Reports on the recent Nickle Mines (PA) shooting are stating that the shooter (Charles Roberts) may have been suffering emotional instability from the loss of a child some three years previous and may also have been seeking revenge for an as yet un-detailed twenty-year-old grudge (perhaps with God).
The gunman in the Platte Canyon shooting (Duane Morrison) is reported to have been a troubled homeless petty criminal. The sketchy details that have been released in the media from the fourteen page letter Morrison mailed before going to the school paints an apologetic haunted person who could not cope with who he was and pursued a dramatic ending.
Additionally, those young gunmen in the Columbine shooting were reported as being motivated by depression brought on by clique exclusion, bullying by peers and being emotionally disengaged at home.
It can be speculated that each of these people could have been helped in some way to find solutions to their problems; and thus, the catastrophes averted.
Could we have been there for them?
The way the American healthcare is structured, hundreds of thousands of mentally and emotionally burdened people struggle out their lives in the cracks that exist between: being not functional enough to earn enough money to afford the proper help they need; and being too functional to qualify for programs that could provide quality assistance.
The pressures in these blank spaces continually cycles, sometimes to points of breaking.
Additionally, we Americans are not a very emotionally available society.
We ridicule weaknesses, short-comings and over-sensitivity. In the work-world environments of today If a problem with a divorce, death or other hardship. cannot be solved in a few weeks or less social ridicule and avoidance begin.
Friends tend to last much longer, providing you have some good ones.
We are the society of "grin and bear it, No Whining!" philosophies. Many in our populations never learn coping mechanisms to help them when they can't bear it any longer and their grin has become a demon's mask.
In this Grand American Society of ours, which affords the ability for tens of millions of people to lose tens of billions of dollars to the gambling industries; and which affords five hundred billion dollar profits to oil companies, could we not, perhaps, find a way to provide some viable mechanisms to treatment, or some time to care?
At least to those that perceive themselves as needing help with some sort of instability?
It might save some lives.
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"Death toll hits 5 in Amish school shooting" - Reuters/Yahoo! - October 03, 2006
"School killer suicide note included apology" - Rocky Mountain News - September 29, 2006
"Columbine High School massacre - Aftermath and the search for rationale" - Wikipedia
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Comments: 17
I'm willing to bet though, that there were many signs leading up to this, but that no action was taken to help the situation beforehand.
Candace - I totally get your point, but to many Americans, time IS money.
Why aren't they asking?
Do they feel shame? Have they tried but been rebuked, rebuffed or dismissed?
An excerpt from an AP article posted today on Yahoo! ("Gunman said he molested girls long ago" - October 4, 2006) quotes Roberts' suicide notes;
"I haven't been the same since (his daughter died three years ago, twenty minutes after being born) it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God and unimaginable emptyness it seems like everytime we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn't here to share it with us and I go right back to anger."
Many of those that battle depression say that they don't want to bother anyone with their problems; and they often don't see any point in talking with others.
Let's be honest; Who welcomes the company of people suffering depression? Generally, we Americans avoid the depressed. We avoid them because we don't want to be "brought down" by their negativity or sit and listen to their self-pity, their blaming or their making of excuses.
That is what we hear.
Although it's true, you can lead a horse to water and not make them drink, what We really do is more analogous to pointing the way to a water source to a person that can barely crawl.
We rely on the individuals will to survive (or God, or others) to actually get them there, and get them to drink.
Congrats on being featured!
Yup, What these people did was pure and total evil. The point of my article is not to blame or make excuses. The purpose of my article is to promote means by which society might reduce the number of these horrific incidents.
Each of these people admitted to, or were found to suffer from a horrific sense of isolation, alienation and desperation. Having an effective way to eleviate these feelings may prevent an individual from carrying out a horrific act such as this.
Even if it cost millions of dollars to set-up, and it only prevented one such catastrophe, Don't ya think it would be worth it?