That Guy, Part III

It's not rained here the last couple of evenings, so I have taken time off to enjoy the mere fact that the days are longer and that it's not raining. I've been reflecting as well on the Virginia Tech shooter, and a lot of the bad memories of the mass murder in my neighborhood last year have floated to the surface. They are minor in comparison to what others are going through, of course, but the voodoo does slow down the mind in ways I cannot get at.

Some aspects of that guy's mental health history are beginning to emerge: he was seen at a hospital, committed by a judge, kept overnight and was released the next day after a doctor deemed that he could be let out into outpatient treatment. Those are the bare facts on that end. Obviously people were scared of him on the Virginia Tech campus and by now I assume most of you have seen out takes of the video clips and pictures he sent to NBC News and have read his deranged statements.

Some bloggers have declared him a classic paranoid schizophrenic. That's possible, but I don't see the evidence for it because a) that guy was released from a hospital after a brief stay and, from what I have read, was not given a diagnosis (that might change as more information comes to light) and it doesn't strike me as too likely that a hospital-based psych doc would release a paranoid schizophrenic so quickly; and, b) almost every schizophrenic I've seen or read about has been too deranged and/or cognitively-shattered to pull off all the computer tricks that guy did (yes, they can write manifestos as did the Una Bomber). But perhaps I am wrong on these points.

John Grohol at Psych Central has offered some smart thoughts about society's need to grapple for the why of that guy:

"Whether or not the person who perpetrated the shootings has an illness or specific motivations doesn’t explain a tragedy of this nature. Honestly, nothing can. Most people deal with human tragedies throughout their lives and most people do not go on shooting rampages. A failed exam? A break-up with a girlfriend? Angry at the school for not letting him or her in? Even if there was such a “reason,” what would it explain? People normally don’t take such extreme criminal actions when confronted with a big life disappointment."

Grohol has also picked up on the annoying tendency of some psychiatrists and psychologists to encourage the media's dissection of that guy. All the same, I have heard and read a couple of psych docs describing that guy as being a narcissist. I'll buy that for the moment, until we know a whole lot more.

The Last Psychiatrist suggests that that guy's Ismail Ax handle may have something to do with gaming. Interesting.

NAMI put out a press release: "Despite media reports, Cho Seung Hui, the shooter in the tragedy, may not actually have had a serious mental illness relative to other diagnoses." Meaning that guy may not have been schizophrenic. We'll see.

TAC has some predictable thoughts.

I hope to be back soon with some other thoughts and some other news. After all, the doctor who was a co-author of the infamous Paxil/Seroxat Study 329 is at it again. This time, he co-authored the much repeated study in the media that just appeared in JAMA asserting that SSRIs are just fine for kids. But I'll get to that later.