Letters to the Editor
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We can do it.
As I take my evening pills, I'm thinking of you, inspired.
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Thanks
Cary,
Thanks for refusing to extract meaning from such a senseless act!
-Mike
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Making Amends
People who you've hurt or injured glare at you. That is a natural reaction. If you don't like this, learn to cultivate some tact and diplomacy if you don't possess it naturally.
Yes, they should forgive you. Yes, it would be the right thing. But yes, these things are generally said by psychologists and/or priests, people who are in the business of forgiving people, and wouldn't collect their paychecks if they didn't. And moreover, probably wouldn't give you the time of day if you weren't paying their billable hours or being part of their congregation.
You want regular people to forgive you? Make amends. Talk is cheap and asking for forgiveness is cheap, especially if you do it in public where there's the emotional blackmail aspect where the person you're asking will seem like a jerk if they don't say they forgive you. Besides which, being forgiven doesn't mean someone will like you now or again or ever. You're associated in their mind with pain and injury.
You want to make that go away? Repair the damage you did, and even if you can't, go out of your way to do nice things for them. If you're lucky, you'll end up an emotional mixed bag for them, and eventually on their schedule--not yours--they may actually forgive you, not just say the words.
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College Students and Mental Illness
After the VT tragedy - which I read about not ten minutes after returning from my own 9 AM engineering class - there seemed to be plenty of indignation towards college mental health services. Some of it was deserved - my school has a world-renowned depression center, but trying to get help for myself was hell. Especially with the complete lack of energy associated with the depression. A wonderful doctor at the general health clinic managed to help me navigate my insurance carrier running me in circles, but I have several friends who went to the college counseling center who turned out worse.
However, what bothered me the most about the post VT rants was the parental notification demands. My school, as well as my academic department, steadfastly refuse to release information without my written consent. And was this not the case, I doubt I would've gotten the help I needed - I would've tried to self-treat and would have ended up crashing and burning.
There's plenty of stigma still associated with mental illness. Ironically, when one is doing the right things (getting treatment, being open about the condition) there's almost more prejudice than one who just suffers silently. The latter is more easily written off as just "stressing because of finals", where I overhear conversations about others in my situation just trying to "take the easy way out so they can get extensions on homework" and the like.
Most of my future employment hinges on security clearances of one sort or another. This is what kept me from seeking help when I should've - it took until my third year of school, when the depression I'd been hiding successfully since high school became overwhelming and grades dropped.
If the school decided my parents had to be notified, or that they could disclose the details to any potential employer or the State Department, I would have never gone. Period. I was and am not suicidal or homicidal, but that's besides the point - one of the reasons I never came forth with my illness in high school was a outright fear of my mother's response (when I told her the basic details, I was accused of faking it) and the stigma my family has (I know at least 3 relatives who have or had depression, but the diagnosis itself never passes anyone's lips).
I am an adult. I am self-sufficient, paying my own rent and arranging my own loans. I realize FASFA believes I have support from my family, but if my mother had the power to call the university and learn my treatment regimen, I wouldn't have gone. Period.
Psychiatry and psychology rely on the patient being completely open with the therapist. The more that right is whittled away, the more likely you won't even have a history of treatment for the next rampager.
School psychology resources have to be strengthened. If the school has a medical program, especially a well-respected one, the way the undergraduate and graduate students who aren't in medical school are treated should be included in the school ranking.
I did call the center, when I lost a doctor and refused to go back to the (focusing on short-term anyhow) counseling center I had bad history with (prescribed medication which brought my first suicidal thoughts; failed to follow up when I missed the next appointment, busy going through self-imposed withdrawl... I could've been dead, and they wouldn't have known).
The wait was over a month, and I needed full insurance. Being a fellow member of the University meant nothing.
But with the exception of obvious warning signs, privacy is very, very essential. Communication between the police, local health authorities, and university officials is also lacking. My health records are scattered across two university offices, two general practician doctors, two hospital systems, and another university.
Trying to gather those together myself has been nearly impossible. I can't imagine it's much better for a concerned outsider who would like to know previous warning signs.
Here's hoping the realization comes that mental health illness on campuses needs to be dealt with compassion, not stigma and fear and invasion of privacy. However, I'm saddly doubtful.
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Sense and the lack of it in the face of evil
I loved this column.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, several years ago my close family friend (during my teen years, she was in my parents' will as guardian in the event that they both died at the same time) was murdered by three teenaged boys. What struck me then, what strikes me now, is how stupid, how pointless, evil is. It makes no sense. Nothing you can do to it in your mind will make it make sense. I read the psych reports, I sifted through the police interviews, I stared into the faces of the killers at the trial. I even, briefly, spoke with one of them. And still nothing makes sense, because there is no sense to be made. Eventually I filed the whole experience under "Seriously Fucked Up," stuck the folder in the back of the cabinet of my mind, and returned as best I could to business as usual. I think Cary's captured the essence of what it feels like to be confronted by senseless violence.
However, even in the land of the senseless, some things do make sense.
In the case of my murdered friend, the three boys who killed her were horribly abused as children. Robert Carpenter's father, Robert Carpenter senior, punished him when he was a boy for some minor infraction by pouring lighter fluid on the five-year-old child and setting him on fire. At the emergency room, the senior Carpenter claimed he saw nothing wrong with his actions. For reasons which are opaque now due to the death of the officer who filed the police report, he wasn't charged with a crime. I can't remember whether it was Robert or his brother's trial - there were three killers, and both state and federal charges, so all the trials blur together now - but during the sentencing phase of one of the trials the boys' mother was summoned to testify about the circumstances under which her sons grew up. She didn't bother coming to court. The look on that young man's face when he turned with hope in his eyes to see his mother and then slowly realized his own mother didn't care enough to speak in his defense made me almost feel sorry for him.
So. Out of nonsense, something that makes sense: setting children on fire is bad. It has repercussions. Five-year-olds who are set on fire may grow up to kill innocent people.
In Cho's case, there are also a couple of things that make sense. Untreated mental illness isn't good. A guy who everyone was aware was mentally ill, who was found by mental health professionals to have been dangerous to himself (if not to others), should really have been compelled to get treatment. Or at least it should have been easier to keep him away from handguns and classrooms full of people.
It's very difficult to involuntarily commit someone in America at the moment. My own half-sister is losing her mind; so far, she has set her neighbor's house on fire, called the police because she was convinced there were people living in her attic, and threatened to drive cross-country and murder my mother. We're not having a lot of luck getting her treatment; she doesn't think there's a problem, and the authorities aren't all that interested. At the moment, all we can do is cross our fingers and pray that if she ever does decide to carry out her threats, her car breaks down en route. It's hard to keep in mind that her actions are caused by illness. My mother, in particular, is having a hard time believing that she's ill, not just evil.
My half-sister's situation is not unusual. It's unfortunate but true that as a result of the policy of deinstitutionalization, mentally people who are violent are walking the streets. Given that, it's not surprising that many people are afraid of the insane.
If I remember correctly, schizoaffective disorder isn't likely to make anyone commit murder. But the average person doesn't know a paranoid schizophrenic from a schizotypal or a disorder from a psychosis. For the average person, all mental illness can be summed up by the word "crazy," and the stereotype of "crazy people" is determined by whatever is reported most loudly in the news. It sucks, and I'm sorry about that.
LW - Take heart, though. Unless you wear a sticker on your forehead that says, Schizoaffective, no one will know except those close to you, and you can explain to them what exactly it means. You won't necessarily succeed in convincing others that your illness, and not you, was responsible for you behavior in the past. We humans like to cling to the illusion that we are masters of our own minds. Insanity, intoxication, senility, anything that reminds us that we aren't completely in charge, these scare us.
As for being afraid of the mentally ill - it's true, there are some mentally ill people who commit murder. But there are also non-mentally-ill people who commit murder. In fact, the majority of murders are committed by people who are NOT mentally ill.
We can try to second-guess Cho. We can lock up unstable people in hopes of preventing the next massacre. But the fact is, as Cary beautifully pointed out, we can't make our lives safe. The next mass murderer might be someone with no prior history of mental illness. The one that gets you is the one you never saw coming.