Free Republic

After a week of polls showing the American people reacted to the Umpqua Community College (UCC) shooting with stronger support for gun rights than gun control, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released October 26 shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans also believe Congressional focus ought to be on fixing our mental health system instead of talking about more gun laws.

Brain imaging reveals how neural responses to different types of music really affect the emotion regulation of individuals. The study proves that especially men who process negative feelings with music react negatively to aggressive and sad music.

Time Capsule Found at 1950s Mental Hospital, Contains Film With Message For the Future Construction crews in Indiana were shocked to discover a time capsule from 1958 at a former mental hospital. The most exciting part? It contains a film with a message to the future–a message about electroshock therapy and psychiatric drugs. Frustratingly, much of the audio from the film has been lost. What were they saying in the damaged parts of the film? Was it a warning? Did they know something that we don’t?!?! “When the psychiatrists of the future open this time capsule, only they will be...

A senior diplomat with a European Union government allegedly told former NSA intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer and Daily Beast columnist John Schindler that his/her government believes President Barack Obama is ‘quite mentally unwell’ and inquired about impeachment–an apparent suggestion that his/her government believes Obama is unfit to serve as president and should be removed from office–according to a tweet by Schindler posted Monday. “Had a senior EU diplomat, old friend, ask me today, “How does your impeachment work? My government believes Obama is quite mentally unwell.””

The public personas who pass as conservatives are not system builders. We know them as conservatives not by their well thought-out, philosophically consistent thinking, but because they’ve staked out certain positions on The Issues, over time. “Gun violence” is the term used by conservatives with this messy habit of mind. A careful thinker would allude to “goon violence.” “For guns are not the root cause of man’s evil actions. Neither are the multiplying categories of manufactured illness in the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Evil is integral to the human condition, always has been, always will be....

From the BBC story on Oregon shooter... Oregon college gunman Chris Harper Mercer has been described as an "uncommunicative" loner who was ejected from the US Army after less than a month of service.

Donald Trump’s gun platform is out and it’s a mixed bag. From a strategy standpoint it seems odd to release it late on a Friday afternoon. That’s traditionally in the “Friday News Dump” category, but perhaps Trump was hoping to change the topic from his skipping of the Heritage Action Forum in South Carolina and the “we’re going to be looking at that” comment over Muslim camps from Thursday. Where Trump’s gun platform is good, it’s pretty good. But where it’s bad, it’s pretty bad. From a conceal carry standpoint, Trump is spot on. NATIONAL RIGHT TO CARRY. The right...

Despite the undeniable mental issues affecting black, gay Democrat Vester Flanagan, who was not sporting a Confederate flag before he shot and killed his two former KDBJ coworkers, reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward, the fact is that he passed a background check and legally possessed the Glock handgun he used. As much as we all want to prevent the mentally unstable from possessing firearms, the fact is that there was nothing in Flanagan’s background to prevent him from legally owning a firearm.

Mental illness is "a massive problem," GOP front-runner Donald Trump said Thursday, one day after two Virginia journalists were brutally murdered by a disgruntled former co-worker, but he does not believe there is any need to get rid of guns. "If you try to do it, the bad guys would have them," Trump told CNN's "New Day" host Chris Cuomo, saying that instead, the focus should be on solving the mental health issues. Former reporter Bryce Williams, whose legal name is Vester Flanagan, killed himself Wednesday afternoon after shooting to death TV reporter Alison Parker and her cameraman, Adam Ward,...

Ann Coulter is going to be on the Megyn File....so I tuned in. The murdered girl's father and boy friend made a joint appearance....they really seemed to be almost comfortable. Now look, we all mourn differently...yet the two seemed so at ease on the subject. Maybe the shock of what happened has them in a daze. But at the end of the interview, the father vowed to "shame" people into accepting gun control....but he DID speak about guns being kept out of the hands of mentally ill people. I thought the law already did that. Now Megyn has a former...

The rich array of microbiota in our intestines can tell us more than you might think.Eighteen vials were rocking back and forth on a squeaky mechanical device the shape of a butcher scale, and Mark Lyte was beside himself with excitement. ‘‘We actually got some fresh yesterday — freshly frozen,’’ Lyte said to a lab technician. Each vial contained a tiny nugget of monkey feces that were collected at the Harlow primate lab near Madison, Wis., the day before and shipped to Lyte’s lab on the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in Abilene, Tex. Lyte’s interest was not...

This is a disturbing, or perhaps better described as heartbreaking story which popped up this weekend and set off all sorts of alarm bells for me. NBC News is featuring the tale of a child named Lia (until recently, Liam) who is being fully encouraged and supported by his parents on a “journey” to become a girl. The child is ten years old and began this “trip” at the age of five. We moved from Indiana to New Hampshire when Lia was 4. She was still wearing boys’ clothes and playing with trucks through preschool, but she really wanted girl...

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery. For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways. A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they...

A legal team investigating the Obama administration’s order that certain American military veterans deemed “incompetent” give up their weapons says the problem is worse than expected. People who live with veterans now are being ordered not to possess a gun, and some veterans are told they can “buy back” their Second Amendment rights by giving up their veterans’ benefits. “This is simply unbelievable, On the one hand the [Veterans Administration] and the FBI have found veterans to be mentally ill and too dangerous to be allowed to own firearms, while on the other hand allowing these allegedly dangerous people to...

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — Coming into close contact with cats can spread a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) – also dubbed the “cat poop parasite” – which are linked to schizophrenia and other mental disorders that affect humans. The cat-carried parasite is the most common in developed countries and can infect any warm-blooded species, according to the Schizophrenia Bulletin. Although most humans don’t suffer any symptoms from the widespread parasite, it can cause the illness T. gondii, which is linked to weeks of flu-like symptoms, blindness and even death, CBS News reports. Two new studies have now linked the...

Anxiety has now surpassed depression as the most common mental-health diagnosis among college students, according to The New York Times. A recent study of more than 100,000 students by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State found that more than half of students seeking help at campus clinics report anxiety as an issue, and nearly one in six college students has been treated for anxiety in the past year, according to the American College Health Association. Mental-health counselors on campus attribute numerous factors to this rise, namely academic pressure from a much earlier age and compulsive social-media interaction....

A scene stands out to me from my graduate program in social work. A lesbian professor visited our class to tell about her experience of being same-sex attracted in a small, Midwestern, devoutly Protestant town in the latter twentieth century. As expected, her story was heart-rending. Afterward, during the Q&A, a black woman in her 40s raised her hand. “I’ve noticed that the high school girls today go through phases where they say that they like girls, and then change their minds and say they like boys again, like it just goes back and forth. And I don’t know if...

Responding to people with mental health issues is the number one drain on police resources in Berkeley, a police officer who specializes in the topic said this week. Nationally, 10% of police calls are for people having a mental health crisis, according to Berkeley Police Officer Jeff Shannon. In Berkeley, that number is 35% or more. Over the past five years, police have seen a 43% increase in calls for “5150s,” or people who are a danger to themselves or others, he said. “Not only in Berkeley, but across the nation, we are experiencing a mental health crisis,” Shannon told...

Veterans, Dependents Account for Disproportionate Share of ‘Mental Defective’ Category on Gun Ban List Apr 15, 2015 WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is requesting an explanation for why nearly all of the names on the Justice Department’s gun ban list in the “mental defective” category belong to veterans or their dependents. “It’s disturbing to think that the men and women who dedicated themselves to defending our freedom and values face undue threats to their fundamental Second Amendment rights from the very agency established to serve them. A veteran or dependent shouldn’t lose...

Andreas Lubitz: Germanwings flight's last minutes revealed in chilling black box transcript 29 March 2015 By Alex Wellman Patrick Sondheimer is heard screaming to his co-pilot "Open the goddam door" as passengers scream in the background The dramatic last moments of the doomed Germanwings flight have been revealed in a chilling transcript of the black box recording that shows the captain screaming at Andreas Lubitz “Open the goddam door”. Patrick Sondheimer, pilot of the traffic plane, is heard frantically pleading with the killer to let him into the cockpit, just seconds before crashing into the Alps. BEA Germanwings CVR Evidence:...