Guns, Violence, Mental Health

Feed the Compassion

Where were the killers, the mass-murderers?  In Tucson, in Aurora, in Newtown.  Where were the killers’ family members, class-mates, friends and neighbors?  Were they residing in Denial, looking the other way, ignoring the specter of mental illness in my family, among my friends, my neighbors?  Such is the stigma, the cloud of fear, ignorance and denial that surrounds mental illness in this allegedly civilized country of ours.  As a mental health worker and a person whose own family was afflicted by mental illness, I understand the painful dilemma surrounding mental health diagnoses and treatments.

I am not implying that family members and others surrounding the shooters were to blame for the deaths of so many innocents.  Of course not.  Those mass killings and the ones which may be coming are part of a complex social issue involving many causes.  Inadequate gun laws and poor access to mental health services are just two slices in the pie chart of shameful culpability.  Here is how I apportion the causes and here are my recommendations.

Culture of violence, 30%.   Films, video games and TV shows that glorify killing are pervasive and ubiquitous, presenting blood and gore as entertainment.  They offer multiple excuses to justify atrocities and allow participants to enjoy the (virtual) thrill of slaughtering victims: “it’s war time and they’re the enemy...they’re zombies...they’re evil aliens from another world...they’re vampires.”  The purveyors of this stuff are the vampires.  Boycott them.  Supervise your children to shield them from such assaults on their innocent humanity.  Those forms of “entertainment,” unfed by your dollars, will shrink like a leech deprived of blood.

Inadequate gun laws 30%.    We love our guns, here in the United States.  Many people hunt with guns, not just for pleasure but for subsistence.  My own son owns a gun that probably saved his life on one occasion.  And yes, we need to be prepared to defend ourselves from internal and external threats to our freedom.  But can you at least begin to see that we are afflicted with a National paranoia, a pervasive fear of extinction, and that we use guns to assuage that sick fear?  Ironic, perhaps, in that our country was founded on gun violence and aggression justified by the claim of “Manifest Destiny.”  Consider the recent evidence of guilt and fear induced paranoia:  in what other country in the world would an upper-middle class woman, secure, educated, who lived in a peaceful little town among friends, own pistols and assault rifles and take her mentally/emotionally disturbed son on target practice jaunts?  To me, that is almost as shocking as what happened because of it.  Who was it who said, “We have met the enemy and it is us”?  Support sweeping changes to gun laws.  On the day of the 2-year anniversary of the January 8 shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and others here in Tucson, I signed another petition demanding change.

Mental Health Issues 30%.   This is the toughest issue to confront, both collectively and individually, and the most complex, but our focus here is very narrow:  mental health and violence.  Statistics show (sorry I can’t cite specifics right now) that the vast majority of crimes are not committed by the mentally ill; and the vast majority of the mentally ill do not commit crimes.  The best predictor of violence by any person is a history of violent behavior.  But the Tucson and Newtown shooters had no previous history of violence and only the Aurora shooter (as far as we know) had been diagnosed with a mental illness.  Then how can we predict and thus prevent violent behavior by the mentally ill?  We must look for indicators of mental illness and potential violence in those near to us, and take action when needed.  A few profiles that may suggest future violence:  males in their 20s, those with paranoid schizophrenia with a history of violence, those with sociopath personality disorder with a history of violent, abusive or coercive behavior, and those with bipolar disorder in a manic phase.  Another potentially dangerous condition is depression in men, which on rare occasions manifests as a smoldering anger that flares into violence.   We must not ignore the fact that the vast majority of mass killers are male.  Is this surprising in a culture of male superiority and dominance that feeds the male ego and can render such things as loss of a wife or girl-friend or loss of a job as excuse for rage and vengeance?   Teach our men and boys that violence is the act of a helpless, impotent person, and going out “in a blaze of glory” is a disgustingly misnamed act that is not only desperate but cowardly.

   In the end, recognizing when someone is “just not right” mentally/emotionally is the easy part.  Taking action is the hard part.  Living with or around a person who exists in a different reality and is sure there is nothing wrong with him or her can be excruciating.  A family member of one of my clients once told me, “Living with a crazy person is making me crazy!”

If you know someone who is obviously disturbed and refuses to get treatment, the State of Arizona (and, I believe, most states) provides for what is called a Petition for Involuntary Evaluation.  This allows mental health workers to go to the person’s location and conduct a mental status exam, even if the assistance of the police is required.  If the person is deemed a potential danger to self or others, they can be hospitalized for 72 hours, which allows time for two psychiatrists and other mental health workers to evaluate their condition.  If found in need of treatment, they can be hospitalized longer and required by law to receive treatment.  There are adequate safeguards in the law to prevent this from being used maliciously or inappropriately, to protect the rights of those who are mentally ill as well as those who are not.  I believe it is the responsibility of every family member and yes, every citizen, to know such details about mental health law in their area, and to act on it when necessary.

Unfortunately, even when an ill person enters treatment, he or she doesn’t always stay with it.  The major flaw in the country’s mental health laws and their delivery, in my opinion, is the inability of professionals to adequately force medication compliance on those who have been court-ordered for treatment, even those who have demonstrated or threatened violence.  Change mental health law to enable professionals to force medication compliance on those who have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness and present a significant threat to others.

The last slice in my pie chart of causation and responsibility is:  Individual and Collective Moral Values 10%.  What can one say here?  What about the Quakers among us, who abhor violence and refuse to participate, even during war time?  What about the Christian Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill?”  What about those of the Baha’i Faith, whose founder told his followers not to resist their tormentors because it is better to be killed than to kill?  We human beings are endowed with a penchant for violence and with an equally strong penchant for empathy, kindness and compassion.  These opposing capabilities remind us of the story about the two beasts within our breasts that are locked in a struggle for dominance.  Which one wins?  The one we feed.  Let’s feed the one within us that embodies our intellect, our compassion, and our humanity.

Mount Algebra

Mount Algebra

 

Some years ago I was a (politically correct) “returning student,” (read old person) at the local community college.  I had taken five or six fun and easy courses, each rewarded with an “A” and a ratchet up in confidence.  Finally I felt ready to take Beginning Algebra.  Be impressed.  This move demonstrated a bravery equal to falling on a live grenade, considering the fact that I have a math phobia and had managed to graduate high school innocent of even rudimentary contact with said algebra.

That first day in class I realized that my peers, most of whom were less than one-half my age, had taken algebra before and this class was designed for them, not an algebraically uninitiated like myself.  The teacher blithely rattled on about formulas, equations, real numbers, natural numbers and irrational numbers.  Perversely, she wrote letters on the blackboard, instead of any of the aforementioned numbers and some were embraced by parentheses, which I had foolishly assumed were used only to cozy up groups of words.  The teacher’s language was worse than gibberish.  I felt as if I were about to become an irrational number, so at the ten minute break, I exited and didn’t return.

Next semester I took the same class with a different teacher.  Same result, except this time I controlled my panic attack until class was dismissed.  Devastated, I dropped the course.  But I had committed to working toward a degree, which would be the first in my family of origin, and follow my daughter’s college degree.  No one would award that coveted B.A. until I had passed College Algebra, four courses and a universe away.

Before the start of next semester I asked around: who was the best algebra teacher in the school?  I made an appointment to talk with that awesome lady.  I related my humiliating story and in anguish, asked, “Will I have to give up getting a college degree because I can’t do algebra?”  She reassured and encouraged me.

I prepared for that class like plotting an assault on Mount Everest.  I purchased the text book weeks beforehand and perused it until it sent me and my irritable bowel to the bathroom.  (Maybe I should have just left it in there for bathroom reading.)  When I talked to my next door neighbor, who was trained as a teacher and was home-schooling her children, she agreed to help me with homework if I got stuck.  I made the acquaintance of the math lab at the college, where they provided free tutoring any time during school hours.  The first day of class felt like a long workout on a balance beam but I stuck the landing -- er, the first class and the second, and the first week.

This wonderful teacher had a precise grading system.  She awarded points for tests, of course, but also for each class attended, for each homework assignment handed in, and for each of a limited number of extra credit assignments.  Together, the points totaled 100, for a perfect A.  As I looked at the syllabus with that grading system, an outrageous idea struck.  Maybe I could get an A in this class, to match all the others:  a very seductive prospect.

As the weeks went by, this possibility was nurtured by modest success.  I did every homework assignment.  These weren’t graded for content or accuracy just checked briefly to see that the student actually did the work instead of entering a solution from the section at the back of the book.  I did check my work with the answers in the book, and the few times I had to consult my next door neighbor it was because the book’s answer was a misprint.  It was tough.  Each homework session produced a pounding headache, the result of new algebra synapses firing in my brain, I was convinced.  One day I just couldn’t take it; I decided to skip class.  No problem.  Next week I was back plodding away, still reasonably on track for my A.

Before the final exam, I checked my accumulated points and knew I had to get at least a 92 to get the coveted A.  The exam was excruciating.  I was the last person to leave the classroom.  We knew the teacher posted exam results on her classroom door, identified by the last four digits of the students’ social security numbers.  I held my breath as I located my grade.  91.  Mount Everest, ha!  I had failed to reach the summit; it was nauseating.  I felt like I was suffering from altitude sickness.  A sympathetic friend told me to ask the teacher to give me an extra point.  I considered it, but what stopped me was the though of that one day I had skipped class.  One day, one point.  I got what I deserved.  Two weeks later when my grade report for all my classes came in the mail, lo and behold, an A in Algebra, stacked sweetly in the column with the others.  To this day, I wonder:  did she give me a pity A, or when I totaled class points, did I make a mistake in my math?

    

Can you believe this book:  Proof of Heaven  A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D. ?

     This book relates the “near-death experience” (NDE) of a neurosurgeon.  There are hundreds of such accounts in the media, but this book claims that its author’s experience was both unique and compelling enough to render proof that consciousness exists independent of bodily existence, that life goes on after death.  Woody Allen once said, “I don’t believe in an afterlife but I’m taking a change of underwear anyway.”  We share his equivocation but we prefer to know for sure if we should pack those skivvies. 

     Twenty-one years ago, I wrote a report on the NDE for a college class.  I began my research by attending a meeting of a local chapter of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, where I met and heard the stories of several NDE’rs.  Why do such accounts fascinate us?  Perhaps because they offer the best elements from both a good old-fashioned ghost story and a bulletin from the frontiers of science.  They tantalize us with the promise of eternal life, a form of comfort that formerly only religious faith could supply.  While faith is the purview of the devout, belief is available to all if it is supported by scientific “fact.”  In an age of conflict between science and religion, any revelation that purports to reconcile the two paradigms offers us psychological integration or what used to be called peace of mind.  This new field of study, dignified with the multi-syllabic Latin name “circumthanatology,” has been cleansed of superstition and religious dogma and sanctified instead by statistical study.

           The book under discussion, however, is just one more of many “anecdotal reports,” anathema to the scientific mind.  The author claims that what makes it different is the absolute incapacitation of the “human” parts of his brain while in a coma with e-Coli meningitis.  He even includes, in Appendix B, rebuttals to various neuro-scientific hypotheses that would explain the NDE experience.  Yes, his account of factual details and more emotional, human-interest details was fascinating and compelling.  I was convinced.  Or was I?  One unique feature of Dr. Alexander’s NDE was that he had no sense of self, no awareness of an individual identity while in that state.  He points to that fact as further proof of the independence existence of consciousness.  Couldn’t one also hypothesize that the very fact that his neo-cortex was “bathed in pus” and therefore totally inactivated, was the cause of his lack of a sense of identity?  If proven, that hypothesis would strengthen the “brain produces consciousness” theory.

     So, before packing my underwear in anticipation of my own journey into the afterlife, I checked out the web site of his nonprofit organization, Eternea, at www.Eternea.org.  Interesting.  The site states that “anyone can join” yet the fee for basic membership is $50 and there are tiers of membership according to the amount of the “donation” given, with increased privileges for those higher on the tiers.  Proof of hierarchy based on financial status, even among Heaven’s advocates?
     The most compelling statements in the book, for me, were those that revealed that, and I paraphrase, God is love; love and compassion are real, concrete, and are the very fabric of the spiritual relm.  Further, Alexander states that God loves us.  How well this harmonizes with the basic precepts of the great religions of the world.  Take this statement as an example, "You must...look toward each other and then toward mankind with the utmost love and kindness...This has been the essence ...of the teaching of the Prophets, saints, seers and philosophers..."  Abdu'l-Baha.  For more about and from Abdu'l-Baha and the Baha'i Faith, go to www.usnsa@usbnc.org.

Why I Love American Indians

WHY I LOVE AMERICAN INDIANS

First Story -- Grandma

Grandma’s name was Ona Raney.  She was born in Aransas after the turn of the last century, child of a full-blooded Cherokee mother and a white father.  As an adult, on a tiny farm in Oklahoma, she personified the best of both races.  Her life was a template for a woman living with energy, courage, integrity and grace.  This blog will feature several stories about her, and about my other contacts with Native Americans and their culture and rituals.

Against the dark, joyless backdrop of my childhood her memory stands forth in a gentle wash of pastel colors.  Her essence is warm, round and soft amid the jagged fragments of bitter reminiscence.

“Grandma, why do you always do things so fast?”

She looked up, surprise in her blue eyes, not knowing I had been watching her.

“Well, Hon, I guess I just got used to moving quick-like.  I always had so much to do, seems like doing it on the run was the only way it got done.”

Grandma bent her silvered head over the dough board.  It was five-thirty a.m.; the roosters hadn’t yet begun to crow but the usual morning fare of fresh biscuits and gravy would soon be on the table.

With seven children to raise, Grandma still had to help Grandpa in the fields as well as tend her flower and vegetable gardens.  That seventh and last child had arrived when Grandma was well into middle age, and Grandpa approached seventy.

Grandma’s house.  The smell of those biscuits, fried chicken and apples -- that’s what I remember.  I picture her in the doorway, plump in her flower-sprigged cotton dress, wiping her hands on her apron, pausing to smooth her pinned-up hair.  In greeting she would smile broadly and enfold us all, in turn, in a cheerful, enormous hug.  In parting she would wipe away her tears with an embroidered handkerchief.  “Ya’ll come,” she’d say, as we trooped onto the porch, and then she’d wave us out of sight down the dusty track.

She didn’t know that even then she and her way of life were anachronisms, that her way of speaking was quaint -- tomorrow’s caricature, and that she was creating for me treasured antiques for the mind.

We spent the summer I was eight there on the farm.  It comes back in vivid remnants mostly -- the shocking pink, orange and scarlet of tiny moss rose flowers lying lank upon hot, sandy earth.  Tomatoes and corn fresh from the garden.  Chickens scrambling for the parched, cracked corn I tossed.  Eggs discovered one by one in hidden nests.

One day I got very sick.  Grandma said it was dysentery.  They didn’t seem very surprised:  the outhouse, no running water, the shared dipper for drinking from the bucket that stood by the well.  Perhaps it was understandable.  The illness flashed through me so violently that within twenty-four hours I was a fevered, empty shell lying weakly in bed.  I was scarcely able to sip water and eating was something I neither desired nor was able to do.  Over the next days, I felt my already scrawny frame shrivel, grow weightless against the rough muslin sheets.

Grandma sat by me.  She brewed hot tea for me from the bark of one of her peach trees.  Peach tree tea was only one of many remedies passé down to her by her Cherokee mother.  The medicine was bitter, but the expression of concern and tenderness on her face helped it go down easier.  She cared deeply but she didn’t cluck and coo -- she was not a demonstrative woman.  For her generation, stoicism was not a repressive aberration; it was the requirement of a demanding lifestyle.  I was happy to heal for her.

     I'd like to share some ideas, opinions and some deeper thoughts about life with anyone interested.  I'll share my ideas about current events, about the challenges of being an author, and just about anything else that strikes our fancy.  This blog will be free of profanity, insults and other negative sputterings.
     Here is my first offering, because Labor day and September bring back-to-school memories. 

Mount Algebra

      Some years ago I was a (politically correct) “returning” or “non-traditional student,” (read old person) at the local community college.  I had taken five or six fun and easy courses, each rewarded with an “A” and a ratchet up in self-confidence.  Finally I felt ready to take Beginning Algebra.  Be impressed.  This move demonstrated a bravery possibly equal to that of throwing myself on a live grenade, considering the fact that I had a math phobia and had managed to graduate high school innocent of even rudimentary contact with algebra.

That first day in class I realized that my peers, most of whom were less than one-half my age, had taken algebra before and just needed a refresher.  This class was designed for them, not an algebraically uninitiated like me.  The teacher blithely prattle on about formulas, equations, real numbers, natural numbers and irrational numbers.  She wrote x-s, and y-s, a-s and b-s on the blackboard, instead of any of the aforementioned mysterious numbers and some of the letters were embraced by parentheses, which I had foolishly assumed were used only to cozy up groups of words.  The language of algebra was worse than gibberish to me.  I felt as if I was about to become an irrational number so at the break I swiftly exited, not for the scheduled ten minutes, but for good. 

Next semester I took the same class with a different teacher.  Same result, except this time I was able to delay my panic attack until class was dismissed.  Devastated, I dropped that class too.  But I had committed to earning a degree, which would be the first in my family of origin.  No academic institution would award that coveted B.A. until I had passed College Algebra, which was four courses and a universe away.

Before the start of next semester I asked around: who was the best algebra teacher in the school?  I made an appointment to talk with that awesome lady.  I related my humiliating story and in anguish, asked, “Will I have to give up getting a college degree because I can’t do algebra?”  She reassured and encouraged me.

I prepared for her class as if mounting an assault on Mount Everest.  I purchased the text book weeks beforehand and perused it until it sent me and my irritable bowel to the bathroom.  (I considered just abandoning it there for my every-morning bathroom read.)  Later when I talked to my next door neighbor, who was trained as a teacher and was home-schooling her children, she agreed to help me with homework if I got stuck.  Then I introduced myself and gave fair warning to the staff at the college math lab, where they provided free tutoring during school hours.  The first day of the class felt like a long workout on a balance beam but I stuck the landing -- er, the first class and the second.

This wonderful teacher had a precise grading system.  She awarded the usual zero to one hundred points for tests, of course, but also awarded one point each for every class attended, for each homework assignment handed in, and for each of a limited number of extra credit assignments.  Together, the points totaled one thousand, a perfect “A.”  As I looked at the syllabus with that grading system, an outrageous idea struck.  Maybe I could get an A in this class to match all the others on my transcript:  a very seductive prospect.

As the weeks went by, this possibility was nurtured by modest success.  I did every homework assignment.  I checked my own work with the answers in the book, and the few times I had to consult my next door neighbor it was because there was a misprint in the book.  It was tough.  Each homework session produced a relentless headache, which I figured was the result of newborn algebra synapses firing off furiously in my brain.  One day I felt especially overwhelmed; I decided to skip class.  No problem.  Next week I was back plodding away, still reasonably on track for my A.

Now, about my obsession with grades:  no one would ground me if I got a C or even an F, and no one rewarded or congratulated me for my As.  But during my early years in school I was an under-achiever, and now I felt I had something to prove to myself.  Those As, like potato chips, create a craving for more.

The semester wound down.  Before the final exam, I checked my accumulated points and knew I had to get at least a 92 to get the coveted A.  The exam was excruciating.  I was the last person to leave the classroom.  The teacher posted exam results on her classroom door, identified by the last four digits of the students’ social security numbers.  I held my breath as I located my grade.  91.  Mount Everest, ha!  I had failed to reach the summit; I was nauseated; maybe I was suffering from altitude sickness.  A sympathetic friend told me I should ask the teacher to give me an extra point.  I considered it, but what stopped me was the memory of that one day I had skipped class.  One day, one point.  I got what I deserved.  Two weeks later when my grade report for all my classes came in the mail, lo and behold, an A in Algebra, stacked sweetly in a column with the others.  To this day, I wonder:  did the teacher give me a pity A, or when I totaled class points, did I make a mistake in my math?

     Now the moral(s) of the story, my takeaway from this experience: first, show up; if you’re afraid of the answer, ask the question anyway; always, but always, do your best; don’t be afraid to ask for help; persistence trumps brilliance.

Happy studying,

Sharon Sterling