My understanding is that his age range is towards the end of the scale.
I say “they messed him up” is if he was over medicated. The brain snapped as a result.
Here’s my reasoning. That university interviews and does a background check etc before they accept a student. Only six students were accepted to that program. He was good enough initially for them to be accepted. Students have a mentor with whom they work closely. Maybe too closely, too controlling. My guess is Fenton was his mentor. She had a habit of dispensing “medication” freely. Stuff happens.
Anyway, it’s too soon to know anything. I’m sure the University will be doing a lot of covering up. They don’t want to lose grants.
Drugs, prescription or illegal can be a precipitator, but I think he was showing the earliest symptoms during his internship at the Salk Institute based on the news reports.
My point of view is that the only type of government that might be able to discover and prevent the occasional seriously mentally ill person with extremely dangerous delusions and obsessions would be so oppressive that it’s not even worth trying.
Fact is, even totalitarian regimes have had mentally ill mass murderers, so this casting around looking for scapegoats and causative agents is misdirected and more dangerous than crazy people.
Political oppression via psychiatry was old hat to Stalin and Mao, let’s not go there ourselves in the name of safety from the mentally ill.
We are dealing with the vanguard of a generation which has been medicated, coddled, told 'good job!' at every turn (regardless of results), who have collected awards for showing up, and who have been staunchly protected from the outrageous ravages of dings in their self-esteem.
Think about that for a second.
They (and no, not all, but enough) are complete strangers to result oriented reality and the possibility of failure. They are not emotionally equipped to cope with having to do something over or get it right the first time.
And their 'can' has been kicked down the road by every person up the line who should have genuinely helped. The 'nanny state' is a failure as a parent.