Norway's Sad Tragedy

[welsummerchicks]

Quote:
Selective breeding is not something that Americans would agree to. Most already think 'Big Brother' has too much to do with their lives.

Selective breeding, as well as killing handicapped individuals, is inhumane. It is brutal and disgusting and inhumane. God judges societies harshly when they do so.

But the main thing is that selective breeding will NEVER prevent the major mental illnesses. Never.

During the Holocaust, most of the severely mentally ill people in Germany and several subjugated countries, were put to death, as were their offspring, sort of an 'instant selective breeding'.

Within the next generation, there were just as many severely mentally ill people in Germany.

Selective breeding will not prevent mental illness. It would be immediately obvious that it did not work.

Remember: Over 90% of people with schizophrenia do not have a known ancestor with schizophrenia.

Furthermore the inheritability of the most severe mental illnesses is extremely low. In general, a mother with schizophrenia has a 10% or less chance of having a schizophrenia offspring.

As I posted some time ago, it now appears that many of the genetic 'mistakes' associated with schizophrenia are not inherited at all, but occur spontaneously in the individual in the first few moments and hours of life of the fetus.

The solution is not selective breeding or killing them.

The solution is to diagonse them early, get them into treatment and keep them on treatment, and to house them appropriately. If they are mildly ill and can manage medication on their own, they can work and live in the community and do all the things every other person does. If they have problems staying on medication, they go into a program that helps them do that - monthly injections, supervision, encouragement. If they prove unable to live in the community, they live in supervised housing - APPROPRIATE level of supervision.

When they start to get sick, they do so in a hospital.

As they become stable on medication, they will EARN their way out into the community, by showing them can handle each next step.

Don't want to pay taxes? The way we are handling it now - allowing them to deteriorate without treatment, is about 10 times more expensive than early diagnosis, starting them innediately on treatment, and simply making sure they stay on treatment.

Having mentally ill people in society need not be costly, or tragic.

All you have to do is diagnose them promptly and keep them on medication.

There are various programs that have been researched.

All of them are far more successful than what we are doing now.

What we are doing now is insane.

We are not diagnosing people and keeping them on medication. We are leaving them to make responsible health care decisions when the very mechanism of the disease makes that impossible.

Then when something terrible happens, we blame them and wring our hands and beat our chests and shout, 'Well what a shocking and unforseen event! What in the world happened? Why whatever could possibly have gone wrong!!!!'

 

[mom'sfolly]

I agree that there is absolutely not making a delusional person "see reason". Their perceptions are as valid to them as other people's. Where you and I see a car going safely in the other direction, they see a killer. This is also true of the person who is delusional about politics and other topics. To them, it makes perfect sense, and you not buying into their reality is proof that you are part of the conspiracy. They see the Labor Party as a threat that needs to be taken down, the rest of us just see a political party in action.

I think extremists of all sorts are scary. Even those who are part of some pretty big groups.

 

[welsummerchicks]

Almost anyone can be trained to recognize the signs of mental illness. They need not be given years of education to know when someone needs help and is sinking toward a dangerous tragedy. They need not be able to diagnose or to prescribe. All they need to know is the warning signs.

The real problem, though, is not noticing it. The real problem is being ashamed of it, and even more so, not being ABLE to get help for the person. Young adults typically become obviously ill right at the point when they become emancipated adults, another horrific irony of schizophrenia.

Actually, in Israel, there were studies done of people in the kibbutz, and shockingly, there were higher rates of mental diseases found in the kibbutz. For years, kibbutz were criticized for 'causing' mental illness.

But that wasn't what was happening at all.

Because everyone saw health care people frequently, every day in the community, because children saw the school nurse and spent time with other care givers than their family, because there were so many group activities conducted with a trained leader....

they were simply noticing who was mentally ill. There weren't MORE mentally ill people in the kibbutz. There was the same number as everywhere. But because of the close community life and superior health care, they were being noticed.

Well that's enough from me. I hope others will reply and discuss what this tragedy makes THEM think of. If we all think about it and discuss it, change is possible.

 

[Jerseycoop]

This this just breaks my heart. It happens more and more. I'm a Mom of young children and in the past several years have grown weary of my old definition of "safe" places to take my children. Schools, restruants, camps, playdates over their friend's houses. Sad but true this is the reality of "our time". I hugged my children a little more this weekend. May God bless the families of the these so innocent victims.

 

[welsummerchicks]

mom'sfolly :

I agree that there is absolutely not making a delusional person "see reason".
I think extremists of all sorts are scary. Even those who are part of some pretty big groups.

Medication can. Medication stops new delusional ideas from forming, and it makes the already formed delusional ideas far less compelling.

But they have to keep taking the medication. Generally, for the rest of their lives.

The reason the delusions form is because specific nerve pathways in the brain are getting hammered. The medication prevents those nerve pathways from getting pounded.

Not only that, if you can prevent the nerve cells from getting pounded, you prevent more brain cell loss.

So not only do you stop the delusional symptoms, you keep the person from becoming more ill and deteriorating in the future.

For an example one lady had schizophrenia and thought that a certain person in the community had stolen her ideas for the design of a major public building.

Off medication, she had gone to the person's office and shouted at her and threatened her. The person was terrified and had no idea what she was talking about.

After the lady started medication, she said, 'Sometimes I think back to how that person stole my design idea, but I no longer feel lke I have to do anything about it'. She would sometimes mention it, but never expressed any more need to right the wrong.

Another story is about a fellow who became paranoid of his relatives and friends. After being on medication, he no longer became paranoid against friends. He still had some memories of being suspicious of his relatives, but he no longer felt the need to harm them.

However, delusions are usually the LAST symptom to be affected by medication and the FIRST to return if a person goes off their medication.

In other words, the treatment has to be consistent - every single day.

OK that's enough from me, LOL.​

 

[mom'sfolly]

My relative won't take meds.....you can guess the rest.

 

[Dunkopf]

If you know me at all you know I would never support selective breeding. However at this time in America the media has the public all riled up about the need to cut everything to the bare bones. That includes health and mental care. So the only way to get rid of the problem is to eliminate sick people that can't take care of themselves. Obviously not a good choice. Bombs are more important than healthy people though. So I doubt we'll ever see effective medical treatment of any kind. Particularly in anything that is endemic to poor people and mental health will never be properly publicly funded because the only time anyone cares is when it affects them.

 

[welsummerchicks]

But if you really want to cut costs, you do it my way.

It's far cheaper to keep people healthy and on medication than it is to let them deteriorate, and then try to deal with the issues by putting up emergency shelters, more jail beds, and emergency response teams.

For what is spent on the highly broken and completely ineffective system we have now, I could buy each schizophrenic person in the USA a yacht, AND pay for their medication, housing, and an upscale gym membership for the rest of their lives.

It costs roughly ten times more to deal with crises on an emergency basis than it does to just keep them on medication and not let them deteriorate.

 

[welsummerchicks]

I think I am getting a very different look at the shooter as more information is coming out.

His 'manifesto' sounds more disturbed and disorganized than I expected given the first bits of information.

I would urge everyone to not be fooled by the person's identification with political issues. He actually does sound rather disorganized. Parts of his manifesto were simply copied off of Ted Kazynski's document.

Ted Kazynski was another very sick individual who was still able to at least occasionally, plan and carry out mail bomb attacks.

He does sound like a very disordered individual.

The grandiosity of his plan to cause civil war, is just one part of why I changed my mind.

He is definitely more impaired than I thought. You can generally tell how disordered someone is by how grandios their plan is.

Psychotic, but also capable of planning and carrying out an elaborate attack.

And despite being very disordered able to put up a very good front and avoid drawing attention to himself.

Evidently he fooled a lot of people when he was taken into custody.

It now makes more sense to me that he was able to circumvent Norway's better health care system.

I think he won't fool people with more expertise; but he is unusual.

 

[Forrest_Flock]

I was going to
post something about this
when the news caught my eye
I have no idea why he has done this, and it does not look like anyone else has either
it is all very mystifying
my thoughts are with the families