Does 50 or 5 minutes make a difference?

I believe that all of our interactions with other people have consequences. It would be easy to believe that cruel bullying is the primary cause of many of the cases of mass-murdering gun-spree killers (taunt the weirdos enough times and they hit back, sort of thing). But I suspect this is too simplistic.

I remember reading, years ago, that the late Karen Carpenter's anorexia began after she read a review that described her as "podgy".

One of the 'oddest' people I've ever known, a very eccentric individual in mannerisms, opinions and style of dress, once let slip an interesting snippet about his life during a conversation. He recalled an incident from his childhood, when he badly wanted some item of clothing that was the pinnacle of fashion. His mother couldn't afford it and chastised him mildly for his pestering by asking him why he wanted to "be like everyone else". Well, if that story was true, she got her wish. He's the most unlike anyone else I ever met ... not always a nice person either.

On the other hand we can take up too much time beating ourselves up over the tiniest verbal and non-verbals signals that we give out and how they might affect others. Such an obsession might become a new mental illness for the millennium: a strange kind of reverse paranoia. It's tough enough as it is to avoid worrying if "they" are talking about me, but to start also worrying if he is likely to shoot me because he is worrying that I am talking about him ... my mind just melted.

 

I've always thought that getting older not only added wrinkles, it added to the weight of guilt for things we've said that we regret, or even I-should-have-said regrets. There are more and more of the...if only I had or had not...feelings.

I am sometimes very surprised by the reactions to what I say here. For example, when Person123 was worrying about the pressures of school and family and we were all offering support, I suggested she go hug her mother without telling her why. I wasn't being flip. I meant it, because I'm a mother and love to hug my kids. I don't know if 123 followed my advice but someone else did (someone I won't embarrass by naming names.) And all I could think is, Wow! I made another woman's day brighter, a woman I will never meet.

In RL, if I start running my mouth, I usually regret it because I say really stupid things. In this forum, I at least have a chance to backspace over the worst of it. (Sometimes I don't when I should have.) But for various reasons (in RL and here) I try to give a sympathetic ear to people I think may be troubled.

But I know my limits. And I strongly believe that student at VT was well beyond anything a sympathetic friend could have said or done. I suspect he had problems from a very early age.

 

I agree.

We had a "Code Red" at school today. Talk about scary! We were playing kickball outside then you heard the "code red" over the intercom. We all ran inside and hid, locking the doors an' stuff. They didnt tell us that there was going to be a drill or anything, not even the teachers knew. Then our principal came over the intercom and said it was a drill and we did a good job.
:faint:

 

Jazz, I love that quote about fiction writing.

 

It's a shame there's not more comment, really. This issue is a serious one because it relates directly to everyone. Mental illness is common enough that no-one in a western country is without direct experience of a family member or close friend with mental health issues.

In addition to that there are cultural issues here as well. My own experience of attitudes to mental health problems in relation to cultural/ethnic issues is somewhat limited. Where I live there is a substantial proportion of people from the Indian sub-continent, predominantly sikhs and moslems. Both these groups tend to ignore, or else hide, mental problems, regarding them as shameful. I believe that this attitude is prevalent right across Asia in varying degrees, as it was in most western countries only a generation or so ago.

Then there is the additional problem for the psychiatric professionals of making a useful diagnosis. In an ideal world, the likes of Cho would have been forcibly detained for treatment. However who has 20-20 presecient vision? We cannot go back to the days of locking up everyone who may be crazy enough commit a murderous rampage. We've barely gone past the inhumanity of having unwed mothers committed to asylums (I'm pretty sure it happened in the USA up until the 60s (it sure enough happened here in the UK ... not in every case, but once was once too often)).

The awful truth is that there are 17 million+ students in the USA. Being a young adult is the most dangerous time in one's lifetime. There's a whole raft of diseases that can kill you, you're most likely to die in a road or sporting accident, or from the effects of substance abuse, or just from youthful high-jinx that go wrong. If you run the numbers on your calculator you will find that 365 33s is around 12,000 ... is a lot of dead people but is actually only one per 1500 enrolled per year.

OK, before you think I am making light of the tragedy at VT ... I am NOT. I am highlighting the fact that an average of 30 US students die a violent and pointless death every day of the year ... you can't have 1500 young people in a group and not have at least one of them, per year, get run down, fall off a roof, get a fat embolism and die from a stroke following a broken leg sustained on a skiing holiday during spring break, get knifed by a student hating red-neck mugger, catch meningitis and kark it. VT is only shocking because the numbers are lumped together and even more shocking because the murderer was able to buy deadly weapons by self-certifing himself as sane.

I'll perhaps wish I had kept my opinions to myself when I get up tomorrow ...

Oh, one PS. My high school had a roll of 700 students 11-18yrs. We lost 2 students to violent accidental death during the time I was there. At university I did not keep a tally of people I did not know. I lost one friend who died in a canoeing accident on Mount Everest ... don't ask It's like the bumper sticker says. **** happens

 

Don't see why, because you're right. There are also suicides. I lost a college age cousin that way, but at least he didn't take anyone with him. I just can't imagine the despair he must have felt. He left no note and did not discuss what he was feeling with anyone else. (BTW, no drugs involved, prescription or otherwise.)

I have always hesitated to mention it, because it's hard to think about without getting upset. He had so much to live for.

 

I sympathise, Lynet. I am fortunate that I have not lost someone close to me through suicide. I don't know how I would feel for sure, but the extemporiser in me would tend make a fictional character feel the lack of a note as a positive ... somehow a note requires a powerful effort of will -- not to mention premeditation, whereas the absence of a note indicates a possibility of a sudden, desperately tragic, loss of desire for life. There is, I think, a small crumb of comfort in that the suffering through emotional isolation and withdrawl was, at least, mercifully short.

The people I most feel for in the wake of the VT tragedy are Cho's parents and close family. The relatives of those who were murdered, at least have their happy memories of their loved ones. The poor Cho family have only the desperately awful knowledge that they gave life to a bringer of death, who also escaped justice and the chance to atone by suiciding as well. I doubt that, as a parent, I would want to -- or could, even -- live with the aftermath of such a terrible soul destroying event.

 

I think that we do have an influence on what we say.
Many years ago I had a Friend that was hooked on drugs. I talked to her for hours on the damage that drugs do. Even said to here she looked like a lumberjack because of the effects on her body that the drugs were doing to her. I thought that I was being a little harsh with her, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
I saw her years later looking great. She thanked me and said it was the lumberjack part which had made her think.
She had started to take pride in herself and had made a major change.
Never took drugs again. I was happy that at least I saved one person from an awful life filled with misery and paranoia.
I always remind people of the good things they have accomplished.

regards Moon