Schizophrenia, Paranoia and just plain bullying .....

[Bullwinkle925]

It is so easy to put the blame of the massacre at VT on bullying, such as in Mr. Cho's case. Bullying is truly a horrendous act for anyone to partake in. The dynamics that went on in Mr. Cho's situation are far more complex, i.e. cultural, mental illness and his take on his family's economic status seem to play a huge part in his meltdown.
Just the topic of bullying, I'm afraid, is not going to take away mass murder in America. There are people on the streets, in the workplace, the markets, etc. who perceive that they are either being bullied, being plotted against or being talked about by others. None of it may be happening at all. Only in that particular person's mind. The film "A Beautiful Mind" is an excellent example of psychotic mental illness.
I have first-hand experience with that as my sister had some form of mental illness that made her extremely paranoid. She would talk to me about the people who were plotting against her in the workplace (not true - I worked in the same office as well). She would think that people were giving her 'looks' all the time or talking about her. She really did not have the capacity to be able to 'reason' her way through it.
Having known someone who suffered from mental illness I understand how easy it is for these VT massacres to happen. Anyone who does what Mr. Cho did is certainly mentally deranged. It's unfortunate that he was so easily able to obtain firearms.
You never know when you might be in a situation with a 'Mr. Cho' in your midst.
My heart truly goes out to each and every person involved in this misery.

edited for grammar

[rucky]

1. so many problems could be avoided...

if more people followed the golden rule.
treat people with dignity and respect.
try to understand them if they're not making sense to you right away.

[EFerrari]

2. A Beautiful Mind and As Good As It Gets are two great films

for understanding what people with these situations go through, on their own and in their relationships.

Sometime, I think I want to try to put our interview with CNN up on the net. There is footage of snapshots I took of the first severe episode. While I was at work, my partner believed I was trying to hurt him in some way. So, he went through the whole house and did his best to "erase" me by destroying all my possessions. Books were burned, instruments smashed, clothes thrown out on the sidewalk. He had my car towed away and our beloved dog was turned in as a stray.

He adored that dog.

Then, he went to a gig in Reno for two weeks.

At the time, there was only the shock and confusion. But there was one thing he did that helped me understand what had just happened. When I got home, I couldn't get in through the front door. It was blocked somehow from the inside. I crawled in a window somehow and then saw he'd put a bookcase across the front door -- as if he was barricading himself, keeping danger out. I worked 60 miles away.

And the kicker is, I decided to take pictures of the whole house because I knew that if I reported this to the therapist she'd probably not really get it because my husband was out of the "normal" window for a first episode of this type. I didn't touch anything, took pictures and filed a police report, walking my neighborhood cops around the house. Showing them his stuff immaculate and neat and all of mine, destroyed.

That was a terrible day but it was the day I began to understand what we were dealing with. And how horrible it must be to suddenly know that your wife is out to get you so certainly that you'd have to take those measures. :(

We were lucky. It could have been me, not my violin, for example. As difficult as it was, we were very, very lucky.

Our families shouldn't have to live by the seat of their pants and by what luck comes their way. And our communities shouldn't, either.

peace
Beth

[Bullwinkle925]

3. I loved my sister dearly and it tore me apart in not being able to really help her.

She never did make it through any kind of mental help. She had a psychotic break and was hospitalized for a week in a psych unit. I remember the day that she called me from that psych unit and told me what had happened. She had been hearing voices. I was so distraught at not being there (we lived 2000 miles apart) that I jumped in the car and drove to the nearest mall just to get out of my house (I was home alone) and be in a setting where there were people present. I remember sitting down in the main area of the mall on a bench and just crying. It was that day when I realized that she was indeed very ill. I had suspected for years but was never able to get her to any help. It took an act by her husband to have the police come to their house and then take her away by ambulance to a psych unit. It must have been a very traumatic night as he is a very passive individual. So passive, in fact, that a few years later she died from breast cancer that had not been treated until it was too late. She had a 'bleed-out' of her breast that they were unable to stop and once again they had to take her to the ER by ambulance. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, but, unfortunately too late.
My hope is that our society would address the very desperate situations that these people and their families are faced with. There are so many time bombs out there who have yet to explode.
I'm sorry for what you went through. I do know how tough it is to see someone you love suffer so.

Hugs - BW925

[EFerrari]

4. Back atcha, BW925.

I guess we all have our stories of that terrible, helpless moment. :hug:

And thank you for yours posts. Maybe someone will get it, maybe the next time we try to do something to keep everyone safe, one more person will extend their help.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. Our country doesn't care about the mentally ill or depressed, whether mild or serious.

The only answer they have is a pill, because that's cheaper than listening professionals or hospitalization that is more than warehousing.

[EFerrari]

6. So, my vote is to break it down. Because our families sure do care.

Communities that have to deal with out of control people or who have to witness this kind of suffering care. We have to get local.

[silverojo]

7. Cho wasn't delusional

Don't you watch the news? People who are still alive (and are mentally stable) have been coming forward to confirm that Cho was, indeed, bullied. He's not the first, nor will he be the last, to decide enough is enough and take his own life, while taking others down with him. True, any issues of mental illness and/or abuse would exacerbate his social problems...but the fact remains that bullying is a severe problem in this country.

Teachers simply refuse to do their jobs, caring more about their paychecks than about making sure the kids and teens in their care are thriving. They know that cliques, bullying, and the like occur...they just don't care to intervene.

Before any teacher supporters start whining about this statement, I know about this from personal experience.

In elementary school, I skipped a grade and excelled in my work, so I was the target of bullies who literally tried to kill me at times. Several boys (older than I) routinely physically threatened a pigtailed little girl, whose great sin was getting good grades. The teachers' take? One told my mother that I should try to get along better with the other kids (kinda hard when they're chasing me with swingset chains). Another told her that she couldn't control the class, anyway, so she had no way of stopping the bullying. And so on.

And it wasn't just me. We had a weird, scary kid (who, it turned out, had a tumor near his head that ultimately killed him). Many times, I witnessed other kids shoving him down stairs, etc., while teachers were looking on--too busy talking among themselves to rescue a mentally deficient boy. I was shocked when one of my own friends (a girl) reacted to his pestering by kicking him in the crotch so hard that he screamed in agony...the three of us were about 8 feet away from the teachers.

Stories abound, all with the same theme: Teachers not intervening with serious bullying issues, with disastrous results. Probably the only reason that the scary kid never harmed anyone was that, sadly, he died in junior high. Me, I had a good family to keep my head on straight--we were poor, but they removed me from the situation by relocating from our redneck hometown to a larger, more civilized city. If I'd remained in that school system, and gotten to the age where boys became bigger and stronger than girls, I know I would have been gang-raped and/or killed eventually. Thank God my family was good to me, and moved me to an environment where I could grow up in normalcy.

Not everyone is as lucky as I was. People like us aren't "paranoid"...and neither was Cho, now that you hear people finally being honest and speaking out about how he was treated.

In addition to the mental health issue, there's a huge issue that's being swept under the rug, just as it was after Columbine:

Teachers need to stop kids from tormenting each other, and teach them that it's dangerous (as well as cruel) to push "weird" people too far.

[Bullwinkle925]

8. That wasn't the point I'm making.

Yes indeed - bullying is a huge issue in this country. My premise is that I don't want to see the mental health issues swept under the rug and the news media leaping to a concrete fact of bullying in order to explain Mr. Cho's meltdown. Everything goes hand-in-hand. The point that I'm attempting to make is that simply by addressing the issue of bullying (and I know that it is in serious need of attention - beginning with oversight by the academic profession and perhaps leading to mandatory family counseling for families of those who bully) that sometimes it is a mentally ill person who is having perceptions of being singled out by anyone on the street, in the classroom - wherever - without it being an actuality. I don't know if you read my posts above regarding the experiences I had with my sister? It is not my intent to minimize those who have been bullied - my heart goes out to you. I think that people tend to want to grasp onto something they can understand - like bullying - instead of also understanding how mental health issues undeniably play into scenarios such as we saw this past week at VT. I agree with you that children should be educated (perhaps beginning in the primary grades) regarding the issues of treating one another with respect.
In short - my post was a response to an earlier post regarding stopping bullying would stop these kinds of massacres (paraphrased). It would be a gigantic first step in helping - but we also need to understand that other kinds of hallucinations, psychosis, etc. are going on in some minds that we cannot foresee. The person looks absolutely 'normal' to the eye - but there is a firestorm going on in the psyche.
I hope this helps you to understand my position a bit better?
edited for typo

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. The problem is that BOTH will be swept under the rug

fast, in fact as fast as possible

[Bullwinkle925]

10. You're correct. Let's not deal with anything in a constructive manner.

Beside - the funding it would take is all being shuttled over to the Middle East at the moment. Let's blame it on bullying and the fact that the guy had a 'screw or two loose' and let it go at that.

sigh

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. That is the media attitude

and the reason for that... well if we did otherwise, we would have some very hard questions about bullying and mental health, and whether both of them are actually tied to each other or not

This country is not good at dealing with complex questions, especially at the media level

Don't get your anger on me, but a media system that likes simple answers

Hell they will not ask either how many of these cases could potentially fall under the rubric of terrorism, since that is something that only fereigners do

[Bullwinkle925]

13. Yes - in this country talk is cheap.

Topics are ballied about in the media - then quietly dropped until the next VT massacre. Keep the majority satisfied with talking heads on the boob tube, but nothing else substantiative. Blame goes to the sheep in this country who do not loudly make demands. As far as they can continue their shopping expeditions and fuel their cars or behemoths, they are happy.

[LisaL]

11. I know of one person who became schizophrenic and then

came up with the most bizarre scenario of how he was a victim. I think feeling persecuted is a part of paranoid schizophrenia.