Posted on 02/20/2018 7:09:48 AM PST by Wolfie
The Smoking Gun In Mass Shootings By The Young
Still won't raise the actual issue will you?
“The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense,” said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago’s Rush University Medical College. “The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness.”
Oh really?
The article goes on to claim that ~38,000 people died from firearm violence in 2016.
What is being omitted is that the majority were suicides!
In fact, of those 38,000 people (37,863 for 2015 according to the CDC) 22,928 were firearm suicides in 2015 (according to the CDC again), or more than half of all deaths by violence and roughly half of all suicides. And virtually all of those suicides, along with most of the homicides, are committed with handguns.
(It's actually a bit of a trick to kill yourself with a rifle or shotgun. It's not impossible by any means, but it's a hell of a lot harder to shoot yourself in the head with a rifle that it is with a pistol.)
With the exception of the few people who committed suicide under perfectly-understandable and sane circumstances (e.g. facing a terminal illness and choosing the time and manner of death instead of having it forced upon them) the rest were mentally ill.
Are you next going to tell me that suicide is not a "violent behavior" Mr. Kraus? Or does it only count if someone blows their brains out instead of taking a intentionally fatal dose of some drug, jumping off a bridge or similar?
Go **** yourself you lying sack of ****.
You see, what Kraus is deathly afraid of is this sort of event being properly pinned on him and his profession -- which was a very, very near miss:
RUTLAND - An 18-year-old Poultney man pleaded not guilty Friday afternoon to charges including attempted murder in connection with the threat of a mass shooting at Fair Haven Union High School.
Police said former student Jack Sawyer indicated he wanted to cause "mass casualties" at the Rutland County school of about 400 students in ninth through 12th grades in an attack he had been planning for two years.
By the way, this guy bought a shotgun. Which is not an "assault weapon", but will still kill you very dead.
What else do we know about him? That he was on medication and stopped taking it. He was also institutionalized for a while under care of a psychiatrist. You know, someone who claims to be an expert in figuring out whether someone is dangerous (and mentally ill, I might add) or not!
How did said psychiatrist do in this case, on an objective basis, if I may ask the dear Doctor Klaus? Would you care to give him a grade on a scale from "A" to "F" or do we need more letters than that to appropriately express his level of performance?
And what medication was the alleged would-be shooter on? Anti-depressants, it appears, if the article is correct.
Let me point out once again that the the infamous "329" study, which led to GSK being criminally charged for off-label marketing, when re-analyzed showed:
Few studies have sustained as much criticism as Study 329, a placebo controlled, randomized trial of paroxetine and imipramine carried out by SmithKline Beecham (which became GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2000). In 2002, a US Food and Drug Administration officer who formally reviewed the trial reported that “on balance, this trial should be considered as a failed trial, in that neither active treatment group showed superiority over placebo by a statistically significant margin.”4 Yet this same year, according to the New York State Attorney General’s office, which sued GSK, over two million prescriptions were written for children and adolescents in the United States, all off-label, after a marketing campaign that characterized Study 329 as demonstrating “REMARKABLE Efficacy and Safety.”
Got a reading comprehension problem folks?
The drugs don't work in teens and children; neither showed that it was superior to a sugar pill in terms of being effective. Worse, they massively increased the risk of suicidal ideation - by anywhere from 2.5 to more than five times depending on the specific drug in question. Finally, the government (FDA) knew all of this in 2002.
Why would you allow a doctor (of any sort) to prescribe a drug to someone that we know, scientifically, does not work in that person's age group?
But what we also know is not just that they don't work and raise the risk of self-harm -- they also potentiate violent criminal behavior in a small percentage of children, adolescents and those under the age of 25 who take them.
In fact these drugs as a class basically double the risk of violent criminal conviction in that age group.
DOUBLE!
Now there are plenty of theories on why -- but no facts at this point. But what does exist to date is a warning in the prescribing information on giving them to young adults and teens, especially those who may be bipolar.
This guy in Vermont, I'm willing to wager, was exactly that. He was drugged with a substance known to be dangerous. He tried to go off the drugs on his own which is extremely common for bipolar individuals.
Fortunately he was caught before he was able to commit his crime -- but he formulated intent to commit that crime while under the influence of a psychiatric medication we know comes with the risk of potentiating violent criminal felonies.
Does this make him somehow excused? Of course not.
But when are we going to stop with the bull**** about "assault weapons" when (1) the most-common, by far, violent act committed by mentally ill people is suicide, (2) suicides are more than half of all violent deaths that involve firearms, (3) nearly all suicides and nearly all homicides (10:1 ratio for the latter) are committed with handguns, not assault (or any other form of) rifle or shotgun -- indeed, you're about 3x more likely to be killed by someone with a knife than a rifle of any sort and (4) among those who are under the age of 25 these drugs not only do not work they make both violent criminal behavior AND suicide more likely by a factor of anywhere from two to five times over those with similar afflictions who take sugar pills -- that is, nothing.
The above is not based on my opinion it is based on multiple scientific, medical studies never mind the false (and, it appears, intentionally-so) claims made by one of the drugmakers in question -- and that firm was criminally charged for off-label marketing of said drug.
Yes, 17 people dead in Florida sucks. How badly does it suck that 22,000 people kill themselves every year, many times more than 17, and of those who are under 25 at the time how many of them were taking either currently or recently a class of drug we know not only doesn't work it makes suicidal ideation anywhere from 2 to 5 times more likely?
Look, I get it. People want to hold out this Marcus Welby view of doctors -- including psychiatrists. They don't want to face the fact that physicians either are duped or simply fail to follow the literature, but both happen. In other fields we consider a failure to do so criminal negligence, but apparently not here -- even when it leads people to take their own lives, or much worse, decide to try to take the lives of countless others. Screaming "guns guns guns!" is politically expedient, especially for a certain segment of the political sphere that doesn't give a **** about either people's lives or facts.
You'll never solve this problem with "gun control." If you want to put a serious dent in the issue start by following the scientific literature and studies which say that (1) these drugs do not work in children, teens and adults under the age of 25, (2) they cause (not prevent) suicides compared against those who take nothing at all for the same symptoms in the under-25 age group, and (3) they are associated with a doubling of serious, violent criminal behavior in that same age group.
The criminal association disappears entirely in those 25 and older, and there is decent evidence that these drugs, under at least some circumstances, are effective in older patients.
In other words if you want to put a serious dent in these events bar the writing of prescriptions for these drugs to those under 25 and for those doctors and psychiatrists who hand them out anyway hold them criminally accountable if their judgement, which is directly opposed to the scientific evidence, results in an attempted or actual mass-murder.
Not only will we dent or completely stop these "rage monster" incidents we will probably also prevent thousands of suicides annually by adolescents and young adults -- many MULTIPLES of the 17 killed in Florida -- at the same time.
bump
My expert opinion is that a person has gotta be pretty effed in the head to shoot a bunch of schoolchildren.
Many in the "mental health" industry are themselves serious whackjobs.
(It’s actually a bit of a trick to kill yourself with a rifle or shotgun. It’s not impossible by any means, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to shoot yourself in the head with a rifle that it is with a pistol.)
Ask Ernest Hemingway about use of a shotgun ...
He probably is, see my post #22.
These Florida kids being led by the nose by their commie handlers seem to miss the link that their friends were killed by one of their own fellow students. Not some unknown psycho that walked in off the street, but one they had classes with, joked with, had lunch in the cafeteris just before he was expelled.
>
Few studies have sustained as much criticism as Study 329, a placebo controlled, randomized trial of paroxetine and imipramine carried out by SmithKline Beecham (which became GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2000). In 2002, a US Food and Drug Administration officer who formally reviewed the trial reported that “on balance, this trial should be considered as a failed trial, in that neither active treatment group showed superiority over placebo by a statistically significant margin.”4 Yet this same year, according to the New York State Attorney General’s office, which sued GSK, over two million prescriptions were written for children and adolescents in the United States, all off-label, after a marketing campaign that characterized Study 329 as demonstrating “REMARKABLE Efficacy and Safety.”
Got a reading comprehension problem folks?
The drugs don’t work in teens and children; neither showed that it was superior to a sugar pill in terms of being effective. Worse, they massively increased the risk of suicidal ideation - by anywhere from 2.5 to more than five times depending on the specific drug in question. Finally, the government (FDA) knew all of this in 2002.
Why would you allow a doctor (of any sort) to prescribe a drug to someone that we know, scientifically, does not work in that person’s age group?
But what we also know is not just that they don’t work and raise the risk of self-harm — they also potentiate violent criminal behavior in a small percentage of children, adolescents and those under the age of 25 who take them.
In fact these drugs as a class basically double the risk of violent criminal conviction in that age group.
>
Yet, I just had a few on FR kneeling-n-head-bobbing for the FDA as the ‘great savior’ of human life\health.
If it wasn’t ‘approved’ it’d never be on the market. So, while you’re dying, grasping at straws, tough-luck. But, they’ll OK these kind of mind-altering drugs\placebos.
Follow the $$, as the saying goes. If only We were Free Men, in charge of our own bodies/destinies/outcomes.
>
1) Stop overprescribing drugs
2) Arm security personnel in schools
3) Get parents to be parents and not have government schools be parents
>
We *should* be acknowledging that psychology/etc. are pseudo-sciences. We don’t have the science to say one thing or another vs. the brain (chemistry).
That too means there are SOME people whom should NOT be in the general public, forever\for ANY reason. Least not until its (better) understood.
As for #2: Don’t need to add any armed security; just get GOVT out of the way of people wishing to utilize their inalienable Rights
#3 won’t happen if/until they pay the bill themselves. Kill property taxes, DoEd & unions. Make mom/dad/etc. pay for 1/2 yr (??) directly. Allow ONE warning, then expel w/o refund. Watch how ‘involved’ parents become
Yes, Coach should have been armed! Or, all that is needed is a smoke bomb in the hands of qualified students, teachers, custodians sufficient to disable a shooter. Could certainly have saved lives.
A crazed killer will get his hands on a weapon. He doesn’t have to do it legally! Naive we are to think it only takes a gun.
Yes, Coach should have been armed! Or, all that is needed is a smoke bomb in the hands of qualified students, teachers, custodians sufficient to disable a shooter. Could certainly have saved lives.
A crazed killer will get his hands on a weapon. He doesn’t have to do it legally! Naive we are to think it only takes a gun.
“Seriously, he thinks it is a rational decision to plan and execute multiple murders? “
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Yup - and apparently this guy is prominent enough for somebody to care about asking him to opine. Oy.
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