questionable kid? Hummmm. If only he didnt have access to them?

Hayden.

& if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their butt when they walk!

Realisticlly I have some first hand knowledge of what she (the mother) must have gone through. For most part, the family of an emotionally challenged person is the most calming & caring of all their social contacts. Yet, lay forbids the pro's from taking a family member's word as basis for treatment or restraint, it must be from outside the family such as law enforcment or med pro's. They feel the family will be too close & involved to give an unbiased testimony.

The poor woman no doubt felt totally alone with her battle to raise, nurture, & protect her son & in the end, if she errored , she paid for her mistake with her life. We as a society should feel shame for not supporting her & countless others in the same position rather than condemn them for causing the problem After all we all want a fix, placing blame isn't part of it!

 

[PA Reb]

I see a fatal mistake here. A mom shot by her own gun in her home by her own mentally questionable kid. What? Had money to buy guns but not a safe to keep them out of the hands of your own questionable kid? Hummmm. If only he didnt have access to them?

Hayden.

Do you know that as a fact? Maybe his mom caught him breaking into a safe at the time or maybe she was actually trying to stop him? Everyone should wait for the facts but maybe we'll never know the answer.

If someone like this dirt bag didn't have access to guns supposedly registered to his mother, he would have found a suitable weapon somewhere or changed tactics completely. Here's a small article of a killing that took place in 2005 in Chattanooga, TN. > Badowski Pleads Guilty To Killing Parents - 10/11/2005 - Chattanoogan.com . The parents / victims of this whackjob were both good friends of both my wife and I ever since childhood. The parents were very good people and so was their son until he got mixed up in some "heavy duty stuff". Then, he snapped, first took them out with a rifle and was in the process of cutting them up with a chainsaw when the police arrived. Which brings me to my point - one way or another........ and those that believe that outlawing ARs will stop it are sadly mistaken.

 

[feralmerril]

I sure am missing something or there is more misinformation. They showed the shooters house and it looked far away from a mansion to me. Also a man was interviewed that claimed he was a close friend to her. He said he never knew her to even be into guns at all and was surprised to hear she was a gun collector. On the first report it was said all the guns used were just bought recently. How much of this misinformation is by accident or on purpose, and why? 200G a year alimony? A man would have to make between 750G and a mill a year to pay that and survive himself after taxs. I must have lived in a cave! That was no 4,000 sq ft mansion shown on tv. Looked like 800 sq ft 70 K house to me. Things must be unreal back there!

 

[nipster]

I think it's pretty dangerous to start labeling these preppers as inherently mentally troubled. Or some of this talk I hear about putting limits on the number of guns or amount of ammo you can have.

If you start doing that, where do you stop? Slippery slope...

 

[nipster]

I sure am missing something or there is more misinformation.

This entire story is an absolute travesty of inaccuracy after inaccuracy. Unfortunately the media's mentality now is to run with any breaking news, and if they have to, retract later. A complete 180 from where news/media/journalism was up until the 90's or so when they actually did something called "fact checking".

Look at how many times the story has changed.

First the mom was at the school, then she was home, then it was her class, then the father was dead, they got the shooters name wrong, they said the shootings were done by 2 pistols (the sig and the glock) and there was an AR-15 in the car, then the AR was used in all the deaths and they found a shotgun in the car. I could go on and on...

At this point, it's impossible to put together any sort of story because the media has botched it so badly.

 

[HAWKEYE10]

I read this earlier this mourning and sent it to a lot of people. I hope they read it because we have no idea what these people are going through. They need help and we need to find a way to help them. Don

 

[silentflyer]

Nipster; As I understand it, she was a stay at home mom..