Thoughts on Newtown, Connecticut

In solidarity

 

I was working at a community mental health agency in a rough part of San Francisco when I received the news of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. This news is terrible...27 dead at an elementary school in Connecticut. I can't even imagine what this must be like for those families. I read my partner's text in horror and instantly thought of my sister, a sixth grade teacher working that day at an elementary school in a nearby community.

Tears began streaming down my face 5 minutes after turning on the news that night. The scene of the crime, a small town across the country, looked so familiar- once ranked "The safest town in the US," it could have been the town I grew up in. Pictures of innocent babies, horrified parents, and young school teachers flashed across the screen. I couldn't watch but a half hour of footage before having to turn it all off, overwhelmed. And then I thought about those who weren't going to be able to "turn it off," get away from the pain of these losses. I thought about the questions my sister was going to have to answer the following Monday when her students would return to school full of fear. I tried to imagine the sixth-grade version of the answers to their questions, and when I couldn't, I found myself thankful I am not a teacher right now. And then I thought about what I would do if I were a psychologist assigned to help one of these families deal with these losses, or help this community rebuild after this tragedy. All I could imagine was sitting in a room, crying in solidarity with a mother or father.

As a psychologist in training, I have a morbid fascination with making sense of these crimes. I so desperately want to know why they continue to happen, what the contributing factors are, how we can work to keep these unfathomable crimes from reoccurring. I am angry that the story is always the same: a white male, somewhere between the age of 18-25 kills innocent victims and then himself, ridding the world of the opportunity to know what led him to such a dark place. I am equally as obsessed with the reactions of others and myself, to such acts. Everyone is so terrified, so rageful, so deeply sad that we hopelessly defend whatever cause we feel will bring justice to such loss. We argue for stricter gun control, the death penalty, media censorship, while the answer to the question Why does this keep happening? remains unanswered.   

I personally do not believe that stricter gun control will keep crimes like these from happening. Don't get me wrong- I don't think it would hurt- but someone hell bent on wanting to kill others will find a way regardless of the means (you can easily find recipes for homemade bombs online, frighteningly). I am also not certain that media coverage of such events is to blame. In fact, I am hopeful that media coverage will inspire more people to react and become motivated to get involved in the solution. And I certainly don't believe that tougher sentencing for crimes is an answer either. Our prison system is broken and overcrowded. Call me an optimist or maybe even a dreamer, but I have a very hard time imagining a person- purely evil- who is capable of killing not one, but 20 babies under the age of 7. I have read of such "sociopaths" and "anti social personalities," and I am sure they are out there, but I am also aware that statistically this is a very small portion of our population. Someone who is capable of killing babies seems to me very, very ill.

Perhaps the most disheartening and unbelievable part of this story that keeps getting told are the folks who say "He was such a good boy...I can't believe he did this....there were no signs at all." And then the more and more I research the killer, I see all kinds of "signs": social dysfunction, withdrawal, isolation, a history of academic and occupational struggles, usually family discord. From what I have read, Adam Lanza exhibited all of these classic symptoms of mental illness. And it's not a hidden fact that the average age of onset for Schizophrenia in men is- gasp- between 18 and 25 (this information resides in our very own DSM-IV).

I'm not arguing that every person with Schizophrenia is a violent killer, or that I am able to diagnosis Lanza based on the media coverage. But I am struck by this story that keeps on repeating. The killer is always the same- age, race, class, personality features. How are we as a society failing to intervene, to end this story once and for all? I hold a serious responsibility and privilege as a psychologist to put forth my very best effort in thinking about mental illness, not just in treating those who struggle with it, but also in educating the public about the signs and symptoms of various illnesses. We have the knowledge, so where is it going? Why does this story continue to be told?

I offer my sincere condolences to the entire Newtown community. My heart hurts not only for the victims and their families, but also for our country-  we all suffer when something like this happens. We must continue to talk about mental illness, and strive to find ways to stop this story from being reproduced.