Schizophrenia or conspiracy?

Once again, this forum is choosing to ignore another act of violence in our nation's capitol First, a mass murder at the Navy yard, and now, yesterday's ramming of a White House security gate and consequent car chase from there to the capitol buildings which resulted in the death of the suspect.

The individual perpetrator in the former, we are learning, believed that his brain was implanted with a signalling device that was telling him to do these things. If not a reality, a schizophrenic delusion.

In the latter, a mother suffering post-partum depression and taking meds for schizophrenia.

Did anybody see the Mel Gibson film, "Conspiracy Theory"? Don/t generally believe in them myself, but it is freaky to me that our nation's capitol has suffered two events now, and the last just after the government shutdown.

Just sayin' it deserves a comment or two, and curious about why, with all the cr** we've been discussing lately, that nobody wants to talk about this. Not giving it credence - just asking questins.

Good question.  There is so much violence,  it is hard to keep up on it all.

I don't know how schizophrenia sufferers are treated in the US, but we fail miserably in the way we allow dangerous patients with records of violence to roam free on our streets. Just a week ago, a young man appeared in court and was convicted of murder. His victim was a young seventeen-year-old girl travelling to school by bus. He used a knife to stab her to death. He had spent time in prison for threatening his mother with a knife. It's very distressing to read about these fatalities that could be avoided if people in authority did their job correctly.

There are too many mentally ill people walking around free left to make decisions for themselves whether to take their meds or see their shrinks. Couple that with something I have long complained about--the media's penchant for covering every act of terrorism and violence with gleeful enthusiasm, and let us be thankful that we don't have even more of these acts unfolding as evil, misguided and out and out deranged people opt to go out in a blaze of glory to win over hearts and minds, sow terror, or simply to dress themselves in a borrowed cloak or relevance for their last scene in their personal drama, safe in the knowledge that their final act will outlive them in glorious replays longer than the normal 15 seconds of fame such atrocities may have garnered them in the past. The more outrageous the act, the longer the air time and the greater the guaranteed replays on the nightly news, the internet, and, in extreme enough cases, with the potential for true immortality--movie rights.

It's not an easy thing, apparently.  My dad's cousin, Norma, married my mom's brother, Feagin, had an attack of what was apparently postpartum depression after the birth of their 4th child (and they still went on to have a 5th - go figure)

She was initally diagnosed with schizophrenia and given shock treatments.  Over the next few years, in between giving birth to another child, she was hospitalized several times for "nervous breakdowns."  More shock treatments.  At one time, my uncle said she would be OK if she would just take her lithium, but she believed that mental illness was due to not pleasing God, and that needing medication was a sign of sin, so she would stop taking it.

I later learned that lithium was a treatment for bi-polar disorder, so who knows what her problem really was.  I am inclined to think it was that she could not handle the perceived guilt she felt for not "pleasing God," along with some chemical imbalances that occurred at different ties in her life, for different reasons.

On the other hand, when one is known to have violent reactions to mental distress, there is a need for  a controlling mechanism that can prevent them from harming others - and themselves.

Norma was a good woman. Her only problem was that she could not perceive herself as good.

Quote :

Once again, this forum is choosing to ignore another act of violence in our nation's capitol First, a mass murder at the Navy yard, and now, yesterday's ramming of a White House security gate and consequent car chase from there to the capitol buildings which resulted in the death of the suspect.

There is a sub forum for this called "All Political Discussions". Perhaps you should post this there.

After you have been here a while, LC124, you might notice that if you want to get a post read, it's best to post it in the chatter box.

After a complete mental breakdown and a destructive brain surgery, my mother was allowed to take care of my brother and  me  teach school and drive a car load of kids about.  Her judgment was a notch off and it seems she should have been monitored.

Dear Alice,
You have turned out ok on the surface.  So have I.  Well, I am ok underneath, too.  I believe that you are, too.  Not all of who we are, is relegated by our parenting.  Most of the inner person that we are is because of our own conception of how real life should be.  Some of that is from our historic upbringing by people who had no idea who we were or are.  Our real self is the one we have created and believe in. We can do that.  It is allowed..  It is not just figments, it is our core belief....I feel sorry for people who do not know that they create their own selves.  They create that self from their mind looking inward.  Most of the time people try to create themselves from someone elses reflection. 
Love,
Betty

I know I am not saying this well. 
All people have a choice unless they are without reasoning brains.

I believe in this thing called the Collective Unconscious.  I am less certain as to where it comes from or how it came to be, but I think I have experienced the reality of it.

A big part of that collective consists, according to the experts, in archetypes, or recognized patterns of behavior that can be seen and named  From these archetypal concepts for people and ways of being, we can see what loving parents, for instance, are like - or ought to be like, even when we didn't experience them directly.  It helps if we have loving examples, like Betty's stepparents or my mom's housekeeper, but whatever, the archetypes are there, and when we find a way to tap into them, they can be our teachers and guides.

We don't need to be afraid, especially of the dark.  We have friends there,  helpers, who can show us ways to get beyond the fears of abandonment and isolation and abuse.  they can help us to see what loving parents do.

As a young adult, I used to worry that I might be schizophrenic.  I read some articles about how it was caused by our mothers putting us into "double bind" situations, where we were damned if we did and damned if we didn't, and I sure as he** knew about those.  There was a period of my life when I felt doomed to depression, before I learned that depression wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and that we needed to grieve our losses, including the loss of a balanced childhood (Note I said balanced, not good)  We need to experience disappointment and frustration as children  Of course, enough comes about naturally that we don't' have to set it up unnecessarily.

Today the psychiatrists seem to say that the disease is merely a chemical imbalance that can be treated with the right drugs, and I am sure they help, but we also have an effect of how the chemicals in our bodies interact, and the state of true joy has a real healing effect, if we can figure out how to trigger it.  I wish that modern medicine had a bit of Old Grandmother's wisdom thrown in.


But we are still avoiding a big question:  What is going on in our nation's capital, right now, in the middle of this lawmakers' crisis?   Nobody wanted to talk about the incident at the Navy Yard, period.  Here we are focusing on schizophrenia in a general sense, but still, no one is talking about what happened between the White House and Capitol Hill just yesterday.

Why is that?

Betty Fasig wrote:

Most of the time people try to create themselves from someone elses reflection. 

Quite right, Betty. I'm me not a reflection of someone else. Years ago, I said to a fellow researcher: "Stop trying to change me to suit you better. If you don't like me, just find someone else to like."

Shelagh,
Sometimes I think about the mirror image that goes on and on and on and on...a static kind of image that never changes but is the reflection of the stagnant mind.
Love,
Betty

Dear Annie,
I am probably as ignorant of the politics of this nation as most anyone.  I try not to do a knee jerk reation to what is posted or on the news and do try to understand how things are.  I am a little like Mr. Zuckerman's pig, Babe.  I believe all things, hope all things and am surprised at everything.

I believe that all of us a schiizophrenic.  Otherwise we would only have one side of our brain. 

But that is my own take on reality. 

I am glad that I do not live in Alaska.  It is too cold, climate wise or political wise. 
Love,
Betty

So, is nobody even curious over the apparent fact that, within a few weeks, two different, apparently diagnosed schophrenics went on a rampage right in the middle of our capitol city?

Do you know why?

If I did, I wouldn't be asking, Alice. Each incident, by itself, seems worth some discussion. Having the two come so close together... We discuss everything here - but not this, apparently.

What do you think about it?

I am appalled by it and don't know what to do about it.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man set himself on fire on the National Mall in the nation's capital as passers-by rushed over to help put out the flames, officials and witnesses said Friday afternoon.
The reason for the self-immolation was not immediately clear and the man's identity was not disclosed. But it occurred in public view, on a central national gathering place, in a city still rattled by a mass shooting last month and a high-speed car chase outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday that ended with a woman being shot dead by police with a young child in the car.

There's the third incident.

And it's being ignored by most of the press, apparently. There has been almost no news on the incident.

The press has a one track mind. They also decide what is news.

True. I have to wonder, in situations like this one, just what the motive is - does it detract from focusing on the shut-down?

Do you remember the oil spill? All we saw or heard about was that.

Oil gushing--one man killed himself because he thought his way of life, which was fishing, was over.

From what I can find, the police removed the child from the vehicle before they shot the woman multiple times. When they are removing the child, would it have been too much to expect of them to notice that the woman wasn't armed, and at that point in time posed no threat. Also, from what I can find, the "high speed" chase was only a couple of blocks. Unless the car was a drag racer, there wasn't a lot of "high speed" involved. Also, neither the President nor any members of government were ever in any danger, she ran over a barricade that was across the road, and didn't do that at a high rate of speed. Also, why is it that every time a police man tells a driver to stop their car and they don't do it, they are trying to run an officer over? More likely they are just trying to leave the scene. But if the officer says they tried to run him over, it gives him and his officer friends a reason to pull and use their weapons, with deadly force.

There is a very good chance that every officer in every department in DC have been on high alert for the past few weeks, simply because of the things that have been happening. But, this one pretty much stinks. There was no reason to shoot the woman, especially after they had already been inside the car.

Do I think there are conspiracy theories out there? Absolutely. But I also have enough sense to know that there are also real conspiracies going on, and I believe our government has an agenda of their own that is not what is best for the average citizen. Everyone that stumbles upon some information and gets it out to the public is not a theorist. If the information is real, and if something is actually happening, then it isn't a theory at all.

And I believe there are things going on that won't be good for most Americans, but the info, should it come out, will not be acted up because the person(s) spreading it will be lumped into the theorist category, which of course, is something the government dreamed up to discredit the truth.

Thanks for the detailed response, E Don.

What do you think about the Navy Yard shooter claiming that he was being controlled through electromagnetic wavers?

There has still been almost no reporting on the immolation attempt on the National Mall - I understand that man has died, but there has been almost no coverage. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist myself, but it seems to me that tese three events, which could very well be coincidence, would at least have prompted more questions - all things considered.

Any ideas there?

There are a lot of people out there with such fears as the guy seemed to have Ann. Many from the Vietnam era made such claims about being controlled by outside means. Best I can tell there are many from just about every war since then doing the same thing. We know the government is keeping tabs on ordinary people. We know they listen to select phone calls and read select emails, as well as keeping watch on the internet for various key words to appear, at which point in time they take a look as who is using them. The Patriot Act and the DHS have entirely too much latitude in how they can watch and listen to us, and not nearly enough oversight by people who want to protect our interests.

We've all heard the saying that where there is smoke there is fire, and I think to a degree that is especially true right now and in these areas. I have absolutely no idea how many or what kind of conspiracies the government, or whoever is telling our elected officials what to do, are planning or executing against us at any given time, but, I honestly believe there are people who will do whatever they deem necessary to further their own agenda, and that includes watching us, starting wars, and perhaps even blowing down large buildings in our cities. I think it's all about power, and the wealth with which to achieve that power, and we are pawns in a very real, and very deadly, chess game.