This morning a man was shot and killed while sitting on his front porch here in Atlanta.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/shared-blogs/ajc/copbriefs/entries/2007.06.15.173538.html

His family and friends are devastated. The neighborhood is upset. Murders like this occur biweekly there. Why don't they get a panel?
How many of the young people in these poor neighborhoods are put on psych drugs as a contingency to their families getting financial assistance from the government...i.e. if your kid has a psych disorder, he gets medicaid and since there are no jobs, there's little choice. How much of the "increase in gang violence" started around the late 80's when drugging poor kids became the norm?

Happy Friday.

I don't see much point in this. If Cho was medicated, the public will blame his diseased brain (not enough drugs, obviously). If he wasn't medicated, they'll blame his diseased brain (see what happens when loonies don't take their drugs?). But no matter his status, they won't blame psych drugs. It's just not done.

I don't understand why the panel isn't trying to get the autopsy results before July 1 when Virginia law changes and makes it impossible to get them. Aren't they at all interested in what the prescription drug his roommates reported him taking was? What if he was taking anti-depressants prescribed to him by a psychiatrist? What if he had Aspergers and was taking anti-psychotics which can have terrible effects on folks with Aspergers? Why don't they want to know about this?

I agree with Sally. I believe this is a slippery slope. The government starts demanding "that guys" medical records and entering them into a database, what's next? Anyone who has ever seen a shrink or taken an anti-depressant also entered into the database?

Why didn't they put together a panel for the Green River Killer's medical records and start passing some laws regarding him? He killed well over 50 people that they know of. We suspect it is much more. Oh yeah, he killed prostitutes. Forget the fact they too are humans and victims of the worst serial killer in US history.

i think we need to keep two things in mind: cho committed a crime and when that happens all bets come off in regards to medical privacy. also, i think there are many questions that need to be answered about his situation (dx, school history) that i am ok with this. i udnerstand the slippery slope argument and i think it can be proeprly addressed in future legislation. basically if you commit a crime your records are fair game.

as for the atlanta tragedies, i'd say that sort of thing should be looked into big time. but we know why it's getting ignored.

I absolutely think Cho's complete treatment history with psych drugs and other medications should be made public and in fact I have concerns going way back to his vaccinations in Korea which may have contained high levels of thimerosal. This is not about assessing whether he was mentally ill or not; it's about determining whether these treatments have toxic effects and how many toxic insults some brains can endure. It's also about determining patterns in rampage shootings. If every perpetrator of a rampage shooting in the past 15-20 years has been on an antidepressant then I think we need to know that and investigate exactly what kind of role dosage, metabolization etc. might play in setting this sort of behavior off. If we don't know these things we are never going to be able to stop it.

For any crime? Or just homicide? What about those facing a trial? Obviously, this wouldn't apply to Cho but it certainly would in lots of other cases. Should a suspected murderer have his privacy rights breached? What if he's later acquitted? You can't put the genie back into the bottle.

I really disagree with mental patients' lack of privacy rights. You don't have to commit a crime to have your privacy breached. Several psychiatrists phoned up my family members against my expressed wishes. This is in complete contravention of British Columbia's privacy legislation but we all know that mental patients don't count as "people" thus such laws don't apply to them.

I was referring to perpetrators of rampage shootings in particular although I do believe perpetrators of murder-suicides in general should also abrogate rights of privacy. As for murderers, well that's a bit cloudier perhaps, but certainly I think we should know a lot more than we do now about which treatments lead to what behavior. This could probably be done a lot more thoroughly than it is now without violating the rights of living individuals.

But the issue won't be "what treatments lead to what behaviour?" It'll be "what mental disorders lead to what behaviour?"

[my computer crashed -- so I'm not sure if my reference to the Duke lacrosse story got posted]

Psychiatric labelling doesn't benefit anybody and certainly not the labelled.

I couldn't agree more that psychiatric labelling doesn't benefit anyone and that's why I want to investigate treatments a lot more thoroughly to prove their toxic effects so that people know it's the treatment and not their "disorder" that's causing the problem. We have to educate the public that treatment is having a lot more of an effect on behavior than anyone has ever realized. It's not just some benign, harmless thing that one can try without much compunction and that may or may not help. It's far more insidious than that. Anyway I rest my case. No more comments on this one from me. It seems so obvious to me, but I guess that's not the case with everyone.

Sara, I couldn't agree with you more. Psych drugs seem to be treated as the Holy Grail of solutions for all psychological problems without regard to side-effects. When I had an adverse reaction to Desoxyn 15 years ago, I was permanently disabled. My life was changed for the worse as I suddenly developed a severe motor tic disorder (borderline Tourette's). And what did the doctors want to do to help? Medicate the tics. They just didn't understand that psych meds were harmful to me. They either have blind faith in pharmacology, or they are desperate to throw any solution at a problem, even if it's a bad one.

~Douglas

The Splintered Mind - http://TheSplinteredMind.blogspot.com - Overcoming Neurological Disabilities With Lots Of Humor And Attitude

I think I was misunderstood. In my post above, I meant that in the public's view the issue will always be seen to be the mental disorder and not the treatment. I completely agree that we need more discussion and research and education about the toxic effects of psych meds.

Medical history on Cho is kinda beside the point to me. What if they find out he had a brain tumor? Does that make what happened ok? What exactly is the purpose of the panel -- to make people feel like an action is being taking in response to an action. An action that we can't understand because of the complete evil randomness of it. Why is there no panel investigating how people can heal from such a tragedy and what services are being offered to the them on a state and federal level? I look at the picture on the Houston Chronicle article and there's a man with a large portrait of his daughter. What answers can be found in Cho's past that are going to help with that kind of grief?

I'm curious to see how Cho behaved in the past that could be an "ah - Ha!" to his former actions, but am very cynical as to how the "public" will view it. What if he's labeled as being "bipolar"? Will people then think that *I*, if they find out I'm bipolar, think I'm capable of the same? So he spent a night in a psychiatric ward, so what? That isn't a precursor to anything. I think we'll find that he has done many things, as well as things were done to him, that happen to plenty of people; except, they don't shoot people in their university.

I don't think these "clues" mean anything, or that this could have been prevented. Unless he explicitly told someone "I am going to kill people", how could anyone know? The fact that he had a mental illness means NOTHING. So do millions of people. So do I. And I live life without harming a soul every day.

Why make stigmas that are already terrible even worse?

"What if he had Aspergers and was taking anti-psychotics which can have terrible effects on folks with Aspergers? Why don't they want to know about this?"

Keep asking.

If all we ever find out about Cho is that someone labelled him "bipolar" or "schizo-effective" or something else, then of course it doesn't help prevent this from happening again and yes, it does have the potential for harming others who have been unfortunate enough to be similarly labelled. On the other hand if we find out he was on a large dose of Paxil, Cymbalta, Zoloft, whatever and perhaps that he wasn't metabolizing it (in fact Asians do as a group tend to metabolize antidepressants differently than other ethnic groups) or that he had vaccines with high levels of thimerosal that also put him at risk for reacting adversely to drugs or that he was on Accutane, then even though a lot of other people take these drugs, it still sends up a red flag that there needs to be a lot more caution surrounding treatment because some people go haywire on these drugs (a lot more than is currently recognized). And if we also find out that ninety percent (or more) of rampage shooters are on antidepressants, then it seems to me that that is sending out a signal too that might help us be on better alert in the future. Just letting the whole matter drop and assuming it was nothing but mental illness and a troubled past seems foolhardy to me. We need to investigate whether treatment played a role. We cannot keep letting medical professionals be careless and cavalier with treatment that ends up leading to tragedies of this sort. If he had no treatment at all ever, then fine at least let's find out.

Sara says:
We cannot keep letting medical professionals be careless and cavalier with treatment that ends up leading to tragedies of this sort. If he had no treatment at all ever, then fine at least let's find out.

So you are saying that if he got treatment it was “careless and cavalier” and if he didn’t, well we should just know that too? It seems to me that we all do the same thing as the pundits on TV. We superimpose our own anxieties and fears on a tragedy that is covered ad nauseum by the media. I hear what you are saying about perhaps finding links between behavior and pharmaceuticals, but Cho is an isolated case and should be used by nobody as an example of anything. Not by us or them. People kill other people. There are a million theorized whys and after all this time that humanity has existed, we’ve never found a good answer.
I believe that there should be a panel to look at how and if the system in place failed. Did the school and campus police respond correctly. If he was found to be a danger to himself and was put into the mental health system, was everything done that could be? I’ve read a lot of articles over the years about mental health care options in colleges is pretty lacking.
All kinds of folks have come up with a dx for this guy and given the malleable nature of dxs, I think that probably everyone’s right. Can’t we just accept that he was a fucked-up, lonely, and very disturbed individual and move on?

I believe what Philip said is why the records need to be fully accessible; for future legislation. There will never be a clear answer as to the "why" in this story. Meds on or off, mental illness is an unpredictable illness, that psychiatric medications are used to reduce symptoms, but the meds are not a cure. This we all know.
What needs to happen from this, a full review of history, of this young man's life, that includes medical, presumption of autism,psychiatric evals and medication use. Then a fine comb will be needed to review how each are connected. Autism is not a mental illness, and Cho could very well have been one of the sad cases where a person is Asperger's as well as mentally ill, and this becomes a complex person to medicate, and understand.
The review of records can therefore create legislation for proper placement and care of such individuals. Currently it is rare to find a psychiatric hospital prepared to work with a psych patient who is also autistic.

I speak from experience. The only way to change things for the better from the Cho tragedy is to change the system, and that means many facets.

This opens the door for the discussion of preventable tragedies that TAC likes to coin--and the discussion for long-term intramuscular anti psychotic uses, as well as the Haldol Disc being worked on for approval by the FDA for under the skin distribution for long-term of an anti psychotic, as well as anti depressants.

The problem then, with a person such as Cho, who could have been Asperger's...though presenting with psychiatric symptoms and behaviors--is that psych meds do not help Asperger's. Behavior modifications must have been in place at an early age-[as in 4-5 years old]. If a patient such as Cho was placed on a long-term injection, or say disc under the skin...there still would be no guarantee that his behavior would have changed, thoughts controlled etc. In fact it could have created other symptoms that increased agitation.

Point being, that forced medication used as prevention is still not the simple answer that some people think it could be.

This is an example of a very sad story, that is very complex, and I hope his family and the ones who lost loved ones can heal as people constantly speculate.

I have an issue with the information going public. This opens up a can of worms. I recently attended a meeting and if this thing goes thru then invol committed consumers will be on the database. This is an issue with people when it comes to everyday life and work. I was going to start a career in Criminal Justice and now if this database idea goes thru that dream is broken. The stigma of the whole tragedy is what is the worse in my area (SW Virginia). The day of the shooting a co-worker looked at me and had the nerve to say "so when are you going to bring a gun to work and shoot us". We need to educate people on the stigma. Consumers are no more dangerous than non-consumers.