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THINKING OUT LOUD Mass shooters, mental illness and treatment?

Weymouth News (MA) - 6/22/2016

When it comes to mental illness, most people live in denial. However, what most Americans think about mental illness isn't even true. When it comes to connecting mass shooters as being mentally ill, the facts don't say that.

Whenever a mass shooter strikes, folks come on TV. President Obama has done it plenty of times tying recent mass shootings with the lack of treatment for the mentally ill. The polls show the same thing. Most Americans could very well be believing in myths about violence and the mentally ill.

I worked 41 years in the field of mental health in both support services and direct care. I served 28 of those years with the Department of Mental Health as a police officer. While most Americans believe all mass shooters are mentally ill, criminologists and psychiatrists say not necessarily so.

As a police officer I have worked with both the mentally ill who had serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, delusions and psychoses who can be helped with treatment but there are also many folks with anti-social sociopathic disorders. These folks lack empathy, can be very callous and have no sense of right or wrong. To them all that matters is not getting caught. Some of these characters are truly scary. Full of rage bottled up inside, they are unpredictable at most times. Many times people use terms like bad seeds or the face of evil. In reality these folks are lurking in the shadows and could pounce at will.

Early in my career, I learned the differences between the two. I know a sociopath when I see one but I had the years working in this population and it educated me.

As a police officer, I had to deal with the several mentally ill and sociopaths or pyschopaths ( same thing, two terms). Given a choice, I felt safer with pyschosis than someone who had no sense of right and wrong.

Michael McDermott, who killed seven people, and Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 soldiers, were not mentally ill. However, the Virginia Tech shooter was mentally ill. Most vicious killers aren't mentally ill and there isn't a pill for those folks to get nice.

We live surrounded by sociopaths and don't even know it or recognize. Thee are also various degrees of having an anti-social behavior. Once as a police officer, I was rescued from serious harm with the assistance of a sociopath who ran for help for me. I remember I thanked him afterwards. A psychiatrist told me I shouldn't have thanked him. I told the doctor, it wasn't your neck getting crushed, was it?

Our society runs risks everyday but there isn't always a magic pill to fix everyone but to blame those with mental illness for all the mass shooters is unfair when most of these kills always know right from wrong.

As far as law enforcement goes, we need more treatment for most and some confinement for the violent sociopaths waiting to strike when the urge hits. Knowing the difference between the two groups isn't as important as staying alert and aware of what is out there.

As usual politicians look for quick and easy answers even if they're aren't any?

Sal Giarratani is a retired police officer.