Posted on 01/09/2011 6:32:21 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
You have a lot of nerve trying to inject facts into the media meme. /sarcasm>
Here are the facts on schizophrenia and marijuana:
“Researchers in New Zealand found that those who used cannabis by the age of 15 were more than three times (300%) more likely to develop illnesses such as schizophrenia. Other research has backed this up, showing that cannabis use increases the risk of psychosis by up to 700% for heavy users, and that the risk increases in proportion to the amount of cannabis used (smoked or consumed).
Additionally, the younger a person smokes/uses cannabis, the higher the risk for schizophrenia, and the worse the schizophrenia is when the person does develop it. Research by psychiatrists in inner-city areas speak of cannabis being a factor in up to 80 percent of schizophrenia cases.”
“Professor John Henry, clinical toxicologist at Imperial College London said research has shown that people with a certain genetic makeup who use the drug face a ten times (1000%) higher risk of schizophrenia. “
“Without the effects of the drug [marijuana], such a person might live their whole life without ever experiencing mental health problems. It has been estimated, for example, that between 8% and 13% of people that have schizophrenia today would never have developed the illness without exposure to cannabis.”
http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html
The idea that marijuana is harmless is a myth. There are a lot of users that would like it to be harmless and have warped the public perception of it - just like libs do with so many other pet issues.
Please pass this on to people who might benefit. Thanks.
A goodly number of mentally ill folks do not have care givers and are given the same rights as others in society to choose whether they take their medications and adhere to their treatments.
I am certain that there are caregivers in this country that would do as you suggest but I work with this on a daily basis and I do not find what you say to be the “norm”. Good, caring, helpful caregivers CANNOT make someone take their meds. The “bad” caregivers can knock them coocoo so they can’t function and get out there to do what this guy did. “Bad” caregivers want the ill person to be no trouble to them and therefore totally sedated.
When mentally ill folks were turned out on the streets back in the seventies and the world of the homeless began in huge numbers it was our glorious government that did it. I know because I worked for Medicaid in Mississippi at that time.
The federal government has tied the hands of the states in many ways in dealing with mental illness. Someone with some common sense should be in charge up there in Washington because the dingalings we have don’t know their a@@es from a hole in the ground.
You cannot MAKE someone take their medications or go to their treatment centers. Instead the enormous cost of their care is charged to each and every one of us because they bounce in and out of our psychiatric hospitals.
These folks often choose illicit drugs instead of their medications and then we have a person who is capable of what happened in Tucson. If fingers need to be pointed then we, as a union, need to turn toward Washington and point our fingers and shout “it is YOU that has allowed this”!
I don't have the answer to the origin of this plague of psychopaths, but the list is now too long to ignore the least common denominator -- that they have either a history of psychological treatment or drug treatment or both -- and then they go on shooting sprees.
This nonsense about "they went off their meds" and "good care givers vs. bad care givers" is just that. Nonsense. It's a rationale to hide ineffectual and/or socially dangerous practices in the name of "treatment." There is not one single psychotropic drug that cures anything. What we are living with is drug-made automatons and sociopaths who are made to pass off as "normal" then allowed to walk free among us.
I would favor a law that eliminates the right of gun ownership to any person who takes psychotropic medications -- you need to be medicated to get through your day? Fine. You can't own a gun. You want drug treatment? Fine. You're on a registry and so is your psychiatrist.
Then watch and see the "mental health" community wail and moan about the violation of their patient's rights while the innocent stand by and get slaughtered. The "care givers" aka drug vendors should be criminally liable for the conduct of their patients.
This carnage has to end.
Have you ever actually worked or been around someone who was schizophrenic? Schizophrenia is an organic brain disorder. The latest technology has been a great asset in understanding what is really going on in the brain during an active psychotic episode.
Hard to say, these days.
I was a case manager for the severely mentally ill. You would know it if you had been around someone who was in an active psychotic state. I had a client who was on Haldol shots every 30 days and at the end of the month he would pick the rats off of my shoulders and talk about the angels but within 30 minutes of getting his shot he was pretty much free from the hallucinations.
I also had one young man who wanted to see Lost in Space and thought nothing of it until he started freaking out over the aliens.
Another one went off when the Russian Army was invading his apartment.
Most of the truly schizophrenics are people who would do anything to be normal. Many are quite intelligent but their brains are broken. Not all are violent when sick.
That's great. Do you think Mr. Rat Picker should have owned a gun? And when he was free of his "hallucinations" who would stop him?
Here's an excerpt of an article about this very issue on Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter:
The in-person consultation at the center followed Cho's release from the psych ward at Carilion St. Albans hospital on Dec. 14, 2005. According to the documents, Cho had been admitted overnight to the hospital after his roommate became concerned when Cho threatened to take his own life.
"I met with student for about 30 minutes," wrote triage counselor Sherry Lynch Conrad on a Post-It note stuck to Cho's file dated Dec. 14, 2005, the day after his release. "He denied any suicidal or homicidal ideation. Said the comment he made was a joke. Says he has no reason to harm self and would never do it."
Even so, Conrad drew an "X" through the portion of the medical chart that assesses a patient's mental health, instead writing, "Did not assess -- student has had two previous triages in past two weeks -- last two days ago."
Conrad wrote that she provided Cho with emergency numbers should he begin to have "suicidal or homicidal thoughts" over winter break, but she did not schedule a follow-up appointment because Cho didn't "know his schedule." Cho first made contact with the center on Nov. 30, 2005, when he was referred by a professor.
In the records from his initial telephone conversation, another triage counselor checked off "Troubled: Further contact within 2 weeks" under the portion of the form that rates the severity of the patient's disposition. An in-person appointment was scheduled for Cho on Dec. 12, 2005, but when he failed to show up, another telephone consultation took place. According to the documents, Cho indicated in the second phone conversation that his symptoms of depression and anxiety had persisted. He also said that he was having trouble concentrating.
That counselor's notes indicate that Cho said that "he did not want to come in at this time," despite his symptoms.
This is the first time the public has seen the notes of three separate therapists who counseled Cho.
On April 16, 2007, Cho killed 32 people and then himself on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., making the school the site of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history and the focal point for a renewed debate over gun control and mental health services.
In a written statement released in conjunction with the medical records, Virginia Tech released a statement saying the university believes the center's counselors acted "appropriately in their evaluation of Cho."
"The absence and belated discovery of these missing files have caused pain, further grief, and anxiety for families of the April 16 victims and survivors, as well as for the Cook Counseling Center professionals who interacted with Cho and created and maintained appropriate departmental records," reads the statement.
"With release of these records, Virginia Tech seeks to provide those deeply affected by the horrible events of April 2007 with as much information as is known about Cho's interactions with the mental health system 15-16 months prior to the tragedy."
Just two weeks after the shootings, Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine signed an executive order that required anyone court-ordered to receive mental health treatment be added to a state database of people prohibited from buying guns.
A year after the shooting, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., introduced legislation that would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which determines how much of a student's mental health records can be disclosed by a university. Webb argued that the Virginia Tech massacre may have been prevented had the policy been more clear on when information about a mentally ill student can be shared by a university .
Cho Records Initially Found to Be Missing
The records released today were discovered to be missing during a Virginia panel's August 2007 investigation -- four-and-a-half months after the massacre.
The notes were recovered last month from the home of Dr. Robert Miller, the former director of the counseling center, who says he inadvertently packed Cho's file into boxes of personal belongings when he left the center in February 2006. Until the July 2009 discovery of the documents, Miller said he had no idea he had the records.
Miller has since been let go from the university.
The documents released today make no reference to any mental health diagnoses prior to Cho's time as a Virginia Tech student. After the shooting it was reported that Cho had been diagnosed and had received treatment as a young adult for an anxiety disorder.
Four months after the shootings, Gov. Kaine released a report that harshly criticized the university for its handling of the incident, primarily in the failure to notify students promptly about the shootings, as well as the failure to notice warning signs that he says may have prevented the incident altogether.
University officials have cited privacy laws as the reason they did not exchange information on Cho's mental health history or contact his parents about problems he was having on campus.
The Virginia Tech massacre occurred over a span of several hours, beginning in the early morning of April 16, when Cho claimed his first victims -- students Emily Hilscher, 19, and Ryan Clark, 22 -- as they sat in Hilscher's fourth-floor dorm room.
Cho is then believed to have returned to his own dorm room, where he collected more ammunition and firearms before preparing a lengthy note in which he wrote, "You caused me to do this."
Cho, Dylan Klebold, the kid who turns a gun on his grandparents -- they number in the thousands now -- all "treated" and let go to kill by a mental health industry that either can't or won't take responsibility for the scourge they let loose on the public.
None of my clients should have had the right to purchase guns. They were too unstable off meds and it is quite common that most schizophrenics are not med compliant 100% of the time.
The laws in place are the reason why they are let loose. I fully believe that some people need long term hospitalization to function their best.
Whatever. You are entitled to your opinion and I understand that it is based on first hand knowledge of mental illness and medications. Not the Personality Disorders...but true mental illnesses.
Just read your comments (after watching a profiler/Psych PhD/Lawyer being interviewed by Megan Kelly). Profiler was very good and pointed out the 18-20 age when psychoses begin to show in isolated schizophrenics etc.,
His mother and his teachers apparently never sought help for his increasingly threatening behavior - which could have possibly prevented his ‘snapping’ and murderous rampage. At least he would have been monitored and unable to purchase that Glock 9mm.
>They drug their patients to obtain an apparency of “normalcy”, and then they set the patient free to enjoy their “rights” among the rest of the populace
Half right. They must do it.
I remember long ago when SCOTUS ruled that doctors must do exactly that because a patient who is on proper medication has every right that you & I do, and that includes refusal to continue the meds after release.
They used buses to remove the mental patients and dump them on the major city streets by the hundreds.
Everyone was warned exactly what would happen but pinheaded lawyers are removed from such consquences...
And who is making the representation that their medications and treatment are effective?
If you or I were diagnosed with some mental disorder, (God forbid), and we followed the treatment, why wouldn't we have the right to say, "I'm doing everything I've been told to do and the docs say it's OK"?
I'm not saying we should abandon the concept of personal responsibility, but when we're talking about mental illness we have a situation where the individual has already acknowledged a lack of competence, yet, their "care providers" are taking no more responsibility than saying "take this drug so you can pass as normal and we're good to go."
I would argue that the mental health industry is using the "treatment plan" as a cover just as much -- if not more so -- than the individual.
So Loughner, a Jew himself, is anti-semetic? Should we assume that every crime against a Christian is done by a bigoted hate-filled anti-Christian?
>and we followed the treatment, why wouldn’t we have the right to say, “I’m doing everything I’ve been told to do and the docs say it’s OK”?
That is exactly correct.
and the SCOTUS has already ruled on this and it is settled law. - Doctors are bound by that and have little to no recourse.
It isn’t cover, it is what they are legally obligated to do.
Your commentary would be better directed to the legislature to try to pass a law to challenge that SCOTUS decision but I would not hold my breath waiting for action.
Oh I think you’re right it would require new legislation. Someone, somewhere needs to start holding these characters accountable.
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