Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

I M Losted, what you are saying is not universally true. I've gone to public clinics and medication is suggested but ultimately voluntary, never required for psychotherapy and counseling. Have not personally seen such a case. Will admit there's collusion between Big Pharma and psychiatrists, but I haven't yet encountered aggressive behavior from the general practitioners and psychologists you have to see before reaching a psychiatrist in a clinic.

an anti-abortion activist who believed in murdering someone who had an abortion would be mentally ill imo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/science/the-mind-of-those-who-kill-and-kill-themselves.html

I suspect pharmaceuticals are more likely a contributing factor to many of these incidents than potentially the solution

― rip van wanko, Thursday, August 27, 2015 10:55 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Prescription opiods still kill 2x more people than illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine. I'm sure the number of people they harm psychologically is up there with the hard stuff as well.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

I think we're more likely to fix Big Pharma before the gun laws but who knows.

OTC drugs kill 5x more than cocaine, which is available only from shady ass people in alleyways.

Maybe not OTC but prescription. As in you get them from a counter at Publix.

Okay it's getting a little off-topic, but then again it started because I was reading too many RW gun nut tweets saying we didn't have a gun problem, we had a mental health problem.

Anyway, I live in a working- and lower-class urban community, and we had some traumatizing and violent incidents, during which I, as an activist, did some research on "mental health" services in the community. TWO clinics for poor people within a twenty-square-mile area, and, from phone calls, NO psychologists unless you were solidly middle-class and had a plan to cover it. The two poor people clinics, to whom I was referred to BY THE STATE, strictly offered psychiatric services under the name "mental health". Go to an emergency room because you're distressed, you'll be shot full of meds & prob hospitalized at least a week. Those people don't care if you have grief, trauma or abuse. They exist to treat SICKNESS.

I don't agree with that. At least, I can see the logic in it - if a)you believe in just execution and b)you see abortionists as mass murderers of people (the fetuses we're talking about) then the moral calculus of murdering them to save the lives of countless "innocent" fetuses is easy.

not sure appointing yourself the executioner is the behaviour of someone of sound mind, even if i leave the "believe in just execution" part alone.

Yeah if you believe in a) then you don't really need any justification, you can literally decide who lives and dies, since you define was "just" is.

Also keep in mind once it is out of the womb the child is on it's own NO FREE RIDES =/= a moral foundation rmde

Prescription opiods still kill 2x more people than illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine. I'm sure the number of people they harm psychologically is up there with the hard stuff as well.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

I think we're more likely to fix Big Pharma before the gun laws but who knows.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

prescription opioids basically are heroin. and they kill people because people use them recreationally, people who weren't prescribed them. they are in many areas easier to come by then heroin. they are not really oversubscribed ime, doctors tend to be weary unless to subscribe opiates to anyone who isn't in severe pain. the psychological effects they have id imagine have little to nothing to do with random acts of murder.

have seen benzodiazepines (valium, klonopin and the like), which are oversubscribed for anxiety etc. linked with violence, but never with mass-killing (to my knowledge).

why are you guys arguing about mental illness/treatment. guns are the problem.

the only problem

in a thread about spree shootings, yes

Regardless of a direct link it is illustrative of an anxious, depressed, unstable populace.

Maybe the best solution is everyone can have guns but the bullets go really slow like in Gradius so you can easily dodge them.

In the U.S., mental health is treated with medication. If you seek therapy for grief or trauma, you will be referred to a psychiatrist.

this is an outright lie, btw

You will be referred to your nearest retailer more like it.

They're true because I've been told so by mental health professionals. I investigated the matter of treatment for victims of violence. I was told that same stuff by about five professionals I talked to - including a psychiatric nurse.

really? really really? I'm a mental health professional (a former psych nurse tbrr) and if you sought therapy, I'd refer you to a therapist, like literally every other mental health worker I've ever known

don't speak on shit you don't know shit about. most mental health professionals believe in therapy; psychiatry can be a useful adjunct, and if you ask for a referral, they'll give you one. but quit talking out your ass about this stuff.

Let’s worry tomorrow about the problem of Evil. Let’s worry more about making sure that when the Problem of Evil appears in a first-grade classroom, it is armed with a penknife.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-simple-truth-about-gun-control

why are you guys arguing about mental illness/treatment. guns are the problem.

― Οὖτις

because this is a thread on the internet.

if we want to really avoid extraneous/superfluous discussion then we should just lock this thread because these massacres happen because of guns, but the majority of americans are against gun control, and in fact that majority is larger than it was pre-columbine, and this is going to keep happening for the rest of our lives.

but the majority of americans are against gun control

depends what you mean by gun control

also acting like the issue is decided cedes victory to the NRA, so I would say don't do it

repeal the 2nd Amendment everybody! Donate to groups with this as their goal.

that's a great long-term goal. in the short-term, fund metal health, because it's glaringly, unbelievably obvious that people who shoot a bunch of people in public are mentally ill

mental health, even

Why would you refer someone to a therapist if it wasn't in their almighty health insurance.

I grant that psychiatric nurses are experts on life in the ghetto. Real economic justice advocates, those people. Especially when they can't name the symptoms of grief, as the one I talked to couldn't distinguish between exogenous and endogenous depression.

Certainly not talking out of my ass when it comes to navigating the health care system.

Enjoy your cushy health insurance.

...

Also, if they are mentally ill, exactly how ought those brilliant social activists in psychiatry supposed to treat them?

I'm sure incipient gunmen have really good health insurance.

can this convo please go to another thread

ffs

Enjoy your cushy health insurance.

I pay a third of my household's monthly income for health insurance but pay mental health out of pocket, so go fuck yourself

you know literally nothing, hold your tongue

I M Losted, it sounds like you've done some great research. did you publish it anywhere?

you know literally nothing, hold your tongue

this is some supreme cold phrasing

I thank you

Why would I hurt people in my community by publishing about our collective trauma? I was trying to get badly needed counseling services, not broadcast our community's travails to an unconcerned professional community.

I think publications like Mother Jones have done good work in health care in low-income communities, not that too many people care.

Research was for a potential lawsuit, not for publication.

I M Losted isn't a troll exactly but uh this is p par for the course ime

xp

stop responding to them ffs

h**p://gawker.com/this-is-a-good-newspaper-front-page-1726946476

lol @ this bullshit (CW: contains images from the shooter's video)

btw, a little late now, but i also read and found moving that FB post Eazy shared upthread about the reaction to the video. and to me, what made so resonant was how the author dispensed with the usual haughty tone so common among purveyors of that particular POV -- and recognized as valid people's reactions, empathized, and then attempted to place the issue in its proper context. it's an attitude people on "our" side, myself included, could learn from

xpost everything about that is terrible.

they're really going hard at cornering "smug mic-drop tone"

From the other thread:

yeah our culture is not getting more violent

Maybe this is similar to the relative stagnation of car sales? Like, it's less that we are driving less and more that we just can't drive more? Maybe we hit maximum violence and have been leveling off? Because for getting less violent, we still are crazy violent.

And I feel that it's fair to say that, as the US becomes less violent overall, violence in America is becoming more incoherent and irrational. It's not just domestic violence or drug violence or gang violence or violence because of theft or what have you anymore. Increasingly (seemingly), it's violence with no discernable cause beyond mental illness + easy access to weapons.

one does not argue about health with a man named San Te

I'd like to see the trend for the death rate for African-Americans, particularly if it takes into account deaths at the hands of authority figures, before agreeing that we live in safer times.

I think that's key. The rate of violent crimes may have dropped, but do people feel safer?

one does not argue about health with a man named San Te

― rip van wanko, Friday, August 28, 2015 5:31 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

da fuq?

I'd like to see the trend for the death rate for African-Americans, particularly if it takes into account deaths at the hands of authority figures, before agreeing that we live in safer times.

Serious question, crudely phrased: What if it turns out that "black person killed by cops" is this year's "child bitten by pit bull"?

I don't think the statistics will be radically different this year. There's just a much brighter light being shone on the problem at the moment.

I don't think the statistics will be radically different this year. There's just a much brighter light being shone on the problem at the moment.

That's kinda my feeling, too. And I wonder what's going to happen once the media turns the light off again.

So glad I don't work in HR:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/us/virginia-shooting-spotlights-riddle-of-workplace-safety.html

It's not really just the media who arbitrarily chose to focus on police brutality this year. This has been a brave and determined effort by mainly black people of Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, etc, to say enough is enough and take to the street and demonstrate. They've been hit with water cannons, tear gas and truckloads of bullshit arrests. And then smart and brave #BlackLivesMatter activists har worked determinedly to spread the word whenever something new has happened.