School Shooting In Connecticut

[skinsguy]

This is horrible and tragic. I can't imagine anyone, anyone at all, who would be heartless enough to take the lives of children like this. This is pure evil, plain and simple. My heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to the victims and their families. I hope in the face of this massacre, they find some comfort and peace to help them through this. Though, it won't be easy.

I would please just caution people on starting political arguments about gun laws and understand that the real issues are much deeper than guns. I believe every state needs to look at their mental healthcare programs, as we know nobody who would do such a thing is in his or her right mind.

[BigHairedAristocrat]

Originally Posted by skinsguy

This is horrible and tragic. I can't imagine anyone, anyone at all, who would be heartless enough to take the lives of children like this. This is pure evil, plain and simple. My heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to the victims and their families. I hope in the face of this massacre, they find some comfort and peace to help them through this. Though, it won't be easy.

I would please just caution people on starting political arguments about gun laws and understand that the real issues are much deeper than guns. I believe every state needs to look at their mental healthcare programs, as we know nobody who would do such a thing is in his or her right mind.

Unless we make every citizen take periodic mental health exams, involuntarily commit anyone who we think poses a slight risk, and have several armed guards at every school, you can't stop stuff like this from happening. Things like this are a sad and unavoidable reality of this sick world.

It's natural to want to assign blame, but we can't do that for something like this. The person who is responsible is dead. He can't hurt anyone anymore. Now we just have to worry about the sickos out there who will be "inspired" by this.

[skinsguy]

Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat

Unless we make every citizen take periodic mental health exams, involuntarily commit anyone who we think poses a slight risk, and have several armed guards at every school, you can't stop stuff like this from happening. Things like this are a sad and unavoidable reality of this sick world

I agree with you, but what you posted is not what I was suggesting. I work for a Mental Health/Substance Abuse agency, and we have great programs for our community that starts from infancy on up to adults who have mental health issues of any sort. We also deal with those in jail, those in crisis, etc...we deal with those who voluntarily commit themselves as well as those who involuntarily commit themselves. We have Youth and Prevention programs, Anger Management programs...the point I'm making is, not every state is equal in the sense of providing strong mental health programs, and because they aren't, a lot of these people who go out and commit acts of violence are ones that have fallen through the cracks. MAYBE, just MAYBE if there was a strong behavioral health program in the state this shooter was in (New Jersey) that MAYBE this would have been avoided. I can't say that for sure, but I wouldn't rule it out. And even if the mental health program is great, I understand that you can't prevent every tragedy like this, but we can at least make sure that those programs are top notch first and foremost.

Again, I'm merely just saying, most people will jump on the guns thing, and the argument will go back and forth and never will there be a solution everybody agrees with. Instead of doing that, maybe we should put our thoughts toward behavioral health and what programs would help to catch such behavior in people and treat it before it manifests into something like this.

But, I'm not going to debate it today. Let's just take today and think about these families, their victims, hug your children if you have them, and if you don't, hug your nephews and nieces.

[BigHairedAristocrat]

Originally Posted by skinsguy

I agree with you, but what you posted is not what I was suggesting. I work for a Mental Health/Substance Abuse agency, and we have great programs for our community that starts from infancy on up to adults who have mental health issues of any sort. We also deal with those in jail, those in crisis, etc...we deal with those who voluntarily commit themselves as well as those who involuntarily commit themselves. We have Youth and Prevention programs, Anger Management programs...the point I'm making is, not every state is equal in the sense of providing strong mental health programs, and because they aren't, a lot of these people who go out and commit acts of violence are ones that have fallen through the cracks. MAYBE, just MAYBE if there was a strong behavioral health program in the state this shooter was in (New Jersey) that MAYBE this would have been avoided. I can't say that for sure, but I wouldn't rule it out. And even if the mental health program is great, I understand that you can't prevent every tragedy like this, but we can at least make sure that those programs are top notch first and foremost.

Again, I'm merely just saying, most people will jump on the guns thing, and the argument will go back and forth and never will there be a solution everybody agrees with. Instead of doing that, maybe we should put our thoughts toward behavioral health and what programs would help to catch such behavior in people and treat it before it manifests into something like this.

But, I'm not going to debate it today. Let's just take today and think about these families, their victims, hug your children if you have them, and if you don't, hug your nephews and nieces.

Sounds like you do a lot of good work. The problem is you can't force people to go to a place like yours to get diagnosed, let alone treatment. Families often don't know what to do or are afraid to do anything. I have no statistics to back it up, but I would think that for every person getting help, there 3 or 4 that aren't.

I don't know if we just don't hear about it as much, but it seems stuff like this happens a lot more here than other parts of the world. For some reason, this country seems to produce the most lone gunmen, serial killers, etc. I wonder why that is. Why are there so many crazy people here vs other places?

Who knows what this guys deal was. His mother worked there and he killed her.

[skinsguy]

Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat

Sounds like you do a lot of good work. The problem is you can't force people to go to a place like yours to get diagnosed, let alone treatment. Families often don't know what to do or are afraid to do anything. I have no statistics to back it up, but I would think that for every person getting help, there 3 or 4 that aren't.

Well, it really depends upon the situation. I mean, there are such things as ECOs and TDOs (Emergency Custody Orders, Temporary Detention Orders) that are issued by a court once our emergency clinicians have evaluated the individual. They either voluntarily come off the street and seek services, or they're arrested for something and the police requests a clinician to come and evaluate the individual. So, it's not always that they come into our facility, our clinicians are prepared to go out and see them. Not that it's going to prevent every situation like what happened today, but it's possible that there may have been several like situations that have been prevented because of our behavioral health services.

Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat

I don't know if we just don't hear about it as much, but it seems stuff like this happens a lot more here than other parts of the world. For some reason, this country seems to produce the most lone gunmen, serial killers, etc. I wonder why that is. Why are there so many crazy people here vs other places?

Who knows what this guys deal was. His mother worked there and he killed her.

We all can agree that people who do these things are not in their right minds, but where we all may disagree is how did they get to this point? Was it genetic, was it some experience that happened in their lives? Was it drugs? Was it alcohol? What was it?