A Self-Inflicted Homicide
This is not a subject that I like to write about, its sensitive, morbid, can bring to surface very hurtful memories and can be offensive. There is so much pain and tragedy that surrounds, suicide and mass homicide, it seems to put a morbid blanket over public conversation on details that could be very helpful in possibly finding commonalities between many of these cases. One commonality that suicide and mass homicide both share is both attempt mass harm, (one is inward, the other is outward).
On April 18th, the front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, had both the details of the current school shooting (at Florida State University), and an update on the Apalachee school shooting. I have personally started a file of extraordinarily crazy events ranging from individual suicides, to mass shootings at schools, local murder suicide, Kentucky Sheriff killing a district judge in his courthouse office, and more recently a Georgia judge that took his own life while sitting on the bench in his courtroom.
Locally we have gotten hit as families, friends and communities with many suicides over the past year. There were several that were friends of mine in the past year that left us in a sudden and tragic way. One was a member here at the gym and had just come in and renewed his membership the day before, and we had a very good and lengthy conversation, and he told me that he missed the month before because of a knee injury. The next day this husband, father, had a loving mother, and many friends who loved him made the decision to end his life. My first cousin, Roland Kauffman, had a loving family, wife, and two daughters but made a final and fatal decision to end his life during his lunch break from work. This has been quite a few years ago, but the pain of his loss continues in the lives of the ones left behind. This is mirroring what is happening in other areas as well and the fact that legislative bodies from local, state and federal are not actively bringing up this subject and the causation of this epidemic is concerning.
Questions the public and legislators should be asking: what might they have in common with each other? It seems technology and data crunching are in place to red flag anything else that connects incriminating evidence to the source. If this data is being collected by our consumer protection agencies on violent death, why is there not more public awareness?
CDC and FDA: we have had suicides, and homicides that are psychopathic in nature, that has been growing in front of us in epidemic proportions, and it seems our consumer protection agencies should be uncovering what has changed to cause this spike in violent deaths over the past 20 years. However, these are the same agencies that should have detected (and sounded the alarm) on the death and destruction that mass prescriptions of opioids, (the pharmaceutical form of heroin) were causing, but they didn’t for years. Eventually, the pharmaceutical companies were sued by various states but quite oddly our consumer protection agencies (that should have seen this coming), were not called out for being blind as a bat, complicit or ignorant. They did however put out plenty of warnings during this time period against a food that is 1000’s of years old (raw milk, which is milk in its best form). They also maintained their firm stance against an herb (marijuana) that had been used as medicine for thousands of years with the earliest recording of medical use being 2700 BC). It was criminalized in 1942, removed from US Pharmacopeia by 1942, and has been considered a schedule one drug for the past 50 years in the same group as heroin. These are the types of results we get when corporations, lobbyist, and policy makers get too interwoven with each other and give birth to bad policy, (aka wolves left guarding henhouses).
Our rash of suicides and crazed homicides: we need to ask ourselves a question, “what has changed most over the past 20 years, when it comes to brain, chemistry and psychiatry?” The primary answer that comes to my mind is the mass distribution of psychotropic drugs. Until we as a public acknowledge what has changed over the past 20+ years (put it under a microscope) and connect these dots, we most likely will continue to have powder keg’s (occasionally ignite) amongst us, that will either do the most harm they can do inwardly (suicide) or outwardly (mass homicide).
Psychotropic drugs: a psychiatrist has to get 4 more years of training, than a medical doctor, but yet the drug industry has it set up to distribute psychotropic drugs through medical practitioners that are not licensed in psychiatry. How do regular practitioners know the details of psychiatric drugs, in comparison to a psychiatrist that qualify them for distribution of psychiatric drugs? Before starting someone on anti-depressants, do they make certain their patient has a clear understanding what could happen if they suddenly discontinue taking them, or if they mix alcohol or any other drugs with the psychotropic medication (when they themselves are not schooled in psychiatry)?
School shootings: what happens when a depressed child who is put on psychotropic medications, but during the adolescent/teen years, decides it is no longer necessary or mixes alcohol or other drugs with psychotropic drugs? Have the parents been warned about this, does the teenager who is now in control of what they consume or do not consume aware? It is easier to chalk it off as a deranged killer, but is it an otherwise good kid, who’s chemistry has gone haywire? One thing quite certain it is quite easy to see where the object of their rage is consistently at.
Good and bad behavioral decisions on a scale of 1–10: we have seen mental health prevail itself tragically through suicide, and even mass homicide, but there are many decisions an individual can make, that are not nearly as tragic, (none-the-less can be very tragic and costly to the individual and/or ones around them). Letting psychotropic drugs be distributed so easily throughout our population, seems to mirror the same blindness when the medical industry was allowed to flood our country with opioids. Is this happening once again but in the shape of psychotropic drugs?
Opinion: Peach and Crawford just went through a very intensive process with the UGA Carl Vincent Institute that helps counties and municipalities develop best practice for handling mental health crisis, mental health in the jail, judicial system, and stabilization and care in the community. However, if we do not quit putting the masses on psychotropic drugs, and side-stepping the responsibility of doing what it takes to keep individuals on psychotropic medication’s that have severe mental health difficulties, (that would have received an elevated level of care in state institutions), we are going to continue living in a powder keg society, where occasionally one gets lit.
