Azelma wrote:
Well, I'd hope that counselors, psychologists, etc. are trained to recognize someone who is a potential threat to themselves or others and report it to authorities/higher ups/fellow counselors (whoever). My girlfriend is studying to be a counselor...if they think someone is going to harm themselves or others, they have an exact procedure to follow. If someone is talking real crazy in a session, then they can commit them. The VT shooter had been in Virginia Tech's counseling services, it seems that people just didn't recognize the threat. This case seems to be a simple "miss" with a package sitting unopened in an office. Had someone opened it, I would have hoped they would have taken proper steps.
This is moronic. The very fact that counseling is seen as a risk factor is a major reason why its actual usefulness is zero.
Azelma wrote:
Commit them. Get them on medication. Put them on suicide watch. Inform their family. Inform the authorities (depending on how serious a threat you think they are).
If that shit actually worked, we'd live in a way better world than we do. The fact is, it doesn't.
One of the lessons of history is that every society has some group responsible for defining social values, because humans need such values to get along. That this is a secular society has merely moved that onus from priests to shrinks, and they don't have any more of a crystal ball than the former.
Shrinks have less than zero power to accurately gauge or change others' mental states. (Less than zero means that correlation between the practice of shrinking and accurately seeing/changing reality is
less than random chance).
Excellent article that you can mine a lot of sources/information from. But I already know you'll give your usual weak nonsense like "well that's just one article" or "shrinking is probably useless but its better than nothing" or "well I still think..."
Or probably you'll (or the usual Kool-Aid squad) will say something like "Aestu hates shrinks, therefore his point is invalid". If the Kool-Aid squad were actually intelligent/educated people, they would instantly realize that is circular reasoning. However, they are not.
The very nature of your post proves my point. You want easy answers and the preservation of our social values. You aren't willing to cast all blame on social values, despite abundant objective evidence those are precisely the factors to blame for this. So you turn to a dogma that offers you all the answers in neat objective terms, even though those "objective" answers are provably wrong.
It is no different than horology, theology or phrenology, other fields that are "objective", "scientific", and "documented", but also completely wrong.
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There are all sorts of things you can do if someone is talking to you and says something like "I've thought about shooting people" -- that's a red flag that should be taken quite seriously, and can be.
This is fear talking. In most cases, such as this one, the behavior is without stated threats, and most threats/remarks are made precisely because the person has no power or inclination to carry them out.
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To a certain extent, most definitely. Some risks are more serious than others. There's a few homeless people around my office who are crazy. One guy is clearly schizophrenic, always yelling obscenities at someone who isn't there. Is he a "risk" to the public? Yes, he could flip out and attack someone, or run out into traffic, or any number of things. His risk is minimal compared to a crazy like this guy who wasn't homeless, had access to some sort of cash to get weapons, was smart/mentally capable enough to plan out an attack, and so on.
Another case of socially motivated fear. Homeless people are often crazy but rarely dangerous. If they were dangerous, they wouldn't be on the streets, they'd be behind bars. They are typically so malnourished that they pose no real threat, and they generally don't do the high-risk things you describe because, like rats, they're excellent at just staying alive.
The only reason to persecute homeless people (or other socially aberrant individuals) in the way you describe is socially motivated fear.
