[GED]

Jack@$$es like Jack Thompson, who have graduated from "ambulance chasers" to "senseless tragedy chasers" aren't helping matters much here.

[Voyager]

Yea, well, our wondrously enlightened psychiatric system declared him an "imminent danger to self and others" set him loose, licensed him to be armed, and then made his target area a gun free zone, just so people could feel safe, and in that order.

Anyone else see a tiny bit of logical inconsistency here?

Then again, I've never had much faith in psychiatry, so I suppose I'm proving the authors point.

Harry Voyager

[Scape]

Cho is the poster child for prescription drug reform in the US. This is the reason why kids should never be raised on pills and television. The shooter was "treated" at a mental hospital. He was on Prozac and other drugs, that make you more prone to suicidal and homicidal rages. This is the end result when you treat every made up disease with psychotropics, that totally alter their brain chemistry for the rest of their wretched lives.

[Voyager]

Well, to be totally fair, we've had psychotics trying to kill people in lot batches since before the "medicate them into a stupor" theory of schooling came to be.

Addendum: Was researching up the tower shooter, and it turns out he was on psychiatric drugs as well, and his doctors had missed a malignant brain tumor that may have inhibited his ability to control his emotions.

[Scape]

We have an entire generation that has been medicated to madness that are now coming of age. Add to that easy access to guns and a media that will guarantee to cater to their every whim to cover every gory detail worldwide and you can bet there will be a lot more of this.

[Psudo]

Scape wrote:

He was on Prozac and other drugs, that make you more prone to suicidal and homicidal rages.

Technically, it's a fairly rare side effect that makes them more prone to homicide/suicide than usual. Nonetheless, it's a serious side effect.

In my early teens, I took some medication for acne (Accutane). During my later teens, I spent a lot of my time deeply depressed. In my early 20s, I found out the medication I took had been linked to depression. I'll never know how much of my depression was normal teen angst and how much was chemically induced. Perhaps more importantly, I didn't kill or injure myself or others despite my emotional troubles. And, in case you are wondering, it is in fact an extremely effective acne treatment.

[Scape]

Well, good for you in not becoming a psychopath then.

Prescription drugs are connected to school shootings and other violence, yet more drugs are touted as the solution

That still does not alter the fact that everyone of these school shooters has been on some form of prescription mind altering substance. Whether it’s Prozac or Ritalin, all of them admittedly, according to the drug companies that produce them, increase the risk of someone acting out in homicidal or suicidal rages.

Are you really all that surprised something like this was going to happen? In a world where 6 year olds are routinely drugged for having psuedo-diseases like ADD that some of them might grow up to be a little unstable?

Time to cut off the TV and start talking to neighbors, parents, children, teachers, police, and take a new direction. I don’t mean standing around talking about how evil guns are either. This guy could’ve easily used something else, even more deadly, made out of common household materials. Rather it's time we stop having parents working two full time jobs to 'make ends meet' and have kids turned into latch key kids brought up on TV and Prozac and Ritalin. All that is doing is insuring we have monsters of our own doing walking in our midst.

[Kjorteo]

.

Psudo wrote:

In my early teens, I took some medication for acne (Accutane).

I was on Accutane for a while in college. I almost died. It had a very not-good reaction with the thing that controls my heartrate (like what an artificial pacemaker would replicate if I had one, except that I don't.) That stuff is bad news. It also didn't do a blasted thing for the acne, but then again, I was only on it for about a week before the medical intervention.

Scape wrote:

That still does not alter the fact that everyone of these school shooters has been on some form of prescription mind altering substance. Whether it’s Prozac or Ritalin, all of them admittedly, according to the drug companies that produce them, increase the risk of someone acting out in homicidal or suicidal rages.

Are you really all that surprised something like this was going to happen? In a world where 6 year olds are routinely drugged for having psuedo-diseases like ADD that some of them might grow up to be a little unstable?

Let's assume that, sure, all the most notorious spree killers were on antidepressants. Do you have anything to prove a non-coincidental, direct cause-and-effect relationship? After all, antidepressants are serious stuff that generally require psychiatric evaluations and prescriptions. Generally, I would think that most kids are given psychoactive drugs because they have issues...not the other way around. So, unless you can definitively say this isn't a post hoc fallacy, then all you're really establishing is that all the infamous spree killers have been mentally warped enough to necessitate drugs. Perhaps the case can be made that the drugs weren't working well enough to quell the derangement as all parties involved would likely have hoped, but that's a far cry from saying they created psychopaths out of otherwise perfectly normal happy children.

Scape wrote:

Rather it's time we stop having parents working two full time jobs to 'make ends meet' and have kids turned into latch key kids brought up on TV and Prozac and Ritalin. All that is doing is insuring we have monsters of our own doing walking in our midst.

Care to explain how you would go about enabling the ends to be met, then? I would guess that not many working parents took that second job just because they really really like working or they have a child neglect fetish or anything.

[Scape]

Kjorteo wrote:

Let's assume that, sure, all the most notorious spree killers were on antidepressants. Do you have anything to prove a non-coincidental, direct cause-and-effect relationship?

As much proof that doctors have of the long term effects of dependency upon psychotropics. So we have a stalemate but it is not a stretch to see that the cause and effect of such dependency is not as rosy as we are being told.

Kjorteo wrote:

Generally, I would think that most kids are given psychoactive drugs because they have issues...not the other way around.

Doctors are still human and prone to error just like the rest of us.

Quote:

Belief in chemicals as a cure-all is just one more sign that we are living in the dark ages of medicine
Today, however, we're living in the Dark Ages of medicine. We're still living in the chemical-based medical society where everybody says that chemicals are the solutions to health problems.
"Does your head hurt? You need a chemical. Blood pressure too high? We have a chemical for that, too. Do you feel nervous speaking in front of groups? We have a chemical for that one. Having trouble with your relationships? Chemical. Got a little bit of joint pain? Yup, there's a chemical for that." Then they'll tell you, just in case, "We have chemicals for stuff that you haven't even experienced yet. We have chemicals that you can take to make sure that you never have pain or heart disease. You should take all these chemicals right now, just in case, and keep taking them for as long as you live."

Face it we live in a society that thinks there is a chemical solution for all our woes. All I am saying is excess of anything is a bad thing. We have created a culture of chemical dependency.

Kjorteo wrote:

Care to explain how you would go about enabling the ends to be met, then? I would guess that not many working parents took that second job just because they really really like working or they have a child neglect fetish or anything.

Healthy diet would be good a start. Having more quality time with the kids is another. Deferring parental responsibilities to the TV and drugs isn't.

[Kjorteo]

Scape wrote:

Kjorteo wrote:

Care to explain how you would go about enabling the ends to be met, then? I would guess that not many working parents took that second job just because they really really like working or they have a child neglect fetish or anything.

Healthy diet would be good a start. Having more quality time with the kids is another. Deferring parental responsibilities to the TV and drugs isn't.

Okay, so let's assume our hypothetical parent starts eating right, turns off the TV, and vows to spend more time with the kids. How is he or she going to pay the rent now? Your original point was that working two jobs to make ends meet (thus creating latchkey kids) is bad, so I'm asking how else you would go about making the ends meet, not how else you would go about tending to the kids. Unless you plan to sell the happier and more well-adjusted kids into slavery, then what you propose doesn't especially help with the bills.

My mother just had to start a second job to help pay for the cost of fixing the roof on their house--the roof fell into such complete disrepair that they had to all but start over on the entire roof and a good portion of the walls, to the tune of $50,000 or so. Fortunately, I'm 24 and I live on my own now, so I'm not really affected aside from really feeling bad for her. Let's say I was still an impressionable child who comes home from school every day, though. Do you have any better ideas on what she should do?

[Scape]

We are talking about conditioning here. It was the quick fix mentality that got this snowball rolling to begin with as that is the root cause.

This is not be something that will be easily changed overnight with a flick of a switch. This would be long and arduous task requiring dedication to long term goals much like an alcoholic taking the 12 step program. There will be great temptation for relapse.

Live is a balancing act and sometimes we drop the ball. When we miss more than we hit we look to other ways to get what we want. Some shortcuts taken to sate our wants can end up owning us.

We can blame gun control for Cho but gun control is not an answer to a social problem. We must find a means to break the cycle of the self perpetuating cycle of isolation that turned Cho into a monster. We must confront a society of chemical dependency. If we can't bring ourselves to understand what drove Cho to madness, depression and such hatred of everyone else then we in denial.

[Kjorteo]

That...doesn't even remotely approach my question.

[Scape]

I'm not dodging your question I am addressing the context and the underling root cause which I see supercedes the importance of short term demands like making the rent.

What good is paying the rent when the problem that created this monster to begin with hasn't been dealt with? You now have a monster with a roof over his head but you still have a monster.

I'm not saying drugs are bad m'kay. I'm saying the cycle of dependency is. Your talk about a $50K roof repair and the short term crisis is just that, short term. Sure sacrifices will be made but at some point you have to return to normal living. It's not an all or nothing here like the gun debate Cho showed up with a mental history and was able to get a firearm with no background check, wait period or firearm certification. Banning guns would be the wrong answer when the situation allows a non US citizen who has serious issues to pick up leathal firepower without even a cursory check on who it is that they were selling to.

[Psudo]

Kjorteo wrote:

After all, antidepressants are serious stuff that generally require psychiatric evaluations and prescriptions. Generally, I would think that most kids are given psychoactive drugs because they have issues...not the other way around.

Scape's point is that we're handing out drugs based on flimsy diagnoses. The cure may be worse than the disease if it makes things sufficiently worse in a sufficiently large proportion of it's users, as he claims. And I do agree with him that there are real worries about children being over-diagnosed and treated with such dangerous substances perhaps unnecessarily. There is a political issue regarding whether schools should be able to medicate sufficiently troublesome (especially ADD and ADHD) students without an extra level of approval from the parents above the normal waiver. If schools are medicating kids unilaterally, that's a lot different than a consult between medical professionals and parents over medications.

I think Scape makes a lousy case for the order of cause-and-effect, but his medical wariness is not unwarranted.

And Scape, which does more towards creating a monster: professionally prescribed meds or forcible homelessness? I think they both pose a serious likelihood of screwing someone up.

[Kjorteo]

I will concede the concern of whether people in general are too quick to prescribe mood-altering substances to children. It's certainly a scary what-if thought.

My personal view is that I have yet to be convinced that such a thing actually happens, though. Even more importantly, even if it does happen on the scale we're considering, I have yet to be convinced that it induces psychotic aggression, that the psychotic tendencies weren't already there (perhaps being why they were given medication in the first place) and the medicine wasn't simply ineffective at stopping them, and in general, that there's truth to this whole claim that we're taking perfectly normal children that would be fine if left alone and turning them into spree killers. Over-medicating kids is an alarming thought, but so are most of the hazard warnings you receive in the mail with frantic instructions to send this to everyone you know! before their inevitable debunking on snopes.com. Does "that would certainly be bad if it actually happened" mean that it actually happened?

However, I will concede my lack of actual knowledge on this one. I simply don't know what goes on in the world of antidepressants and child psychology, and I have no knowledge or insight that would render further debate on the matter anything more than me arguing just because I like being right.

However, I will say that, as important as it is to spend time with one's children, doing it to the exclusion of critical matters like one's own job is alarming. Personally, I don't think hanging out together under a bridge while scrounging for food counts as helpful parent-child bonding time.

Finally, this has been said before, but it bears repeating: Psudo, you make a fantastic rival. I can't think of anyone I agree with less or who gives better discussion regarding the disagreements.