Tim Oltersdorf
Active member
I am a radiologist not a psychiatrist but I can read the medical literature and have dealt with truly crazy people probably more then most. As my wife says:"It takes one to know one." Here are some cold hard facts. For the vast majority of mentally ill people we don't know what causes their illness and the treatment of mental illness is primitive mainly suppressing the symptoms but not curing the disease. There is no treatment breakthrough for mental illness on the horizon. The vast majority of the mentally ill are not violent but there is an increased incidence of violence among the mentally ill. Some of the mentally ill resist treatment and forced treatment and/or involuntary commitment is extraordinarily difficult because of laws and regulations protecting their rights. There is not enough money to treat these people hence they are released into the general population often with no treatment or followup. There is a popular perception among the public that mental hospitals are a hotbed of evil health care workers who perform unethical experiments, sexually abuse, illegally incarcerate, beat, electroshock, bully and lobotomize often normal, sane victims. This stereotype is fed by Hollywood movies ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kill Bill, etc.) and actual past abuses. These abuses still do occur in foreign countries with totalitarian regimes. I have never seen this occur but there is the rare occurrence reported in the news almost always by an aide. This results in public resistance to mental health treatment. The truly crazy are relatively easy to recognize the psychotics such as catatonic schizophrenics. A more difficult problem is the evil person; one who lacks compassion for his fellow man, one who lacks a conscience, who has violent anger issues, who tortures and bullies. You probably have met these people. The prisons are full of them. They are only deterred by self preservation instincts from murder. Combine a mental illness or that doesn't possess this instinct with evil and you get mass murder followed by suicide. Then there is the problem of spotting the not quit crazy/evil that could be tipped into insanity by outside influences; bullied by others, addicted to violent video games, gangsta social culture, a lack of religious morality, (I am not religious but I feel it never hurts to have hellfire preventing you from doing wrong.) etc. I have read articles that seriously suggested (by a non medical liberal) that anyone who is or has been on Prozac like drugs should be banned for life from possessing a firearm. These are among the widest prescribed drugs in the USA. So where does that leave us, probably not in a good place. We can nibble at the problem by better reporting of serious mental illness to a central data base but beyond that I don't have an answer. This will be left to solve by our "enlightened, progressive" leaders. God help us. Tim
Last edited:
Heck,at some time or other,one might have shown up at a Benchrest Match disguised as a legitimate competitor.
