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FSU shooter's friends tried to get help for him months before the shooting
St Petersburg Times ^ | November 22, 2014 | Michael LaForgia

Posted on 11/22/2014 1:55:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife

"...In interviews with the Tampa Bay Times on Friday, May's friends described their frustrations over the past three months with the area's mental health care system, one that couldn't save May despite desperate pleas from loved ones who watched him dissolve into paranoia before their eyes......

Six months into his job as a prosecutor in the Dona Ana County District Attorney's Office in New Mexico, May couldn't concentrate.

The 31-year-old had become so distractible, he told his friends, that he had decided to see a psychologist. He emerged from the appointment with prescriptions for an antidepressant and an attention deficit drug, which he took faithfully until, about three weeks later, he suffered a panic attack at work.

When another attack followed a week later, he returned to his psychologist and had his medication adjusted, said Nixon, a doctor. May was on a combination of Wellbutrin and Vyvanse — drugs that, in rare cases, can cause paranoia.

By late summer, May had begun acting strangely, his friends said. He was worried his neighbors were watching him. He heard them talking about him through the walls of his apartment.

It was alarming to his friends, but it was nothing, they said, compared to what was still to come.

•••

May told his friends that the officers at the Las Cruces Police Department laughed at him when he showed up on the morning of Sept. 7 to make a bizarre report: Someone was watching him through a camera hidden in his apartment. And he was hearing voices coming in through the walls as he bathed.

May left the Police Department that day and went to a shooting range, where friends had gathered for a bachelor party......

(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: banglist; guns; medication; mentalhealth; myronmay; noreasontoinfringe; psychiatry
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But progressives will place all the focus on guns.
1 posted on 11/22/2014 1:55:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Of course they will. People have rights especially to be crazy. Weren’t democrats the ones that emptyed out the asylums back in the sixties/seventies, because people have rights and there were not enough school shootings at the time.

That broad brush will need a wee bit-o-research but I believe that’s the way it all began. I read an article recently and don’t have the reference that there was gun law back in revolutionary times that supposedley kept guns out of the hands of the truly crazy. Who was making the determination of crazy, is another question I don’t think the article answered.


2 posted on 11/22/2014 2:16:58 AM PST by wita
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To: wita

The Left never lets a crisis go to waste:

“....Homeschooling seems to be an easy target for critics of school choice. It always has been. With homeschoolers being by definition outside the education establishment, some people attach a stigma to their choice, suggesting homeschooled children and their families must be somewhat weird. Recent claims about Adam Lanza, perpetrator of the Newtown massacre, are just the latest and perhaps most egregious example.

Calls for more regulation and additional controls over homeschooling curriculum and methods resurface time and again. Thus the recent attacks on homeschoolers are no surprise. But familiarity doesn’t make those attacks any less elitist and misguided.

Opponents of choice criticize homeschooling as failing to socialize children properly. In October in Connecticut, the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission recommended stricter regulation of homeschooled children with emotional and behavioral problems. Their reason: Adam Lanza had been homeschooled. The committee provided no evidence to support its alleged connection between homeschooling and mass murder.

The accusation is obviously ludicrous. One homeschooled individual does not a generalization make; the number of such mass killers educated in public schools refutes this inane assertion.

If Lanza’s education is to blame and therefore the key to ending such tragedies, public schools are the more likely culprit. Lanza graduated with a public school diploma. Although he was taught at home during high school, he attended public schools for most of his education, and he was involved in public school activities while studying at home, according to Dewitt Black, senior counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association. Lanza was homeschooled as a last resort upon recommendation of his psychologist. The boy’s emotional and behavioral problems led to the decision that he be removed from traditional public and then later Catholic school.

“We think it’s totally unfounded” to blame homeschooling for Lanza’s problems, Black said, noting Lanza could hardly be considered the norm for homeschooled students. “There’s simply no basis that there is a connection between homeschooling and violence in public schools. It’s a misplaced effort to target homeschoolers when there is just no basis to do that.”........

The hysterical criticism in Connecticut is more than “some animosity.” It is an attempt to capitalize on a tragedy in hopes of disguising a shameful power grab......”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/11/attacking_homeschooling_is_attacking_choice_.html


3 posted on 11/22/2014 2:35:41 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

OMG!!!! This guy was the poster child for being committed into a mental hospital....oh wait....I don’t think we have any mental hospitals left.....because of political correctness!


4 posted on 11/22/2014 2:43:47 AM PST by Ann Archy (ABORTION....... The HUMAN Sacrifice to the god of Convenience.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Gee, Homeschool gets it from both barrels. Anti-gunners on the one side and Common Core devotees on the other.

They need to get used to it, because assessment is written to the common core standards, and so are most of the textbooks. The fight for freedom goes on. You can bet your boots that college entrance testing is also going to reflect Common Core. We are extremely lucky we still have what can be called Homeschool, and the encouraging statistics that indicate a far better start in life than the average public school education.


5 posted on 11/22/2014 2:53:38 AM PST by wita
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To: Ann Archy

And all those drugs and counseling sessions (like all these shooters seem to have in common) stopped him (Seems to have exacerbated? Caused?) before the shooting.

The timeline of his actions and his friends efforts to get him help is quite dramatic.


6 posted on 11/22/2014 3:00:27 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Ann Archy

He did check himself into a mental hospital. Tragically, no one kept him there.


7 posted on 11/22/2014 3:35:52 AM PST by skr (May God confound the enemy)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Dramatic, yes, and infuriating. The guys saw shrinks. He took his meds. He checked himself into a mental hospital, which promptly released him. He tried to surrender to the police, who wouldn't take him. He friends were calling the docs and the police begging for intervention. This goes beyond, "oops, one slipped through the cracks." The system systematically, repeatedly REFUSED to respond to someone who was seeking help.

I'm old enough to remember the early battles for de-institutionalization and the subsequent skirmishes over attempts to detain and hospitalize obviously mentally ill people. The legal system, as it seems to do with some regularity, drove an extremist position to the limit: a person can't be involuntarily detained unless he is deemed to be an imminent threat to himself or others ... and the law piles presumptions pretty high against any law enforcement or mental health professional who doesn't err on the side of release. I think what we see in this case is the result of decades of legal extremism.

This is a dramatic case, not because a psychotic snapped and killed people -- that happens with considerable frequency -- but because the guy was a lawyer, and had gone to such extremes to get help. I live in the city. I pass with some regularity people who are probably just as sick. They are wild eyed, disheveled, wandering the streets, and ranting to themselves as passers-by give them a wide berth. Why are they still on the streets?

A rhetorical question. I know the answer.

I also recognize the danger of reversing the presumptions. If we gave the feds power to lock such people up, Obama would probably leave the psychotics roaming the streets, because they can be loaded into vans on election day and be voted democrat. But he'd probably find ways to subject political opponents to mental health harassment.

8 posted on 11/22/2014 3:48:23 AM PST by sphinx
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To: Ann Archy

And all those drugs and counseling sessions (like all these shooters seem to have in common) stopped him.....

Correction: DIDN’T stop him...


9 posted on 11/22/2014 3:56:15 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I had a friend who went from sane to crazy in a period of about a month. We were teenagers. He didn’t have a perfect life, but he was not insane. Then he was. His mother tried to get him help from several NYC hospitals, etc. Nobody would help her. He hanged himself.

So yeah, things need to change.


10 posted on 11/22/2014 4:00:13 AM PST by jocon307
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To: sphinx

It’s the age of post-modernism.

Who are we to judge their lives (unless of course it’s a progressive that uses their dire straights to criticize some conservative policy or right that would “infringe” on the rights of the mentally ill)? To Progressives this is another identity, grievance group to cultivate, exploit and wield like a club.


11 posted on 11/22/2014 4:00:34 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: wita

“Weren’t democrats the ones that emptyed out the asylums back in the sixties/seventies, because people have rights and there were not enough school shootings at the time.”

If I recall, it was an ALCU case that ended the first year of Reagan’s presidency. The asylums emptied out. They gave patients a bottle of pills, which were doubtlessly thrown away. The new homeless crazies hit the street along with the trailing edge of the free love hippies. Suddenly, you couldn’t go into a bathroom on the ground floor of any public building. The downtown libraries became the new homeless shelters. People were mugged and raped behind shelves. I haven’t been in a public library since then.


12 posted on 11/22/2014 4:00:40 AM PST by Gen.Blather
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To: Gen.Blather

There were no school shootings before the 1980’s. Every school shooter has been on these prescribed drugs that alter ones mind over time.


13 posted on 11/22/2014 4:09:34 AM PST by bigtoona
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I was on welbutrin for a time. I found that it was causing me to verbalize my self-talk.


14 posted on 11/22/2014 4:24:29 AM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
For 40 years or so, the police, docs, and shrinks have all been on notice that to hold a mentally ill person against his will is an invitation to a lawsuit. These professions have therefore developed procedures, protocols, and reflexes to protect themselves.

In this case, the guy checked himself into a mental hospital which released him in four days. I imagine what happened is that the docs got him stabilized and calmed down, and the rational lawyer took over and said "Thanks, but I think I can handle it from here." Unless he was waving a weapon, threatening suicide, and raving about killing someone, they wouldn't have grounds to keep him. Similarly, when his friends called the doctors and the police on his behalf, the first question was probably, is he threatening someone? When the answer was no, the response was that they couldn't do anything.

The result of this legal dispensation is that brushing off the mentally ill, over time, became an ingrained reflex. This happens every day in police stations and hospitals in major cities around the country.

15 posted on 11/22/2014 4:28:45 AM PST by sphinx
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I think the sole purpose of counseling is to convince people they can live a normal life as a crazy person. That’s liberal logic for ya. They expect crazy or evil people to somehow be reasonable. Then, unicorns.


16 posted on 11/22/2014 4:30:30 AM PST by MaggiesPitchfork
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To: Jonty30

More on the drugs he was prescribed and the inaction of one who prescribed one:

“...Responsible for caring for May’s Great Dane, Lil’ Bit, during one of May’s sudden absences, his friends let themselves into his apartment and found a new pill bottle among his prescriptions, they said.

It was Seroquel, a powerful antipsychotic. The prescriber worked at Mesilla Valley Hospital. Together the friends got on the phone with her and laid out the whole story, describing the voices, the cameras, May’s fear of persecution, his desire for a gun, his wish to have revenge.”

“She listened and then she ended it by saying, you know, ‘I can’t really do anything,’ “ Nixon said. “ ‘He needs to come back on his own.’ “...........


17 posted on 11/22/2014 4:32:43 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

When was that FSU law professor assassinated? I don’t think this guy did that. But that murder popped into my head as soon as I heard about this shooting spree.


18 posted on 11/22/2014 4:47:37 AM PST by petitfour
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The prosecutor and the crazy mass-shooter were the SAME PERSON...?

WOW.


19 posted on 11/22/2014 4:53:01 AM PST by gaijin
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

the ADHD drugs are poison, I have seen more than one life utterly destroyed by ADHD meds.


20 posted on 11/22/2014 5:12:26 AM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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