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Dog, you’ve obviously never had a family member with severe mental illness.

I have.

It’s not as easy or cut-and-dried as you would like it to be. The weird behavior isn’t static. It comes and goes. It escalates. If the individual is lucky, he has a family or support group who talks him into treatment, or he gets so obviously ill that they can get him committed. In the case of a kid, it builds from normalcy to insanity. Many times the symptoms do not show and grow until adolescence.

The parents of this young man knew him, and likely loved him, as their little boy. Who knows how worried they were as he retreated into his shell as a teenager, as stories from his high school indicate. Who knows what conversations they had with him, or even what mask he wore around them when they saw him on occasions after he left home?

From personal experience, I can tell you that a parent seeking treatment — medical or psychiatric — for a family member over 18 is almost impossible anymore due to privacy laws. I’ve dealt with doctors’ offices that won’t discuss errors on a college-age son’s medical bill with me when I’m the one to whom the bill is sent!

I’ve also been involved — more than once — in forcibly committing an obviously psychotic relative, and it is very hard even for a family as informed and determined as we are. To this day, I wouldn’t be surprised if this relative, who is now treated and free, relapses and commits mayhem, but there’s not a thing I can do about it. Nothing. He is marginally competent now, just odd. We do not lock people up in this country for being odd.

Soften up. Lay off these parents. They didn’t cause this, and it’s highly unlikely they could have prevented it.