Posted on 07/27/2012 1:06:39 PM PDT by Zakeet
Psychiatrists are medical doctors, who know a good deal of science, which was my original point.
I also wonder how the profession ever carved out for itself the concept that there are people that ONLY psychiatrists can help??
Not sure where you're going there?
So, she’d have to notify police IF he named specific people, but he could not have done that. Dark theater, shooting randomly. So that kind of threat probably does not warrant notifying police. WHY? There is the question.
So, she’d have to notify police IF he named specific people, but he could not have done that. Dark theater, shooting randomly. So that kind of threat probably does not warrant notifying police. WHY? There is the question.
p.s. Yes it is a state administered school. I would suppose that Colorado is broke like every other blue or purple state but the university system, to my knowledge (and in my very limited experience there), has always spent a lot and attracted a lot of expensive “talent,” faculty-wise.
Before posting to you the first time I scrolled down the Denver campus payroll schedule. I couldn’t pick out her job in particular but did notice that whenever a medical degree was involved the cash register started ringing.
It does warrant a call. The rule is, "harm to self, or to others". Others is general and doesn't require names, or details on the particulars of how, where, or when.
I’ve been thinking... (sorry)
This shooter either went batty,or
He’s so smart that he did this to expose something in the system, something he had learned. (yeah,but why kill people to do this?)Maybe he’s trying to prove something.
ok
guy went batty.
Good point and yet a friend’s husband bought a gun the day he got out and killed himself....It takes too long to get those names on the list....Too much red tape.
Psychiatrists have been drugging people to give them an apparency of normalcy, and then inflicting homicidal maniacs on the rest of us for decades now.
The old, "He didn't take his meds" alibi is wearing thin.
I say, make them criminally liable.
Have you read some of the side effects of those meds? YIKES!
Don’t know which is better to be on them or not.
I think the meds are given to the patient as an alternative to not being locked up.
It's a gruesome decision to take away someone's freedom. But the world would be better off if Mr. Holmes had been sedated and hugging a rock in some nice, quiet, supervised place...
Half our combat veterans could benefit from therapy and medicine. That's simply not what the Marines do (click here).
We're encouraging them to get help. Your proposal will clam them up tighter than a drum--and THAT--not medical help--leads to dangerous situations.
I am retired military who volunteers and helps combat veterans get help for PTSD and other issues. The biggest fear active duty types have in getting help is it will kill their career because they'll lose their combat status. THAT IS NOT TRUE!!!
That’s one heck of a job you have there! You are a brave soul.
We've been warned in this thread not to jump on the doc. We've been reminded that mental illness can be difficult to treat. But in most cases, meds do nothing except create problems when they are skipped. The treatment of mental illness requires professional counseling for thought process modification. The meds are mostly a tool to get over some immediate hurdles and get to the counseling. Meds without a plan (e.g. counseling) do nothing.
The facts in this case are not all known, but we do know that the doc failed. We also know that the perp had considerable higher level education and that failed to teach any morals. It is possible the parents knew their kid was a time bomb and sent him to college rather than deal with it. it is also possible that nobody could have done anything, not the parents, not the school as a whole, not the doc. But how likely is that really?
I agree but the world would also be better off if someone (parents, doc, teachers, etc) steps up to the plate and follows through on complete treatment. Too many people would rather just look the other way.
Three patients killed themselves while under my care.
Two killed themselves while on security watches in psych wards through staff negligence - in both cases the hospitals settled with the surviving families out of court, and since I had thoroughly evaluated and documented the risk and put appropriate orders for suicide watches in place, I was not sued. Both hung themselves in rooms designed to prevent hangings, BTW, and with staff just a few yards away [interesting stories, BTW, but too long to document here].
The third one was an outpatient woman who gave no hint or warning that anything was wrong, and who - despite having a highly-involved case manager and a community outreach team that followed her closely - quietly overdosed at home one night with a highly lethal combination of meds she had researched on the internet.
I had one alcoholic man kill himself shortly after discharge from my care in a hospital where he had been admitted for trying to hang himself while highly intoxicated. He had drank heavily for years, but had no history of depression or previous attempts to kill himself. Once sobered up, he was no longer depressed, nor admitting to any further thoughts of suicide. He complied with setting up an outpatient plan to stay sober, and to get follow up with a counsellor. He was, by the third day, insisting that he be released so he wouldn’t miss more time from work. His insurance, also, would no longer fund him to be in the hospital, and this was in a state in which I had no legal grounds on which to detain him or have him committed. I understood that he presented some risk of another suicide attempt if released at that point, but I had no choice but to document the risk (strictly an exercise in CYA) and allow him to leave. He drank a 5th of vodka and hung himself successfully two days later. The hospital made a compassionate settlement with his mother, which is often done in such cases even though there is almost no chance that any malpractice case would have ever made it to court.
An elderly man with dementia was under my care on a 10th floor psych unit during my residency training. He had been admitted for increasing violence to his wife. I signed the case off to a fellow resident when the rotation was done. The patient managed to disassemble the safety window of his room and jumped to his death a few days later under the other fellow’s care.
One other patient who died under my watch at a mental health clinic was a middle-aged man who presented with psychosis and a severe personality disorder in a setting of heavy stimulant addiction. He had tried suicide many times before, including jumping from a great height one time, which left him hobbled. He lived on the street through petty crimes, and had many enemies. He had recently fractured his leg escaping from a third story psych unit, and had a full leg cast. He was found face down floating in the harbor one day, and it was never determined whether it was suicide, homicide or accident.
I was the last shrink of record - theoretically still the treating physician - for a paranoid schizophrenic patient at a community mental health clinic who, after stopping his meds and getting heavily into meth for a half year, murdered a crisis worker who was sent out to detain him where he lived with and was terrorizing his mother and younger brother. The crisis worker was quite seasoned, and a Green Beret in Vietnam, and knew this patient from back when the patient was on his meds and not using meth, so he foolishly bypassed the usual protocol of having police accompaniment when he went to get the patient. The patient calmly complied, asked if he could go to his room to pack a few cloths for the hospital stay, and then came back out calmly, and began walking towards the front door with the crisis worker, whom he then viciously and mortally stabbed many dozens of times. People who work in mental health, BTW, have much higher rates of job-related morbidity and mortality than LEOs or the military.
Such things happen even to the most careful psychiatrists. I have called the Secret Service on a number of occasions that might have become high-profile cases, and the police even more often. I am very careful, but I also consider myself very lucky so far. Until I know a great deal more about the Aurora case and the patient and psychiatrist involved I would never dream of passing judgement on the doctor, and, knowing how difficult these judgement calls are, I would probably not do so even if I knew much more.
Soldiers...working class conservative men in general: stay away from psychs. It’s stylish for the wealthy socialists to see psychs., but they can afford to pay to cover their tracks—even having courts bury their criminal histories.
Besides, psychs. don’t cure anyone. Keep yourselves healthy by staying physically active, and avoid thinking too much about anything other than technical tasks and personal strategies (getting things done, avoiding troubles, etc.).
The political/regulator class is about to outlaw firearms for everyone who doesn’t play their “progressive” social games.
I too have known a few who checked themselves out, and not all were due to mental illness.
TBS, it's really amazing how much mental illness is out there. It's a bit disturbing considering there are more lurking around us and on the streets, than institutionalized.
Those that go off at the degree Holmes did, is really off the charts, with no reported prior incidents, apparently no criminal record etc. Anger compounded by mental illness, are a really bad mix.
Thanks & take care.
Uh....is it a full moon for Freepers or?
” but we do know that the doc failed.”
Uh, no...”we” don’t. Did someone here think that psychiatrists can cure and control schizophrenia?
Anyone here aware of the big sea change in the mental health field about 20 years ago where Health Services people working with gov emptied the mental hospitals, supposedly for humanitarian reasons? Know how hard it is to keep a suicidal person in a psych ward against their will? I used to work for a clinical psychologist. One of her clients had her phone number written across her arm - during close, persistent questioning, she admitted that she planned to kill herself and the phone number would help police notify her family. (Note: No one made her go to that psychologist, what if she had acted calm that day and wore long sleeves? Human behavior is not easily controlled by outside observers, right?) So the psychologist was glad to get her admitted to the psych ward at the hospital...which promptly released her 24 hours later. It is HARD to get someone in and even harder to keep them in.
If this doc in the OP was being exposed for unethical or concealed info required to be passed to police - I’d expect the kind of accusations seen on this thread. However, what triggered all the sneering accusations was the mere fact that he had seen a psychiatrist. Now, I don’t know if he did it as a cover story or not - let’s find out. But this guy was supposedly planning for awhile - just how likely is it that he went to all that trouble and then went and told a psych all about it? He still wanted to carry out the plan, right? He’d probably check to find out what the Doc would have to relay right?
At the psychologist’s office where I used to work, just leaving the front door open for sunshine and air attracted disturbed people to come into the office and start asking the psychologist VERY detailed questions about what she’d have to report IF it were reported to her. Seems like the monster who calls himself the Joker would have done SOME search on that right?
I am curious, though. Just what is the master plan for people who become schizophrenic? If anyone who tries to help them is guilty of anything they do, then no one will help them. It’s a mental illness, people. Don’t we want them treated? There’s no cure - do you want these people ‘put down’ like dogs? I think having Schizophrenia must be bad enough without being denied any possible treatment or perhaps being automatically incarcerated. But hey if there was a way to know who was dangerous, I’d be in favor of incarceration. But there isn’t a reliable way to predict behavior and states like mine have largely abandoned the idea of hospitalization for people with severe mental illness much to the dismay of families, communities, and even some of these patients. I don’t know all the answers but I am just taken aback by the assumptions made by many on this thread.
After reading some of these posts, I don’t know why some of you didn’t suggest burning anyone with severe mental illness and perhaps any doc who tries to help them.
I suspect he was setting up an insanity defense but I’ll wait to find out more. Some professional commentators (talking heads) have said they think he’s genuinely ill. I dunno, but I will wait to find out who did what before vilifying the mentally ill (I think they have enough problems) or those who try to treat them.
Of course they can't cure, but can control to a certain extent with big drug. Most rely on big pharma like most medical doctors do nowadays. They have job security considering ya see folks all over town arguing with telephone poles, wanting to beat down old ladies for no reason.
Sad thing is, schizo’s are among those who need medication the most but are least likely to take medication because they believe (paranoia) that people are trying to kill them with poison. One lady lined her stove top burners with foil to keep ‘them’ (those out to kill her) from listening in. She’d be fine if she took meds (her symptoms were well controlled in the hospital) but when she gets out of the hospital, she stops taking them. Sometimes it’s well meaning friends and family who convince schizo’s to stop taking the medicine!
Same with my friend - she wouldn’t take medication and feared the reason she was prescribed them was evil. Put these people in confinement and give them meds and some are ‘normal’ enough to release. They exit the hospital praising their return to health and vowing never to go off their meds..where they stop taking their meds because of latent fear or the desire to be ‘normal’ along with the belief they don’t need the drugs. It’s sad really - contrast the woman wrapping her electric burners with foil to the way she acts when medicated (i.e., quite normal) and yet the sufferers of that disease frequently stop meds because they feel normal when they take it and don’t like the side effects. (who likes side effects from drugs)
I know big pharma is a problem. I know our country over presecribes, but I’ve sat across a kitchen table from people who need medication and I never felt like ridiculing them or hating their physicians.
Incarcerating the severely ill probably netted some people who didn’t belong in there and that is a crime (I wouldn’t like it). But emptying the mental hospitals for ‘humanitarian’ reasons often transferred the severely mentally ill to the streets and later, to prisons.
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