There was a terribly sad post yesterday from a woman whose 13-year-old son is violent, coming after her and his siblings with knives, threatening suicide regularly. He's as yet undiagnosed. They don't know what's wrong with him. I told my mom about the post, and she cried for that woman she doesn't know.
oh baby girl thank you for this. i am so sorry for all this pain.
i have to say reading all these heartrending wonkette stories makes me realize how very lucky i am. my developmentally disabled brother is a saint - the farthest thing from violent or destructive (well, ok, chocolate chip cookies...) there is in life.
i thought it was weird growing up different. i thought my little brother was a pain in the ass (he was). now i know he also taught me to fight like a hellcat to defend what i love and i wouldn't change that for the world.
<blockquote>Many people who are mentally ill show symptoms in adolescence and do not become parents (although of course many do). But how can the DNA for mental illnesses have not been weeded to the point of being fairly rare by now? It would seem that they are seriously detrimental to us as a species.</blockquote>
Schizophrenia typically doesn&#039;t manifest itself until young adulthood, and much like the &quot;gene for breast cancer&quot;, the genetics of mental disorders are complicated and express themselves as increased risk not certainty of disease. Are you going to tell a healthy woman she cannot have children because her brother and uncle are schizophrenic? Of course not. But there&#039;s a good chance she has the genes for increased risk of it.
Basically, we&#039;re victims of our own success, genetically - we have the luxury to choose not to be eugenicists. Mental disorders do not threaten our survival as a species.
I was furious this morning when I watched CBS discuss this tragedy with the crawl &quot;Raising A Killer.&quot; Nobody raises a killer. Good parents have terrible children and awful parents have great kids.
When you know what it is like to have your own child come after you, when you&#039;ve called 911 and had the cops come and seen your child taken away in an ambulence, when you&#039;ve had Child Protective Services interview you and you&#039;re at risk of your entire family breaking up, then you&#039;ve got standing to talk about it.
Until then, shut up.
There is a huge gap in our safety net. There are remarkably few available resources for parents who want to keep their children but can&#039;t cope on their own. Sure, parents can turn the kids over to the foster child system. But between the two extremes they are previous few choices.
Far too few choices, if we really want to solve this huge problem. Fortunately, President Obama&#039;s Affordable Health Care Act could be a big first step. And I sincerely hope our First Lady adopts this issue and runs with it.
None of us are entirely free from internal prejudice, the trick is self-knowledge and compensation, and it&#039;s hard to keep that up <em>all</em> the time.
Whatever knowledge I may have is the result of powerful curiosity, at one time motivated by a close family member&#039;s mental health crisis - thankfully short-lived, but very emotional at the time, since it was in the schizophreniform spectrum and he was 18. Part of my coping mechanism was to read like hell. The definitions in DSM are all very nuanced and overlapping, and the personality disorder definitions in particular cover a lot of ground that people used to think of as simply someone being &quot;just a bad person&quot;, sometimes it&#039;s tough to see where the line is. This is especially so when a lack of empathy is involved.
OMG, I thought this was snark but <a href="http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/politics\/2012\/12\/17\/1346491\/tea-party-group-attributes-connecticut-shooting-to-teachers-unions-and-sex\/" target="_blank">sadly no</a>.
So you think all those folks dogging Rebecca were correct?
VP Biden spoke to military families who&#039;d lost loved ones. He said you don&#039;t know what it is like until you&#039;ve been there yourself. I agree with him.
If you are so fortunate that you&#039;ve never had to go through it, count your blessings.
But don&#039;t for a moment think you know what others have had to deal with. You don&#039;t.
Mental disorders have little effect on reproductive capacity, and often do not manifest until after a few years of fertility, so whatever effect they have on attractiveness isn&#039;t always important. But more significantly, even if noone who later went on to develop an illness ever reproduced, it would not eliminate the genes because it&#039;s perfectly possible to carry them and remain asymptomatic. And even if you eliminated the genes you wouldn&#039;t eliminate the disease, because those with the best genes still have some susceptibility.
But most importantly, the fact that we have brains with about a million times the information content of our genes, and a social order more complex still, means that our DNA is very far from determinative of our lives.
I&#039;m very sorry to read about your brother and your loss.
I wouldn&#039;t presume to claim to know what that is like - because I&#039;ve been fortunate enough to not experience it myself.
Just like I wasn&#039;t in the army - they invited me to that dance, but I didn&#039;t go. I took my student deferments and then the lottery and that was that. I don&#039;t demean those who went - and unlike (r)Money I don&#039;t feel like I didn&#039;t go to Viet Nam. I didn&#039;t go.
You still need to explain how the murder rate and violent crime rate have been falling as the rate of playing violent games has increased, or as your proposition would have it, <em>despite</em> the rate of those games being played increasing.
The violent outbursts seem to me, obviously in total Tom Delay mode here, like they might be the kind of thing that are sometimes associated with a <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mixed_state_%28psychiatry%29" target="_blank">mixed state</a>, and it&#039;s only a small stretch to believe that the mother&#039;s description that &quot;When he&rsquo;s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who&quot; might possibly indicate <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hypomania" target="_blank">hypomania</a>.
While obviously there are exceptions to the rule, the majority of people experiencing suicidal thoughts are actually not very determined.
The suicide rate in Britain substantially declined when the domestic gas supply was switched from (highly toxic) coal gas to (barely toxic at all) methane, thus eliminating what had been one of the preferred, and obviously one of the most easily accessible, methods of suicide - sticking one&#039;s head in the oven.
A couple of decades later another substantial decline in the suicide rate was achieved by erecting fences at locations notorious for &quot;jumpers&quot;.
There are studies showing that most people who are talked out of suicide attempts do not try again in the next five years.
This is not to say this applies to your family member - it&#039;s certainly highly plausible that where the suicide ideation is associated with an underlying, long-term mental disorder, there is more determination. However, statistically it is the case that suicide rates can be greatly reduced by the simple expedient of make the act more difficult. And the easiest, and most effective, way of killing yourself in the USA is with a gun.
As my wife said of Nancy Lanza, from the point of view of not having to find a way to come to terms of what her son did at least partially with her enablement, &quot;She&#039;s lucky she&#039;s dead&quot;.
oh baby girl thank you for this. i am so sorry for all this pain.
i have to say reading all these heartrending wonkette stories makes me realize how very lucky i am. my developmentally disabled brother is a saint - the farthest thing from violent or destructive (well, ok, chocolate chip cookies...) there is in life.
i thought it was weird growing up different. i thought my little brother was a pain in the ass (he was). now i know he also taught me to fight like a hellcat to defend what i love and i wouldn&#039;t change that for the world.
and kick the
also can&#039;t we just fucking forget twitter?
<blockquote>Many people who are mentally ill show symptoms in adolescence and do not become parents (although of course many do). But how can the DNA for mental illnesses have not been weeded to the point of being fairly rare by now? It would seem that they are seriously detrimental to us as a species.</blockquote>
Schizophrenia typically doesn&#039;t manifest itself until young adulthood, and much like the &quot;gene for breast cancer&quot;, the genetics of mental disorders are complicated and express themselves as increased risk not certainty of disease. Are you going to tell a healthy woman she cannot have children because her brother and uncle are schizophrenic? Of course not. But there&#039;s a good chance she has the genes for increased risk of it.
Basically, we&#039;re victims of our own success, genetically - we have the luxury to choose not to be eugenicists. Mental disorders do not threaten our survival as a species.
Rebecca:
Thank you!
I was furious this morning when I watched CBS discuss this tragedy with the crawl &quot;Raising A Killer.&quot; Nobody raises a killer. Good parents have terrible children and awful parents have great kids.
When you know what it is like to have your own child come after you, when you&#039;ve called 911 and had the cops come and seen your child taken away in an ambulence, when you&#039;ve had Child Protective Services interview you and you&#039;re at risk of your entire family breaking up, then you&#039;ve got standing to talk about it.
Until then, shut up.
There is a huge gap in our safety net. There are remarkably few available resources for parents who want to keep their children but can&#039;t cope on their own. Sure, parents can turn the kids over to the foster child system. But between the two extremes they are previous few choices.
Far too few choices, if we really want to solve this huge problem. Fortunately, President Obama&#039;s Affordable Health Care Act could be a big first step. And I sincerely hope our First Lady adopts this issue and runs with it.
None of us are entirely free from internal prejudice, the trick is self-knowledge and compensation, and it&#039;s hard to keep that up <em>all</em> the time.
Whatever knowledge I may have is the result of powerful curiosity, at one time motivated by a close family member&#039;s mental health crisis - thankfully short-lived, but very emotional at the time, since it was in the schizophreniform spectrum and he was 18. Part of my coping mechanism was to read like hell. The definitions in DSM are all very nuanced and overlapping, and the personality disorder definitions in particular cover a lot of ground that people used to think of as simply someone being &quot;just a bad person&quot;, sometimes it&#039;s tough to see where the line is. This is especially so when a lack of empathy is involved.
OMG, I thought this was snark but <a href="http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/politics\/2012\/12\/17\/1346491\/tea-party-group-attributes-connecticut-shooting-to-teachers-unions-and-sex\/" target="_blank">sadly no</a>.
So you think all those folks dogging Rebecca were correct?
VP Biden spoke to military families who&#039;d lost loved ones. He said you don&#039;t know what it is like until you&#039;ve been there yourself. I agree with him.
If you are so fortunate that you&#039;ve never had to go through it, count your blessings.
But don&#039;t for a moment think you know what others have had to deal with. You don&#039;t.
Hence my &quot;Of course not&quot; ;)
Mental disorders have little effect on reproductive capacity, and often do not manifest until after a few years of fertility, so whatever effect they have on attractiveness isn&#039;t always important. But more significantly, even if noone who later went on to develop an illness ever reproduced, it would not eliminate the genes because it&#039;s perfectly possible to carry them and remain asymptomatic. And even if you eliminated the genes you wouldn&#039;t eliminate the disease, because those with the best genes still have some susceptibility.
But most importantly, the fact that we have brains with about a million times the information content of our genes, and a social order more complex still, means that our DNA is very far from determinative of our lives.
She was a gunner, but she probably used the legit range. The kid, probably not so much.
I&#039;m very sorry to read about your brother and your loss.
I wouldn&#039;t presume to claim to know what that is like - because I&#039;ve been fortunate enough to not experience it myself.
Just like I wasn&#039;t in the army - they invited me to that dance, but I didn&#039;t go. I took my student deferments and then the lottery and that was that. I don&#039;t demean those who went - and unlike (r)Money I don&#039;t feel like I didn&#039;t go to Viet Nam. I didn&#039;t go.
My sincere best wishes to you and your family!
You still need to explain how the murder rate and violent crime rate have been falling as the rate of playing violent games has increased, or as your proposition would have it, <em>despite</em> the rate of those games being played increasing.
The violent outbursts seem to me, obviously in total Tom Delay mode here, like they might be the kind of thing that are sometimes associated with a <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mixed_state_%28psychiatry%29" target="_blank">mixed state</a>, and it&#039;s only a small stretch to believe that the mother&#039;s description that &quot;When he&rsquo;s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who&quot; might possibly indicate <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hypomania" target="_blank">hypomania</a>.
While obviously there are exceptions to the rule, the majority of people experiencing suicidal thoughts are actually not very determined.
The suicide rate in Britain substantially declined when the domestic gas supply was switched from (highly toxic) coal gas to (barely toxic at all) methane, thus eliminating what had been one of the preferred, and obviously one of the most easily accessible, methods of suicide - sticking one&#039;s head in the oven.
A couple of decades later another substantial decline in the suicide rate was achieved by erecting fences at locations notorious for &quot;jumpers&quot;.
There are studies showing that most people who are talked out of suicide attempts do not try again in the next five years.
This is not to say this applies to your family member - it&#039;s certainly highly plausible that where the suicide ideation is associated with an underlying, long-term mental disorder, there is more determination. However, statistically it is the case that suicide rates can be greatly reduced by the simple expedient of make the act more difficult. And the easiest, and most effective, way of killing yourself in the USA is with a gun.
As my wife said of Nancy Lanza, from the point of view of not having to find a way to come to terms of what her son did at least partially with her enablement, &quot;She&#039;s lucky she&#039;s dead&quot;.
Amen
Also the children of the severely disturbed...