<p>Maybe, with this family’s resources, they will start a foundation to address further education, training and treatment of mental illness. Or they will contribute to UCSB’s medical school’s training program in a significant way, or to NAMI. I don’t believe this family will do nothing. </p>
<p>Well, I didn’t say the goal is to blame, judge or accuse the parents. The goal is to look for answers, which may involve judging what actions they took, and blaming some of their decisions for how the tragedy turned out. That is not being mean spirited, at least to me, it is just looking for answers.</p>
<p>You said this, bay:
I fail to see how shame and blame is of any utility. No one said that was the “goal”. But regardless, it doesnt seem to add much value, IMO. Invoking shame and blame just makes them feel worse. Makes me think of the pilot of the ferry that overturned. He suicided likely as a result of his shame and guilt.</p>
<p>And of course the ever-so-reliable ragsheet RadarOnline said:
If Radaronline says it we know it must be true.</p>
<p><a href=“Elliot Rodger Was Taking Xanax In Days Before Mass Shooting, Insider Says”>http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/05/elliot-rodger-xanax-shooting-2/</a></p>
<p>What does “invoking” shame and blame mean? If MH professionals conclude that the parents made a mistake by allowing ER to live on his own after expressing suicidal thoughts, and the parents feel shame as a result of that the conclusion, does it mean the conclusion should not be made? Or be kept a secret? That they might feel shame is a byproduct of the analysis, not the of goal of it. Really, how can people place potential feelings of shame above the search for answers that can save lives?</p>
<p>They already feel badly enough and are likely running multiple “what if” scenarios in their heads. People trying to accuse them of acting badly or wrongly and blaming them for his actions when it seems they acted with good intentions and the information available at the time serves no purpose. </p>
<p>YOu seem to think they made their decisins about his living arrangements unilaterally with no input from mental health professionals. I suspect that is not accurate. They reached out for help and tried to get resources to help their very disturbed son in many arenas. None of us can or will know the extent of his past treatment or the resources to which they turned to make decision for his welfare. PRivacy laws will prevent us from knowing the depth or extent of intervention or attempted interventions for him. Dont know CA law, but in my state, confidentiality/privacy continues after death. </p>
<p>We will have to agree to disagree disagree on this.</p>
<p>Privacy laws seem to be a big part of the problem here. We have posters who can’t get information on their own kids. I couldn’t find out about a dental insurance issue when I was scheduling a cleaning over winter break. That is craziness. imho.</p>
<p>" Really, how can people place potential feelings of shame above the search for answers that can save lives?"</p>
<p>This is the part I am not getting. I feel like you are saying placing blame equals search for answers. Can you clarify? </p>
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<p>No, I never said that. From what I gathered, ER’s parents assented to, and 100% financed his living arrangements. That is all I think I know about it. If we conclude this was a bad decision in this case, then everyone who was part of that decision bears some responsibility for making it. This still doesn’t “blame” them. It may have been the right decision at the time. But it might also have been done because the parents wanted ER and his problems out of their everyday lives, and not because it was intended to help him. We don’t know without more information. </p>
<p>Or if it was a recommendation, maybe it was a bad one. It doesn’t take much to hang up a therapy shingle in LA.</p>
<p>We will never know if it was 'good" or “bad” decision. Its just as possible that he could have stockpiled weapons in his car or in a storage facility.</p>
<p>Perhaps you are using the word “judge” when you mean “evaluate”. Judging or, being judgmental, is negative, critical or pejorative. Evaluating is more neutral, to explore the situation in an attempt to gain information and understanding.</p>
<p>just a thought, but some of this may be linguistic approach. I know in brainstorming sessions for management they teach to not say ‘no, but’ and replace it with ‘yes, and’ even if what you are proposing is pretty much entirely different. Give credit for the commonality, and expand with your suggestion.</p>
<p>Supposing we were talking about whether it would have been helpful to have ER live in some sort of half way house situation (which for all I know doesn’t exist). We could say, “Clearly, the parents had social role models and had identified psychiatric help for ER in the community, but do you think the more structured resources of a half way house might be a choice parents could make if they faced this? Might that help?”</p>
<p>Or you coulc say 'what little the parents did as they shoved him off on society obviously was woefully inadequate and I think they have to bear the blame for that. They should have had him in a half way house."</p>
<p>Either might draw the response that people think that would be a good or bad idea, but only the second one would likely draw a blaming the parents argument.</p>
<p>Possibly this is simplistic or unhelpful, but I think if @bay is trying to figure out what can be done in the future, that is pretty much on all of our minds. I thinkit might be good to look into whether it might help to have a mental health professional spend 20 minutes on a ‘profile’ of whatever is available, gun records, reviewing the video or social media post or whatever was the reason for the call, while the police were in transit, if they didn’t accompany the police (which it might be good to look into, as well, if police are only getting that limited amount of training.) I’m fiscally conservative, and my bias is that if we just throw more money it might go to yet another day on high speed chases, not to whatever works for this. I’d rather fund targeted, limited study on what way of handling these calls would be more effective as well as practical, then fund the thing discovered. Just my two cents, to start with.</p>
<p>First , I would like to hear a mental health professional say they could have spotted a future killer if they went along on that call. That is not what I am hearing, unfortunately. And, training or funding doesn’t seem to be the issue. Although, I realize that nothing has enough funding, I just think more money for mental health is a worthy cause that doesn’t have much to do with this case. He had his own personal one on one counselors, whatever that is. And, we’re told he had plenty of access to mental health care, although he didn’t want it because he thought he was fine. Plus, potential suicide and mass murder nearly a month later are not the same thing. Not even close. Do we do a criminal profile on every depressed person and put them on a master law enforcement watch list somewhere? Or every depressed young man who likes video games? It gets complicated.</p>
<p>@actingmt I am not a mental health professional and wasn’t speaking of a hold or anything like that, I was thinking of the need for probable cause to search the apartment when the police were already being asked to conduct a wellness check due to family and therapist concerns. Had they reviewed the videos and been particularly concerned, had the fact that the parents weren’t aware he owned guns yet he owned three come out, and had the police therefor asked him where he stored them (since they are likely not allowed under his lease) and then based probable cause on his responses and the situation illuminated by those additional facts maybe things would have been different. Maybe he would have gone ballistic about the guns and his manner might have been suspicious. Maybe when looking at all circumstances they might have checked his room and computer with legitimate probable cause. I’m hearing and sympathizing with the idea that they didn’t have time to necessessarily review the videos or check the gun registry (OK that Im a little less sympathetic with since to me what on earth is the registry for otherwise?). So I’m trying to brainstorm something that might have made a difference in this situation It might not make a difference enough times to implement it, I am just seeing it as a potential action that might have been helpful here, and I’m suggesting it for feedback.</p>
<p>I don’t interpret GP’s posts as blaming the parents. I see it more as tackling the issue of “How can we as parents find ways to make our children productive members of society?” I haven’t seen anything from the killer’s childhood that anything was done to accomplish this goal. Where is the photo of a smiling child playing ball with friends? Or bowing after a recital? Or a happy family vacation photo? So. I’m waiting.</p>
<p>I understand questions re: the parents’ 3-yr. IV financial support even w/out the child getting a job or going to school. When your kids were younger, did you give them allowance if they didn’t do their chores? Don’t they have to earn it?</p>
<p>As for the police, going forward, they should do a gun registration check. I think that’s just common sense and a no-brainer protocol to follow. Be more proactive and invite yourself inside the residence. If five officers will do the welfare check, can one view the YouTube video that alarmed the counsellor/“friend” and mother? In my town the crime rate is so low you have police officers ticketing mothers going 30 mph on a 25 mph empty road. I wouldn’t be surprised if the officers in Sta. Barbara spend more time issuing traffic tickets.</p>
<p>Going back to do the 20 days of hoping b/w April 30th and the tragic day on May 23rd, I’m really hoping something was being done those 20 days. Does anyone have a link to that April 30th video?</p>
<p>I’m also curious to know how a parent can find out if one of her child’s roommates just had a well-being check. I would like to be informed if there is a disturbing YouTube video made by a roommate, view it and assess whether the situation is dangerous to my child? I feel that my child’s life is greater than another child’s privacy rights. If I can help that disturbed roommate then I will. But how can the community help if they don’t know?</p>
<p>Lastly, some of you who had read the manifesto commented that it was well-written. Since the father is a director maybe he could have collaborated with his son in making a short film so that kid’s anger or acute shyness (depends on how the father viewed the child) is channeled into making creative art instead.</p>
<p>Every police car I see has a laptop in it. They could have looked at the video… especially if 6 people went out on the call.</p>
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Cobrat, why do you think they feel this way?</p>
<p>I think the ‘do your kids have to earn their allowance’ line of thought doesn’t necessarily take into account that people’s mental conditions might make compliance much more complicated than it would be with most of our kids. If they don’t comply, then what? If the parents thought they were doing what was best for the situation, and living at home had already ‘failed’, then what?</p>
<p>I think they did use the economic compliance card to get him into therapists, but I think they used it gingerly. I’m not sure why, but perhaps they thought they had to.</p>
<p>The early videos were not the retribution video. They were whining about girls, mostly. I don’t know for sure that viewing the videos would have been a game-changer. Gun checks on potential suicides seems like a no brainer. But, still doesn’t indicate a potential to kill 6 people next month. It could have gotten him kicked out of the building, though. If police care about that. Probably not, it’s a private leasing company. The 20 days could have made a difference. But, I’m still not sure whose job it was to do something more. No-one knew it was necessary.</p>
<p>In case people didn’t know, I live in Santa Barbara. Today, the SB News-Press published an editorial mainly about the issue of mentally ill people having access to guns. However, in this editorial the author gives you a piece of his mind about the parents. I don’t think I would go as far as this guy in condemning the parents but I do agree with much of what he said.</p>
<p>"You may also rightly ask, as we tend to do in the wake of these sorts of tragedies, “where were the parents?” Mr. Roger’s manifesto provides some insight. In it, he describes a history of hired help — psychologists, counselors, and life-skills advisors, tasked, it seems, with teaching Mr. Roger how to navigate the rocky social waters of college life. Notably absent, however, is any indication of true parental engagement or appropriately proportional concern for the severity of Mr. Roger’s mental health issues. He was, after all, clearly not just a kid having trouble adapting to college.</p>
<p>After her son ended up hospitalized with injuries sustained in an altercation in which he attempted to push several female students off a 10-foot ledge, Mr. Roger’s mother left on a vacation to Hawaii and booked Elliot into a hotel. When Elliot was prescribed Risperidone, an anti-psychotic, he refused to take it. His parents’ response? They bought him a new BMW 3 series coupe and shipped him back to Santa Barbara, presumably in hopes that in the absence of medication, a new car would do the trick. To Mr. Roger’s parents, their son’s mental illness, it seems, was a can to be kicked down the road, a buck to be passed but never stopped, and a problem, in their estimation, best placated with gifts and best attended to by others."</p>
<p>There was another article in the paper today about how the health care law has now extended coverage to former inmates. What got my attention is this quote from a former inmate.</p>
<p>"It’s been two months since Rodrigo Salido left the maximum security wing at the Santa Rita Jail, and two months without pills for his bipolar disorder.</p>
<p>The medication, Risperdal, prescribed by a jailhouse psychiatrist, had quelled Salido’s angry moods. “It helped me be more relaxed,” he said. “Not as much on the edge and feeling like everybody is out to get me.”</p>
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<p>Bullying in childhood over one’s Asian/Asian-American background*, observing disparities in treatment/perception of someone because one’s Asian/Asian-American or not, subtle and not so subtle negative stereotyping of Asian/Asian-Americans in mass media, etc.</p>
<p>There’s an article in the Huffington Post which discusses one aspect of this in relation to this case, the effeminization of Asian-American males in Western/US pop culture and how that has affected US dating culture and self-esteem among some Asian-American males. </p>
<p>While that is outside my own experiences, it is something which has also been discussed extensively in the Asian-American Studies Scholars and community over at least the last decade. </p>
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<li>I experienced some of this firsthand in first and second grade as one of only two Asian-American kids in the entire Catholic school in my old NYC neighborhood and again during junior high. Ironically, by attending a public magnet high school where slightly more than half the student body was Asian/Asian-American, where being highly intelligent/intellectual/nerdy was embraced rather than regarded as grounds for bullying, and where most families were not too far removed from their respective immigrant origins, my high school years actually did much to counteract and reinforce the “take pride in one’s origins” ideal.<br></li>
</ul>
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<p>They may not have had sufficient bandwidth within the car to view streaming videos…and that’s assuming the cars are equipped with internet access.</p>
<p>And relying on public wi-fi may not only be iffy in terms of sufficient bandwidth. Especially if others are also on it at the same time, but also a potentially serious security hazard because the connection is unsecured and unencrypted. </p>
<p>Some institutions and organizations also have restrictions/bans on using their computers to connect via public-wifi unless they have a secured VPN tunnel. Something which requires reasonably competent IT staff to set up and adds to the bandwidth overhead issues. </p>