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Hysterical over the Crazy

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As one of the mentally interesting I know that I am the lowest of the low in this society, few people wish to read the opinion of a crazy tard on a passel of pscyhotropic medications. After all these words might leap out and hurt you. I'll do my best not to rave about the overlords of the Zenrox galaxies with their mind control devices in Chicklets.


On 24 March 2008 the Federal Education Department proposed new regulations to clarify when universities may release confidential student information and, after the Virginia Tech shootings last year, reassure college officials that they will not face penalties for reporting fears about mentally interesting students. Because the students seemed to have too much privacy under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to not intercede with young people who appear troubled we get more regulations. Go figure.

You want to know what could have prevented Seung-Hui Cho from going on his rampage at Virginia Tech? Something really simple. The continuation of his Individual Education Program (IEP) from his high school. With the IEP he had in high school he did just great! Unfortunately that information can't be transfered from high school to college. Cho was told he could see his high school counselor, but Cho probably could have used a push. The only changes in the laws that are needed is for colleges to be able to ask the high schools how things worked. No farther back.

Additionally colleges have begun looking for students who exhibit "red flag" behavior in order to get the kids into counseling, or to kick them out of school if need be. Who is looking for these "red flags?" Other students with innocuous sounding names like "Students of Concern."

I'm all for stopping trouble before it starts. Stalking is bad. Yelling in class all the time is bad. Frequently talking about suicide is bad.

But having a bunch of freshmen reporting what they think is aberrant behavior to a group of deans is just as bad. Why?

1) How is a short orientation going to really inform them about anything but the obvious? If not, then that's all they should stick with.

2) What is it going to do to prevent a "Student of Concern" from marking someone as crazy as an act of revenge?

3) With these "Students of Concern" around, that just leads to more stigma, and stigma kills. Adding another layer of stigma makes it more difficult to get help.


A study published in the December 2001 issue of Psychiatric Services found that 39% of people who managed to get a diagnosis won't take their medication because of a perceived stigma of either mental illness or the stigma of taking medication.


Per the study published in the September 2003 issue of Current Psychiatry the average lifetime change of someone with bipolar disorder committing suicide is 15.50%, major depression is 14.6% and epilepsy is 13%. Stigma kills.

That's just one of the dangers to us. What is our real danger to you? I've gone through numerous studies that have been done and most agree that the lowest of the lowest of the low, the schizophrenic, are the most likely of the crazy to do something violent. With "something violent" ranging from hitting a family member to the stereotypical behavior that has brought up these bizarre proposals. Now of those with schizophrenia, only one third, at the most, will be in the psychotic state necessary to get violent.
And those will be there sometimes only once in their lives. The rest of the time they are just too withdrawn to do much of anything.

Now, have I got you all afraid of the so-called "paranoid schizophrenic?" Good, because it turns out that according to studies published for the Public Health Agency of Canada in 1996, for a 1998 MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, the February 2008 issue of Psychiatric Services and the May 2006 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry all come to the same conclusion: the majority of the schizophrenic in a psychotic state are harmless! Only 15-20% get violent in any way and 3-5% can get to a level of violence that can become lethal to others.

Oh no! 3-5% of 0.3% of the general population is walking around out there and they can go crazy violent on us! Let's stigmatize everyone with any form of brain cooties!

But wait, there is more to it. Why do those 3-5% go lethal? Because they were bullied in school. They were physically, emotionally and verbally abused by parents. They had really messed up childhoods.

And those who aren't crazy who are bullied and abused? They get violent. They get lethal the similar upbringings go lethal. They grow up to become serial killers or family annihilators. You don't have to be crazy to get violent, you just have to be targetted by bullies!

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I'm the founder, owner, and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of Crazymeds. Marketing researchers working for the pharmaceutical industry called me the first "Citizen Medical Expert." I liked the name so much I've been using it ever since. You'll (more...)
 

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