How Did I Miss This?

Other than that American news media ignore mass murders thst do not involve guns?  4/13/24 BBC News:

"At least six people - plus the attacker - are now dead.. Eight were taken to hospital injured, including a nine-month-old baby.

Little else is known about the incident. Authorities say the 40-year-old killer was "known to police", but they haven't revealed a motive for the rampage - only indicating it was unlikely to have been terrorism. "

4/19/24 BBC News:

"If he did indeed target women, why? Were there just more women in his path? Did he think they posed less of a physical threat? Did he resent them?

"Police have said it's a "very, very complex investigation" which will take time, but at this stage they have pointed to his mental health and said there is no indication any ideology was a motive.

"His parents - who spotted their son on the news and alerted police - have said he was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had gone off his medication, suggesting he may have been obsessed with knives."

Obviously an Evangelical Christian

2/12/24 CNN:

"The shooter used an AR-15 that had “Free Palestine” written on it, according to a federal law enforcement source. Investigators are trying to determine whether she was politically motivated or a disturbed individual, the source said."

Previously named Jeffrey.

2/12/24 ABC News quotes police that it said "Palestine" not "Free Palestine" and he/she had a mental illness history.  The Stockton mass murder of 1989 (may his name never be spoken) had Hezbollah on his AK-47.

Which is Cheaper?

 From 1/26/24 New York Magazine:

In Oxford, countless people I spoke to framed the events leading up to November 30 as “a mental-health story”: kids falling apart in a desert of care, the same as everywhere else in the country, but in some ways worse. Even before the pandemic, administrators in Oxford schools had started to notice more fragility, anxiety, depression, and withdrawal among students. In the late 1990s, the Republican governor John Engler had closed three-quarters of Michigan’s psychiatric hospitals in a cost-cutting spree, leaving rural areas barren of psychiatric inpatient treatment for kids. There was some outpatient help available, but many families didn’t know where to find it “unless they were very savvy,” one administrator told me. When they did, wait times averaged four months. This backlog strained emergency rooms. “Every time a kid said, ‘If I don’t get an A on this spelling test, I’m going to kill myself or kill you’ or something,” she was sent to the ER, says Sheila Marcus, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan who runs a program that trains primary-care doctors in mental health. Ninety percent of the time, these kids were deemed “not a threat” and sent back to school.

As usual mental health treatment is "too expensive" compared to drawing chalk marks around bodies, autopsies, hail costs, prison costs, and criminal trials.  I will not ignore that the parents and his friends had many indicators that their son was exhibiting evidence of mental illness. 

On April 5, Ethan told his friend by text that he was thinking about calling 911 on himself but was afraid his parents would be “really pissed.” He thought he was having a mental breakdown.

“I am going to ask my parents to go to the doctor’s tomorrow or Tuesday again,” Ethan wrote. When he tried to talk to his parents before, his father had given him some medicine and told him to “suck it up,” and his mother laughed. “She makes everyone feel like shit,” he wrote.

“But this time I am going to tell them about the voices. I only told them about the people I saw.”

“Ok,” the friend wrote back.

But who recognizes these signs?  When my brother spiraled down into schizophrenia, my parents had not a clue what the symptoms suggested. 

Cue the Insanity Defense

12/19/23 WFLA:

"Tampa man tries to enter MacDill AFB with AR-15, calls himself ‘Captain America’: DOJ...

"Roche refused to hand over his ID and instead verbally identified himself as “Captain America,” court documents state. He told security personnel he worked with the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and had a meeting with a general “to provide top secret information.”

How Dare An FFL Do His Job!

10/29/23 New York Times:

"Nearly three months before Robert R. Card II fatally shot 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, a gun shop declined to let him complete his purchase of a firearm sound suppressor after he disclosed on a form that he had mental health issues, the shop’s owner said in an interview Sunday."

He answered yes on the involuntary commitment question (yes, that is a lifetime disabler) and apparently took the refusal to transfer well.  I suppose the attempt should have led to his arrest, but his involuntary commitment was never reported to NICS so no attempt to arrest him.

More Reminders That This Tragedy Could Have Been Prevented

 10/29/23 AP:

Police across Maine were alerted just last month to “veiled threats” by the U.S. Army reservist who would go on to carry out the worst mass shooting in the state’s history, one of a string of missed red flags that preceded the massacre.

Two local law enforcement chiefs told The Associated Press that a statewide awareness alert was sent in mid-September to be on the lookout for Robert Card after the firearms instructor made threats against his base and fellow soldiers. But after stepped-up patrols of the base and a visit to Card’s home – neither of which turned up any sign of him – they moved on.

“We added extra patrols, we did that for about two weeks. ... The guy never showed up,” said Jack Clements, the police chief in Saco, home to the U.S. Army Reserve base where Card trained....

Despite the earlier threats, the FBI said Saturday Card had not been on its radar, telling AP it “did not have nor did it receive any tips or information concerning Robert Card.” The bureau added that its instant background check system “was not provided with or in possession of any information that would have prohibited Card from a lawful firearm purchase.”

Card’s case stands as a glaring example of missed red flags, with many unanswered questions about what the military, police, mental health professionals and relatives could have done to prevent the massacre. 

An involuntary commitment must be reported to NICS.  If the government cannot handle tasks this simple, why trust they can handle broader gun bans?

22 Dead in Maine Mass Murder

Lots of coverage.  Police apparently know who the guy is.  Apparently not a surprise.

Recent mental hospital stay after hallucinations.  No surprise.

10/26/23 Daily Mail:

Card is believed to be an Army Reservist stationed out of the city of Saco

He recently reported 'hearing voices' and threatened to shoot up the military training base

More tragedy.  10/26/23 NBC Bay Area:

The family of the Army reservist accused of fatally shooting more than a dozen people in Lewiston, Maine, alerted police and military officials that he was experiencing an “acute” mental health episode before the Wednesday night massacre, the suspect’s sister-in-law said.

Robert Card, 40, a firearms instructor and longtime member of the Army Reserve, began to hear voices that were saying “horrible” things about him a couple of months ago when he was fitted for high-powered hearing aids, according to Katie Card, who is married to his brother.

Katie Card said the family did their best to reassure Robert Card that the comments were not real, including by verifying with some of the people he claimed had made the remarks. But, she said, “it turned into a manic belief.”

“He was just very set in his belief that everyone was against him all of a sudden,” she said. [emphasis added]

Most of these tragedies come seemingly out of nowhere.  They warned police and they apparently did nothing. 

Found dead by suicide.

Interesting Hypothesis

Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children's Mental Well-Being: Summary of the Evidence

From the Journal of Pediatrics

The article argues that rising rates of depression and anxiety among minors might be caused by the declining opportunities for kids to play without adult supervision.  I cannot see the whole article but there is an correlation for which there is apparently some theoretical basis.  

I know that growing up in the 1960s and 1970s my peers and I enjoyed enormous freedom of motion and decision-making.  (Stranger danger had not yet taken over our society.)  That we lived to adulthood often surprises me especially after the incident where we inflated an 8' surplus balloon with hydrogen; attached a strip of magnesium ribbon to it; and failed to light it.  And the Bicentennial celebration where we last saw the beer can headed up and out to sea.  The mortar tube had expanded quite impressively in the wet sand. Oh yes, the pound of sodium metal in the Pacific Ocean.  Breaking into ARPAnet.  Application of contact explosive (nitrogen tri-iodide) to doorknobs at our school.

Who could get depressed?  We were having fun.

Again, No Surprise

8/26/23 Florida Times-Union:

 Previous incidents included a 2016 domestic call to his home that did not result in an arrest, police said. A year later, another call led to his temporary detention for emergency health services under Florida's Baker Act law. 

Baker Act, more formally, Florida Mental Health Act.  

The gun banners will keep insisting these are coincidences.

Funny But There is a Tragedy There That is Not Funny

6/11/23 Babylon Bee:

"Sad: Invitations To Unabomber's Funeral Mailed Out, But No One Wants To Open Them"

Yes, I laughed, but remember that this was a smart guy whose spiral into schizophrenia put him into a world that makes many Twilight Zone episodes seem normal.

Schizophrenia is not a joke.  It is an illness that ruins the lives of lots of very smart people and their extended families.  A disproportionate number become murderers and mass murderers.  Smile but do not forget: the problem is serious 

Any Idea Why Mass Murder Increased?

5/26/23 NBC News:

"Marijuana linked to mental health risks in young adults, growing evidence shows

New research, involving millions of people worldwide over decades, adds to worries that heavy use of high-potency cannabis could exacerbate the mental health crisis in the U.S."

There Was a Warning

3/29/23 Sydney Morning Herald:

"Washington: The shooter who killed three children and three adults at a school in Nashville sent a series of chilling messages to a friend moments before the attack, warning “something bad is about to happen”.

In an apparent suicide message received minutes before the rampage, 28-year-old assailant Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote an Instagram note to a former school basketball teammate that also declared: “I’m planning to die today.”

Not enough time for police to intervene but still a warning.

This Does Not Surprise Me

3/7/11 CNN:

"U.S. has highest bipolar rate in 11-nation study"  4.4% is a lifetime chance.  The point prevalence measure is 2.8%.

People with Bipolar Disorder I are disproportionately represented in prison and jail populations.  People with Bipolar II are frighteningly energetic and effective at what they do.  Because this is an inherited problem I suspect the generally risk-taking Bipolars tend to immigrate to new places.

A little deeper in:

"The topic has been the subject of at least one book, "The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America," by John D. Gartner, Ph.D. Gartner, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, discusses the hypomanic qualities of entrepreneurs and leaders who took risks to come to America. (Hypomania is a milder form of mania in which a person feels exuberant and may be highly creative without losing touch with reality or experiencing psychosis, which can happen in some people with mania.)"

"But It's Natural, Man"

10/22/22 New York Post:

Kyle’s now in recovery, but his is a story that is becoming familiar to more and more American families. Someone begins showing classic signs of hardcore drug addiction. Eventually, they suffer a full psychotic break. But the only drug history is for cannabis.

“We’re now counting 37 cannabis-related diagnoses a day,” Dr. Roneet Lev, an addiction medicine doctor at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, said about her emergency department. “It’s been steadily increasing over the years. When I started in the 1990s, there was no such thing. Now I see 1 to 2 cases per shift. The most common symptom is psychosis.” 

“We probably see 20 THC-induced psychoses for every amphetamine-induced psychosis,” said Ben Cort, who runs a drug and alcohol treatment center in Colorado. One study showed an increase of 24% in cases of psychoses in emergency departments in Colorado in the five years following marijuana’s legalization in that state in 2012....

“Now that THC is a more readily available drug and the perception of harm is at the lowest point in recorded history, we treat more people for THC disorder than for opiate disorder right now,” said Cort. “I’d say about half of our census is THC. And the vast majority of them have THC-induced psychosis.”

“One clinical study showed that a moderate dose of pure THC causes psychotic symptoms in about 40% of people who lack a family history of psychosis. If you’re a casual user and your dosage is mild, that likely just means a touch of paranoia,” said neuroscientist Christine Miller, an expert on psychotic disorders.

Thirty-five percent of people who have experienced such symptoms, however, will go on to experience a full psychotic break, according to another study, if they continue their high risk environmental exposure by continuing to use cannabis.

Legalizing marijuana has been one of George Soros' long-term projects.  Soros hates America.  Coincidence? 

10/22 UCSF:

The researchers analyzed data from diagnostic codes from every hospital admission, emergency room visit and medical procedure in California for the years 2005 through 2015, identifying nearly one million people who had no preexisting AF, but who later developed AF during these years. Among patients in the databases examined, 132,834 used cannabis, 98,271 used methamphetamine, 48,700 used cocaine, and 10,032 used opiates.

In the longitudinal study, published in the European Heart Journal on October 17, 2022 (October 18, 2022 Central European Summer Time), the UCSF scientists found that marijuana users had a 35 percent increased likelihood of later developing AF.

“Despite exhibiting a weaker association with incident AF than the other substances, cannabis use still exhibited an association of similar or greater magnitude to risk factors like dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, and chronic kidney disease. Furthermore, those with cannabis use exhibited similar relative risk of incident AF as those with traditional tobacco use,” the study authors reported.

I Missed This One

9/1/22 AP:

"DENVER (AP) — A federal prosecutor urged a judge on Thursday to order that a man charged with killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015 be forcibly given anti-psychotic medication so his delusions could be quieted at least enough for him to finally be put on trial for the attack."...

"Public defender Natalie Stricklin told U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn that the government’s proposal to treat a man who believes the FBI has been following him for around 30 years and his defense team is working with them is “overly optimistic” and generalized."

This sort of paranoia is a common mental illness symptom.   On the other hand thinking the FBI is following you around trying to entrap you in a criminal conspiracy is sometimes not mental illness. 

However, the picture of the defendant with the article makes me suspect mental illness.

This Sounds a Bit Worse Than Run-of-the-Mill Bipolar Disorder

8/30/22 Los Angeles Times:

"The nurse facing murder charges for allegedly slamming her Mercedes-Benz into traffic this month in Windsor Hills was in the throes of a “frightening” mental health crisis in the days, hours and minutes before the crash, new court records filed by her attorneys show.

"The fiery crash killed five, including a pregnant woman and a baby. The Los Angeles district attorney charged Linton with six counts of murder, including the pregnant woman’s unborn child."

Remember, in California killing an unborn child ID still homicide unless performed by a licensed physician. 

"She ran out of her apartment in May 2018 during a panic attack, and when police approached her, she jumped on a police car and was arrested for disorderly conduct, her attorneys wrote.

"A few days after that arrest, Linton told her family that she believed she was possessed by her dead grandmother."

There was a time when these events would have led to an involuntary commitment not a nursing career.

Why Mental Illness is a Public Policy Issue

 “Data obtained from a Swedish birth cohort indicates that men with major mental disorders are four times more likely than men with no disorder or handicap to commit a violent offense. The corresponding risk for females is 27 times greater…. In Denmark, a study with a followup period of more than 25 years demonstrated that 20 percent of male and 44 percent of female homicide offenders had a diagnosis of psychosis…” In Finland, "schizophrenia increased the odds ratio of com mitting homicides by about tenfold among both genders. Schizophrenia without alcoholism increased the odds ratios by about sevenfold among men , and schizophrenia with alcoholism by about seventeenfold. The corresponding ratios for women were about fivefold for schizophrenia without alcoholism an d more than eightyfold for schizophrenia with alcoholism.[1]”

---

[1] Markku Eronen, Jarl Tllhonen, and Panu Hakola, “Schizophrenia and Homicidal Behavior,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 22:1 (1996) 83, 84, https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article-pdf/22/1/83/5412202/22-1-83.pdf, last accessed August 19, 2022.

How Can You Tell?

One of the longstanding criticisms of psychiatry is the claim that doctors could not reliably diagnose mental illness.  11/2/19 New York Post:

His research work was also groundbreaking. In 1973, Rosenhan published the paper “On Being Sane in Insane Places” in the prestigious journal Science, and it was a sensation. The study, in which eight healthy volunteers went undercover as “pseudopatients” in 12 psychiatric hospitals across the country, discovered harrowing conditions that led to national outrage. His findings helped expedite the widespread closure of psychiatric institutions across the country, changing mental health care in the US forever....

Rosenhan’s eight healthy pseudopatients allegedly each followed the same script to gain admittance to psychiatric hospitals around the country. They each told doctors that they heard voices that said, “Thud, empty, hollow.” Based on this one symptom alone, the study claimed, all of the pseudopatients were diagnosed with a mental illness — mostly schizophrenia.

And once they were labeled with a mental illness, it became impossible to prove otherwise. All eight were kept hospitalized for an average of 19 days — with the longest staying an unimaginable 52. They each left “against medical advice,” meaning the doctors believed that they were too sick to leave. A total of 2,100 pills — serious psychiatric drugs — reportedly were prescribed to these otherwise healthy individuals.

Now, this is a worrisome problem, but why would a sane people seldom pretend insanity?  If a sane person was involuntarily committed on the claim of another tha would be a serious problem.  But what about the reverse: can psychiatrists tell when a person is no longer dangerous?  I have run into a number of mass murders where the patient was released.  You may recall the sword murders on the Staten Island Ferry some years ago.  Admittedly, that was the 1980s when pressure to empty mental hospitals was very high.  But this?

New York, N.Y. (1950)

03/06/1950: Just released “from a hospital for the criminally insane,” the murderer stabbed to death four and wounded three others on the street.

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: knife[1]

---

[1] "Madman Murders 4 In Brooklyn Knife Rampage," Salt Lake Telegram, Mar, 1950, 2.

Uvalde Police Are Not the Only Incompetents

8/3/22 Daily Mail:

"Mother of boy, 12, shares her agony as police are cleared over the driver who warned them EIGHT times before he killed her son during horror crash at the school gates"

Yes he repeatedly told police he was going to drive into a school.

Active Shooter History

7/26/22 New York Post:

"The woman who opened fire in a Texas airport this week had once claimed to be “God’s prophet” married to singer Chris Brown — and has been repeatedly freed from jail for a series of alarming crimes after being found mentally unfit to stand trial, according to a report.

"It later emerged that Odufuwa was free despite a lengthy history of mental illness and serious crimes, including bank robbery and even arson, according to records reviewed by the Dallas Morning News."

Why would not release a person so crazy she was not fit for trial on minor charges such as bank robbery?