Just a small two cents worth. A man or woman can be identified by their religion, their race, their politics, their work, their reading interests, the neighborhood they live in, but not by their mental state. It is the last politically correct white-out we have… not to know, not to notice mental illness in the extreme.

Are we all neurotic? Of course. But there’s a huge difference between having weeds in the garden vs raging and burning down every person and house in sight. Often over my lifetime, whether it’s Andrea Yates who drowned her five children, or various homicidal/ suicidal persons who make the big news, I often think, we have failed.

We shrinks have failed to arm the public with knowledge about who is just a person struggling along with one thing or another (weeds in the garden), and who is developing into a truly dangerous human being with all wiring of the mind connected to the heart, connected to reason, connected to spirit and soul, gone haywire.

Mr. Scott Roeder, the man found guilty of his pre-planned murder of Doctor George Tiller inside the Reformation Lutheran church, fled afterward. He was also found guilty of aggravated assault for threatening to kill two other men inside the church.

Mr. Scott Roeder claims to be a Christian supported by some Christians. Mr. Roeder admitted he murdered the Doctor, and that he had no regret or remorse. Just from another side, this: In the Christ I continue to learn all these decades, a person who murders another person can be both judged and forgiven by God.

However, it’s contingent on his true remorse and admitting he took a life wrongfully, that he be made right with the God the person claims to follow. I say this not to mock Mr. Roeder nor his Christian supporters, but rather to show the seeming disconnect of the mind in this case…

but also in the minds of many who murder others without remorse. Lack of contrition, is common in those disabled mentally. Inability to control one’s inhumane impulses. And I dont mean smoking cigarettes and having too many brews. I mean homocidal intents.

Remorse is a function of conscience. Even in war, even when one is trained to kill, and must carry out orders, many many who do so, suffer after. All manner of regrets can arise about various matters, for each soul gone to war has a conscience and is filled with love… even as they know they did what they were ordered to do, and in some cases had to do, and wanted to do, and been proud of perhaps.

But striving to get square with one’s conscience, the holding of all life precious, the steep and solid set of rights and wrongs most of us carry, seeing the inhumanity of war, can often be at the base, for instance of PTDS, later.

My sense as a shrink is that Mr. Roeder is not well, and is bolsetered behind the scenes by those who want him ‘to hold his head up high’ for what he did, to be their aegis flapping in the wind, ‘righteous man goes to prison for his wondrous beliefs.’

But in God’s sight, as I understand it with my small finite mind, God is said to see such matters differently as per Christian proscriptions. Christ is the God of Love, seeming supportive of ALL life, all sinners seen as souls yet to be awakened.

Yet, Mr. Roeder’s likely fantasy weaves in with an extremist view from Christianity that all infidels should be murdered on the spot. “Slay the Middanites,” and all that that we see in some of the old old writings.

On the other hand, I dont believe Roeder is capable of reasoning beyond obcessive thought, not from what I’ve seen him say.

People with what I think might be his set of disorders are most dangerously affected by rhetoric and harping between good and evil. Cho (Virginia Tech), and Harris and Klybold (Columbine) and many other homicidally ill persons think they are on the side of Good against Evil, and thus act to slaughter others with full belief the God of Doom or the God of Revelation, or the Black God or the Good God is on their side.

Though there are those on earth who say there is a time and place for aggression, and many of us struggle to weigh this with ethics regarding war and death of any kind, there is also a mental disorder that claims that individuals and groups are evil and only oneself is good. And that all whom are evil must be physically eradicated. It is an extremely sad but also incredibly dangerous mental disorder.

It’s called paranoid schizophrenia. In the extreme of this psychosis, a person many be able to half-well groom themselves and sometimes hold jobs at least intermittantly, and sometimes marry for a time and have children.

But a person suffering from this disorder creates extremely disturbed relationships wherever they go, for they break into psychotic thoughts and make damaging and menacing moves toward others, often in later phrases, escalating to uncontained violence.

Persons with this diagnosis (and not saying this is what Mr. Roeder has, but many of its symptoms appear to be in and with him) are often homicidal and often suicidal as well. Cho and Eric Harris suffered, in my opinion, from this particular disorder also. The obsessive grind to it, makes the person finally desperate to act in ways ‘to kill off’ the demon.

One of the things CERTAIN about persons whose minds split into two extreme parts where all is defined as evil/satanic and good/godly, is that they are the MOST vulnerable to violence from hearing news, rhetoric, propaganda, rabble rousing. They are the ones who decide they are being told to ‘do something to end it all.’

They are also the most vulnerable to being beaten up and/ or killed by others on the streets or at work, who have had ‘enough’ of their aggression and obcessive or violent talk. They are also the most vulnerable to walking into the river or in front of a train because of what their minds tell them is true, that in our consensual reality, is not true… such as ‘that man over there is trying to kill me; I can tell by how he is eating his hamburger.’

Over the years, there has been debate about this disorder, that perhaps to make all symptomatology available to the public means the public would misuse it, trying to self-diagnose, or worse, diagnose others who are merely being in their weird states of development, especially as teens, those states we all go through.

But each time there is a murder(s), a loss of life and the person who did the execution is found to be clearly disturbed and for long periods of time previous and many noted it a priori, but others poo-poohed the evidences consistently, instead acting as obstructionists to that person getting the critical help needed and the ongoing oversight needed…

thus, we see horrendous outcomes from those failures to notice, have real and even handed knowledge, to learn to weigh fairly, to report effectively, to help and enable help effectively, to watch over without looking away.

Disorders like these are in no way chosen by the persons who have them. They do not arise in the morning saying I will be violent and difficult today. They cannot control their thought system. The shizophrenias which contain psychotic elements are not a disease, per se. They’re a brain chemical disorder. And there are medicines that can be given to help even-out the mind and help to wall off the psychosis, especially, bringing the internal fear and rage down to a dull roar that is managable.

Some persons with this challenge do well with the medicines. Others refuse to take whatever medicines consistently, saying they want to be free, and that doctors are trying to control them.

Where the compass lies appears to be, what will most help to keep this person free, safe, alive, with a quality of life, and also keep others safe too.
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CODA
Just in case anyone wonders, I havent a dog in this particular fight about abortion. I’ve written several articles about abortion at TMV. I am on the side of life, which doesnt feel like ‘a side.’ It feels like an instinct.