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It’s Not Guns or Mental Illness. the Problem Is Deeper Than That. (VIDEO)

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In reaction to the horrific mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, this weekend, many people on both sides have been engaged in the same game of slogan-shouting and cliche-spewing that always follows these kinds of things. One side says guns are the problem. The other retorts that mental illness is the real culprit. Both agree that extremist ideologies are partially to blame, but they disagree on which extremist ideology is most to blame. Round and round we go. Nothing is accomplished. Nothing changes. And lost in the fog of talking points is the hard reality of these tragedies — the fact that actual, real people are dying.

It is indeed an epidemic. Mass shootings are still exceedingly rare, but the fact remains that 20 of the 27 deadliest mass shootings in American history have happened in the last 15 years. Since the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, this country has seen 9 of the 13 deadliest shootings in its history. The worst one ever was two years ago. The second worst was the year before that. It’s true that the media tries to grossly (in multiple senses of the word) inflate mass shooting statistics by counting gang violence in the total, but the numbers are still extraordinary even without being manipulated to prove a political point. For some reason, shootings like El Paso and Dayton are way, way more common today than they were 20 years ago or anytime previous. That is not debatable. The only debatable question is why.

As for that question, we never get close to answering it because we are determined to focus the conversation around guns, mental illness, and extremism. Yes, guns obviously are part of the picture. But our existing laws, if enforced, would have prevented many of these slaughters already. We don’t need more laws. We need, rather, to utilize the ones that are already on the books. The Dayton shooter apparently was caught keeping a hit list of classmates he wanted to kill in high school. I think we can all agree that people with hit lists shouldn’t be able to obtain firearms. But that, again, is a matter for better enforcement, not additional laws. Besides, there have always been guns in this country. There have not always been this many mass shootings. . .

At bottom, the answer is that we have become a country filled with numb, detached, and desensitized people. Mass shootings are the ultimate manifestation of that detachment. Our reaction to them — rhetorically slinging dead bodies at each other to score points in a political argument — is a slightly less severe but very much related manifestation. A survivor of the El Paso shooting reports that the shooter casually smirked before unloading on a crowd of innocent people. This echoes many other reports from many similar shootings. The killer is always smirking like he’s slightly amused, or else he’s blank-faced and emotionless. Rarely do you get a picture of someone running around enraged and screaming. We call these acts of “hate,” but they are much more acts of brutal, murderous indifference. These are empty, numb, detached people slaughtering their fellow humans because they are bored and frustrated with their meaningless lives. (Read more from “It’s Not Guns or Mental Illness. the Problem Is Deeper Than That.” HERE)

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Special Forces Expert: Mental Illness Waivers ‘Disturbing’

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The U.S. Army is rescinding its recently announced policy of allowing people with a history of mental illness to get a waiver in order to serve in the military, a welcome move but one that should never have been necessary, according to a former U.S. Army special forces commander.

Earlier this week, the Army announced it instituted a policy in August that allowed waivers to be issued so that potential recruits could circumvent the ban on service members with a history of mental illnesses ranging from bipolar disorder to depression to self-mutilation and alcohol or drug abuse. The Army admitted the move was designed to boost sagging recruiting numbers.

On Wednesday, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley said the Army is reversing course. Milley says the policy on waivers was never actually implemented but was being debates with the Army’s leadership.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin, who spent most of his career in special forces, says the Army is making the right call after entertaining a terrible idea.

“I will take the chief of staff of the Army’s word for the fact that it was still being studied but it’s disturbing that we’re even studying this,” said Boykin, who believes the Army’s sudden shift is due more to public relations than because it believes this was a terrible idea. (Read more from “Special Forces Expert: Mental Illness Waivers ‘Disturbing'” HERE)

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Army Lifting Ban on Bipolar, Self-Mutilating Recruits ‘a Red Flag’

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By Greg Corombos. The U.S. Army is lifting an ban on recruits with a history of mental illness as a means of boosting recruiting numbers, a unilateral decision that could damage readiness and actually hurt the effort to recruit quality young Americans to serving their country in uniform.

The Army made the decision in August, but it is only making it public now as it fears efforts to recruit 80,000 new soldiers by September 2018 may fall short. Americans who deal with bipolar disorder, depression, self-mutilation or drug and alcohol abuse are now eligible to be recruited, although the Army insists it will screen such applicants vigorously to ensure they are fit for service.

That’s not good enough for Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelly.

“This is not a good sign,” Donnelly told WND and Radio America. “At least one expert quoted in the USA Today story said that when you induct people who have psychological problems, it is definitely a red flag. Those psychological problems often get worse in the military. Rates of suicide in the military are much higher than in the civilian world.”

She said one of the recruiting headaches is that a growing number of young people are not physically fit for the military, but she said that shouldn’t trigger a sliding standard on mental health. (Read more from “Army Lifting Ban on Bipolar, Self-Mutilating Recruits ‘a Red Flag'” HERE)

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Army Lifts Waiver Ban for Recruits With History of Depression: ‘It Is a Red Flag’

By Douglas Ernst. The U.S. Army quietly relaxed standards over the summer to allow potential recruits to receive waivers for a host of previous mental health issues — including self-mutilation.

A 2017 recruiting goal of 80,000 new soldiers through September appears to be at the root of a decision to reverse a 2009 waiver ban on mental health issues. Documents obtained over the weekend by USA Today show a willingness to consider applicants with a history of bipolar disorder, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse.

“It is a red flag,” Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatrist who retired from the Army as a colonel in 2010, told the newspaper on Sunday. “The question is, how much of a red flag is it?” (Read more from “Army Lifts Waiver Ban for Recruits With History of Depression: ‘It Is a Red Flag'” HERE)

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Society Isn’t Normalizing Mental Illness. It’s Medicalizing Normalcy

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In a recent syndicated column published by Conservative Review, writer Ben Shapiro argues that society needs to stop “mainstreaming” mental illness, challenging the I’m-Okay-You’re-Okay mentality that allows people to engage in deviant or aberrant behavior without censure.

He describes a case in which a woman who enjoyed being led around by her boyfriend on a leash has disappeared, suggesting that the tragedy could have been avoided if she had been given the proper treatment.

But is it true that modern society is increasingly accepting of mental illness as normal behavior? In fact, just the opposite. Many things formerly considered within the bounds of normal human variation are now classified as illnesses and treated as such.

An analysis of the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) found that, based on its diagnostic criteria, 46.4 percent of Americans will have a “disorder” at some point in their lives.

But because the mind itself is allegedly sick, should people diagnosed with these conditions be robbed of their agency and treated like children at the whim of their doctors, their families, or the state?

The psychiatric profession insists that mental illness is “just like any other illness,” but this is obviously untrue. Bodily illness can be diagnosed objectively from a detectable pathology. The presence of cancerous cells in the brain leads to a diagnosis of brain cancer, even if no symptoms are presenting.

Mental illness, on the other hand, has no such pathology. How could it? The mind is an intangible, unobservable concept. Therefore, mental illnesses must be diagnosed solely based on a subjective interpretation of behavior. The symptom is indistinguishable from the disease itself, meaning that all such diagnoses are opinion-based rather than objective.

And how do we define mental illness anyway?

We’re frequently cautioned against treating delusions as reality, but who is going to serve as the arbiter of what constitutes reality? By this definition, an atheist would be justified in classifying all people of faith as delusional and mentally ill for their belief in a higher power. To an atheist, a believer talking to God is no different than James Stewart talking to a giant rabbit in “Harvey,” and given the chance, he will treat the two equivalently. Is that really a road we want to go down, especially when our political leaders are becoming increasingly secular?

At the core of the question is this: Are we justified in depriving individuals of their freedom, of forcibly hospitalizing (read: imprisoning) and medicating them against their will because they behave in a way that we find odd or difficult to understand?

It’s important to remember that, in the past, Americans were diagnosed as mentally ill for being gay, for engaging in masturbation, and, in the days of slavery, for trying to escape from their masters. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry, thought the consumption of alcohol and opposition to the American Revolution constituted mental illness. These perfectly normal behaviors were regarded as so aberrant as to justify depriving individuals of their freedoms “for their own good.” And while these specific conditions are no longer recognized as mental illness, far more supposed disorders have arisen to take their place.

Wanting to be led around on a leash is odd, bizarre even, but the claim that such behavior justifies imprisonment and drugging is incomparably more horrific. If any unpopular behavior can be called a sickness, only conformists are safe from oppression. And who wants to be a conformist anyway?

America is supposed to be a country in which minority opinions, beliefs, and behaviors are protected from the tyranny of the majority. Ayn Rand said that the smallest minority is the individual, and I would add to this that the individual with unaccountably odd behavior is smaller still. It’s all well and good to claim such people are irrational, but to that I will respond with two quotes from the great economist Ludwig von Mises.

From “Epistemological problems in Economics”:

The assertion that there is irrational action is always rooted in an evaluation of a scale of values different from our own. Whoever says that irrationality plays a role in human action is merely saying that his fellow men behave in a way that he does not consider correct.

And from “Socialism”:

If a man drinks wine and not water I cannot say he is acting irrationally. At most I can say that in his place I would not do so. But his pursuit of happiness is his own business, not mine.

I’ll leave you with this question: Whom do you trust to decide which behaviors are “correct,” and are you willing to surrender your pursuit of happiness to white-coated experts who claim to know better? (For more from the author of “Society Isn’t Normalizing Mental Illness. It’s Medicalizing Normalcy” please click HERE)

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Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists

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Mental illness is largely caused by social crises such as unemployment or childhood abuse and too much money is spent researching genetic and biological factors, psychologists have warned.

Over the past decade funding bodies like the Medical Research Council (MRC) have spent hundreds of millions on determining the biology of mental illness.

But while there has been some success in uncovering genes which make people more susceptible to various disorders, specialists say that the true causes of depression and anxiety are from life events and environment, and research should be directed towards understanding the everyday triggers.

Peter Kinderman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Of course every single action, every emotion I’ve ever had involves the brain, so to have a piece of scientific research telling us that the brain is involved in responding emotionally to events doesn’t really advance our understanding very much . . .

“It detracts from the idea that trauma in childhood is a very very powerful predictor of serious problems like experiencing psychotic events in adult life, so of course the brain is involved and of course genes are involved, but not very much, and an excessive focus on those issues takes us away from these very important social factors” (Read more from “Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists” HERE)

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Two New Studies: Cat Parasite Linked to Mental Illnesses

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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 T. gondii parasite to increased rates of mental illness in cat owners who may have had increased exposure to parasitic infection.

“Cat ownership in childhood has now been reported in three studies to be significantly more common in families in which the child is later diagnosed with schizophrenia or another serious mental illness,” write study authors E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and Dr. Robert H. Yolken of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The researchers compared two previous studies that linked childhood cat ownership and the development of schizophrenia later in life from a 1982 mental health survey. A second study by A.L. Sutterland from the Department of Psychiatry at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam reviewed 50 published studies to a T. gondii infection being tied to mental disorders. (Read more from “Study: Cat Parasite Linked to Mental Illnesses” HERE)

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Study: Video Games Increase Risk of Mental Illness

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Photo Credit: The Telegraph Millions of boys could be at increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other mental illnesses in later life through playing action video games such as Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed, according to new research.

Scientists say players navigate the screen using a key area of the brain called the caudate nucleus, which leads to loss of grey matter in the hippocampus.

Previous studies have shown reduced volume in the hippocampus, which controls memory, learning and emotion, is associated with neurological and psychological disorders including dementia and depression.

The Canadian team said if action gamers have less grey matter, as people who rely on the caudate nucleus normally do, then they may be more prone to mental illness.

In the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, they tested 26 players and 33 non players who wore skull caps recording their brainwaves and eye movements as they negotiated a virtual maze decorated with trees and mountains from which they had to retrieve objects. (Read more from “Study: Video Games Increase Risk of Mental Illness” HERE)

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