Sorry if I offend any fundies here;

[greiner3]

However, I went into major crisis not too many years ago for at least the second time in my life. After i was released from the mental health ward my brother called. He is a minister, pastor, priest, whatever of a whacked out church in OK. he was ordained as a charismatic, an offshoot of the pentacostals. My brother told me, in my time of need and crisis that if I only surrendered all to his god then everything would be great. i was shocked and offended, even in my weakened state. How could he try to brainwash me when I needed help, not empty promises and a life led of lies. Now, today, I look at the Post's story of Cho;

Hyang In Cho was so desperate to find help for her silent, angry son that she sought out some members of One Mind Church in Woodbridge to heal him of what the church's head pastor called "demonic power."

But before the church could act late last summer, Seung Hui Cho had to return to Virginia Tech to start his senior year, said the Rev. Dong Cheol Lee, minister of the Presbyterian congregation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18513128/

The pastor needs to be horsewhipped. Cho's parents need to be jailed. Cho was very bad off. Heck, I'm just a garden variety of depression and bi-polar and when I tell someone about my mental illnesses I can see IT, the fear, in their faces. It's stories such as this that perpetuates the myth that all mental illnesses are unhealthy to all living things. I would venture to say that alcohol is involved in more deaths to mericans in one week than can be attributed to mental ill people in an entire year.

That's just my take anyway.

[bluerum]

1. They get so full of themselves. They convince themselves and others

that they can "save souls" by waving their hands about and mumbling holy verses.

When someone needs psychiatric care, they should reign in their pride for the safety of others.

I believe that humility is on gods to-do list.

edit sp.

[acmavm]

2. These are just todays version of the classic exorcism. And throughout

time exorcisms were used to treat people with lead poisoning (the most common cause of mental illness), true mental illness, and plain psychopathology. It helped no one.

I guess some practices are just too good to let go. :sarcasm:

[Donnachaidh]

3. No offense, but I think your own history is coloring your response.

I'm no longer a christian, however I can see how parents (like Cho's) can belong to a congregation and use THAT as a way to fix all problems. Many times *fixing* with that means to ignore it, or pray even harder. You also have to factor in the very real possibility that their minister also may have counseled them that psychiatric help wouldn't work without divine intervention.

I cannot advocate jailing the parents - they were just as deluded as their child. And must live with what happened. Imagine waking up each and every day for the next 3 decades and knowing that you FAILED to stop a massacre. Imagine again, that you have to reconcile the FACT that you gave up your child to a pastor who did NOTHING to help your child? They have to live with the pain and the karma of what they DIDN'T do.

I don't have an answer for what happened. I'm not sure anyone has. What we need to do now is to look forward, and find a sane solution for the future. Not one that will stygmatize the entire population with mental illness

[Warpy]

6. Their options were limited, I'm afraid

because the "danger to oneself or others" criterion for involuntary commitment is being interpreted far too strictly. The only way it can be applied is if a mentally ill person has a weapon in his hands, threatening another person, or if he's found after a failed suicide attempt. Nothing else is considered and there are a lot of people just like Cho in the mental hospital of last resort: jail.

In other words, you can't force a crazy person who thinks he's totally sane (and most do) to enter a mental health facility against his wishes, and it doesn't matter how crazy he is or how he's destroying his own life.

Cho's parents are being punished enough, IMO. Not only have they lost their only son, they lost him in the most shameful way possible.

Everyone's hands were tied except Cho's. That's really the bottom line.

[Donnachaidh]

7. I wonder if this kid had earlier episodes?

I really could not handle watching the field day the MSM was having with their terrormonkey response. Did they ever look into potential earlier episodes that might have given the parents a way of putting him in care?

I know it's a 20/20 hindsight thing. It's a horrible event. And his parents need to live with it.

[Warpy]

9. He'd been hospitalized in 2005 for an evaluation

after students and teachers sounded the alarm bells. He didn't fit the narrow criteria so they let him go. He was not followed by mental health services. He was just allowed to get crazier and crazier, angrier and angrier.

The one thing students said when they found it the shooter was Cho was that nobody was surprised. In fact, quite a few had guessed his identity before it was released.

So yes, there were plenty of warning signs. Everybody's hands were tied.

...except Cho's.

[mike_c]

4. religion is a dangerous delusion, IMO....

My family is evangelical christian, and their world view is utterly circumscribed by their religious beliefs-- it justifies their distrust of science and education, their bigotry, and their unbearable parochialism about the rest of the world.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

5. Rusty Yates

Remember Andrea Yates, who drowned her 5 children? She suffered from mental illness (schizophrenia I believe) and severe post-partum depression. But her fundie husband Rusty refused to get her the help she desperately needed, choosing instead to "turn to prayer", while forcing her to bear child after child. He really belongs in jail, IMO, and to see him lauded on Larry King recently, showing off his new bride was just sickening. :puke:

I have personally seen fundies try to butt their noses into areas where they have no business or credentials and really screw people up.

[Critters2]

8. I'm a pastor, and I regularly refer people to psychologists

and have, on three occasions, driven people to emergency rooms and waited with them while they got checked into in-patient psych care. I don't believe in "demons" or "possession". I believe in mental illness and I know that it is NOT my area of expertise.

So, I suppose I agree with you, that this pastor was incompetent (not a big fan of horsewhipping, though). Clergy deal with people at their most vulnerable moments. Some use these moments for self-aggrandizement. Which is horrendous.

Still, this pastor is just one in a long line of people who had the evidence of Cho's illness before them and didn't take appropriate action. A judge ordered him to outpatient, rather than inpatient therapy, his family went to a fundie pastor rather than a shrink, and the university had several opportunities to get him substantially more help than he ever got.

The faults lie with a whole range of professionals who weren't sure what they were seeing, or weren't careful enough to take appropriate action.

But, yes, the pastor behaved badly. As did people a lot closer to the situation. In the end, casting about for blame does less good than trying to change the system and the culture, so that mental illness carries less stigma, and so that there are adequate facilities available for everyone who needs them.

This pastor, for one, has been working for those changes for 20 years.

[annabanana]

10. "working for those changes for 20 years"

IMHO, you are toiling in the vineyard and they are sowing salt.

[bluerum]

11. Glad to hear it. Restores a little bit (very little) of my faith in the cloth. eom

[jazzjunkysue]

13. You are a good man, and a godly man. Thank you. When people bash

the church, trust that we do not include good, helpful people like yourself. We're identifying those who use religion to divide and hurt, and avoid responsibility.


The only thing that would have prevented the VT killings would have been better gun control laws. There's nothing his parents could have done.

As long as people can go to the local pawn shop and pick up a gun like a guitar or a gold ring, there will be tragedies.

We need realistic gun laws. No amount of hand wringing will help.

[Critters2]

14. Agree completely. Except that I'm a godly woman!

Other than that....:thumbsup:

[Dervill Crow]

15. A pastor who lives in the "real" world is a great blessing.

:hi:

It's too bad that the lousy pastors and the nutty fundy Christians are the ones we hear so much about.

[MountainLaurel]

12. I caught that too

:scared:

Took me back to my days in a church that taught that mental illness does not exist and that psychology is a manifestation of secular America's selfish nature.

[AuntPatsy]

16. I wish my daughter would allow me to get her help, at this point

I would take anything....but she refuses to do anything....sorry to hear of your pain.