School Shooters: Products of Spiritual Bankruptcy

The Five Factor Formula Has Been Repeated Over and Over Again
Daria M. Brezinski, PhD

After 25 years of research and investigation pertaining to school shooters, a formula emerges that defines ALL Mass Shooters which has replicated over and over again (even with suicide victims) throughout the years. This document represents the accumulation and integration of studies and conclusions from various disciplines. The result is a five prong blueprint which illuminates the inability of several systems, entities, institutions and enterprises to collaborate published data into a concise prescription for prevention.

Children are not born ‘bad’. Calling children ‘evil’ and ‘bad’ misses the mark (sin). Adults have lost their orientation towards protecting children by giving over their power, control and instincts, giving up their rights, to indiscriminate sources. It is time to reverse this process.

THE FORMULA

For years, I referred to ADD and ADHD as children needing attention or connection seeking behavior because studies demonstrate that from the manner in which children are birthed, separated from mother to how they are raised, to technology and education has created generational isolation, detachment and disconnection. Here are some of the studies plus additional research gathered to promote the formula for mass gun shooters:

FORMULA:

Mass Shooters=

1. Lack of Love and Bonding+ at formative stages through birthing practices, adoption or too early separation from mother leads to
2. Depression/Anxiety/Stress+ due to abandonment and separation issues which leads to being
3. Prescribed Psychotropic Drugs and Anti-Depressants+ which leads to aggressive and paranoid side effects because drugs have not been tested on the growing, electro-chemical balance of the child/teen brain often forced by
4. School Districts and Psychiatrists+ then the
5. Access to Guns+ relieves the mental delusions that follow the drugs.

This doesn’t happen all at once…it is a gradual progression from the very beginning of life!

And after two mass shooting in schools where their children died, several parents instinctively discovered the avenues towards change directly related to the results in this research.

SANDY HOOK

Nicole Hockley and Mark Burden started Sandy Hook Promise after their young children were massacred at Sandy Hook. “We train students and we train teachers and we train educators with the tools how to recognize these people and with the tools of how to intervene and with the tools to get them to the help that they need before they pick up a gun or any other weapon and commit a horrible tragedy,” Barden said. “We have a solution right here…We need to do this nationally, now.” “Jackie is a career educator … she will tell you that school teachers have more than enough responsibilities right now than to have the awesome responsibility of lethal force to take a life,” Barden said. “Nobody wants to see a shootout in a school and a deranged sociopath on his way to commit an act of murder in a school, knowing the outcome is going to be suicide, is not going to care if there’s somebody there with a gun. That’s their plan anyway.”

Hockley said instead of giving teachers guns, “I would rather arm them with the knowledge of how to prevent these acts from happening in the first place. How do you identify the kids in your class that are most at risk and then most importantly within a school, how do we have a safety-assessment program so that schools know how to deal with all these threats?” “This is about prevention,” she said. “Let’s talk about prevention. There is so much we can do to help people before it reaches that point.”

COLUMBINE

Darrell Scott, whose daughter, Rachel, was killed at Columbine High School in 1999, he and his wife, Sandy, have learned since the shooting through their program Rachael’s Challenge, that there are preventative solutions. The program his family started after Rachel’s death addresses bullying in schools.

“If you don’t mind, I just want to share with you that we’ve learned over the years, as we’ve worked with millions and millions of young people…that we must create a culture of connectedness. We must create a culture in which our classmates become our friends. That’s something we’ve learned how to do over the years. We have over 28 different programs, and we see children connect with one another. Every single one of these school shootings has been from young men, who are disconnected. And we talk a lot about the mental health issues, but it actually goes deeper than that. There are a lot of mentally ill children that are kind and compassionate. And so, we work with those children every single day of the school year, but there’s always the one with the propensity to violence. So, one of the things we have learned, and we train children and we train teachers, the focus must not be on just unity or diversity. If you focus too much on diversity, you create division. If you focus too much on unity, you’ll create compromise. But if you focus on relatedness, and how we can relate with one another, then you can celebrate the diversity, and you can see the unity take place. I’m for diversity. I’m all for unity. But the focus really needs to be on “how can we connect.“

In addition to Rachael’s Challenge, the Scott’s promote Kickstarter Kids, The Uncommon Athlete and Love and Logic Programs…all about Relationships and Connection NOT more guns but more care.

THE RESEARCH

The first safe and secure environment a child experiences is the sound from mother’s heartbeat in the womb. Neurophysiologists and psychologists emphasize that pregnancy to age 6 years old are the defining stages for modeling all forms of behavior. These patterns are the roots of all future responses, communications, drives and conduct. If the child has not lovingly bonded with the mother during these stages, anti-social neuroses, psychoses and pathologies take root. Boys need this bonding process more than girls, although both are equally in need of mothering. No intellectual intervention, product, pill, drug or substitute can replace this need. By pre-pubescence and adolescence, it is too late.

If the environment is prolific with a toxic mix of abuse, neglect, poverty, family drug use, as well as violent television, video games, movies and music combined with large school populations (more than 300), emphasis on intellect and physical prowess rather than emotional and spiritual, lack of a spiritual base (hope), it magnifies the abandonment and separation issues. In its formulation stage, the brain’s limbic system, the seat of conscience, breaks down its filters, it desensitizes the forebrain disconnecting the link of right and wrong to the rational brain in the frontal lobes. Anti-social behaviors begin to emerge fueled by cultural and societal stimuli- Epigenetics.

Children are than prescribed pharmaceutical mind-altering drugs to suppress these behaviors. With the onset of puberty for boys, the brain produces high levels of testosterone from ages 14-25 as the brain is evolving into its final stage of development. This onslaught of testosterone and the changing brain chemistry, electromagnetic composition and loss of limbic filters enables the irrational behavior and subliminal anger, suppressed over the years from antidepressants which are no longer effective, for the body to implode (suicide) or explode (homicide). Psychology and psychiatry have redefined normal childhood behaviors, curiosity and exuberance as deficits rather than assets. Young teachers and parents unskilled in parenting techniques, child development and strategies are at the mercy of specialists. Since most parents are young, it is only natural to seek the advice and counsel of elders in child rearing. However, the advice today is based on methods that demand scrutiny, examination, review, research, and immediate attention and alteration.

Access to guns and explosive devices combined with a lack of conscience, boys live out fantasies that have long been festering and developing in thoughts of retaliation for lost childhoods by imposing lost innocence on others who are vulnerable. The classic Newtonian worldview where the brain is separated from the rest of the human condition enables children and adults to function at high levels intellectually while disconnected from emotional and spiritual realms until a minor incident sends the shooter over the threshold paving the way for future tragedy. This is not something that develops in puberty but long before it.

MATERNAL BONDING

Dr. James Prescott, former Director of the National Institute of Health Child Research and Development Division, conducted a twenty year study with the largest staff of any federal agency in the US. While other countries took advantage of the research, the United States has not. Carl Sagan, physicist and Director of Laboratory for Planetary Studies, in the last chapter in his book Cosmos, hailed Dr. Prescott as the “only living scientist whose work speaks for the earth”. Dr. Prescott’s theory of sensory deprivation of physical affection during the formative years of brain development- failure to develop affectional bonds- is the major cause of alienation, violence and substance abuse in our culture. His studies of pathologically violent juveniles and adults propose that the cerebellum is the master integrating and regulatory system of sensory, emotional and motor processes. The 20 year study of 49 primitive countries correctly predicted violence due to this lack of sensory development.

Dr. James Prescott has contributed extensively to the understanding of violence, drug and alcohol abuse and anti-social deviant behavior. Through his study, Dr. Prescott found that separating the mother from the child at birth and during the first three years of life conclusively predetermined violence and anti-social behavior. (In addition, Dr. Prescott’s findings were so politically inflammatory, that he was fired from his position at the NIH). Dr. Prescott’s documentary “Rock-A-Bye-Baby” produced by Time Life describes the emotional development of infants and child rearing practices both in humans and monkeys. The contact of the child to the mother represents the first socio-emotional interaction and lays the framework for its later behaviors. The social animals isolated from their mothers and receiving no nurturing physical affection develop severe depression and can die from such deprivation. In addition, maternal-infant isolation that leads to sensory deprivation can cause developmental brain damage. These facts show that mother love has a neurobiological basis that is essential to life.

Dr. Harry Harlow’s, an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development with surrogate mothers has shown that monkeys raised alone in an environment without mother and peers prefer to be with a cloth-covered mother surrogate without milk bottle rather than with a wire-care surrogate mother that provides a milk bottle, even when hungry. They cling to their cloth-covered wooden dolls when they are frightened and they experience the same emotional stress other social animal’s experience when isolated from their surrogate mothers. These experiments show that the need for a loving relationship is stronger than the mere need for food even when hungry. Love-hunger is stronger than food-hunger.

The single greatest contribution to understanding Drs. William Mason, Psychology Department University of California Primate Research Center, and Gershol Berkson provided the mother-infant separation syndrome in their swinging mother surrogate experiments where the importance of body movement in mother-infant bonding was documented. Monkeys raised singly in cages with stationary cloth mother surrogates were compared to those raised with swinging cloth mother surrogates. The infant monkeys reared on the stationary mother surrogate developed all of the abnormalities which isolation-reared monkeys develop- depression, social withdrawal, aversion to touch, stereotypical rocking and chronic toe and penis anti-social behavior. The infant monkeys reared on swinging surrogate mother developed normally with only minor stimulus-seeking behaviors. Depression, social withdrawal and avoidance of touch were absent in the swinging mother surrogate mother reared infants.

There are good reasons why infants and children seek to be carried on the body of their mothers and fathers and love to be rocked to sleep. Dr. Prescott experiments examined the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the process. Brain-behavioral studies on the effects of loss of mother love on the structural and functional development of the brain were conducted. These studies documented both the structural abnormalities of brain cells and functional abnormalities.

Studies by Dr. Selma Fraiberg, University of Michigan Psychoanalytic Training Institute author of The Magic Years, on congenitally blind children demonstrated that when these blind children received sufficient body contact and movement stimulation from their parents, they develop normal social-emotional behaviors. These effects are dramatically portrayed in Dr. Prescott’s documentary as well as the studies of Dr. Mary Neal who constructed a swinging bassinet for premature babies. The premature babies that were given this artificial body movement stimulation showed accelerated neuro-maturation, as reflected in head movements, crawling, grasping and other reflexes. These infants gained weight faster, has less health problems, and were discharged earlier from the hospital than non-moved premature ones.

The documentary also demonstrates how a retarded institutionalized infant of six months of age can have that retardation reversed when provided a loving substitute mother in an intense ‘one-to-one’ relationship. The longer the deprivation and the later the mother substitute is provided such infants, the less recovery from the damage is possible.

Dr. Prescott’s work now entitled ‘Somato-Sensory Affectional Deprivation Syndrome’ demonstrates the importance of the vestibular-cerebellar sensory system in understanding the brain structures and processes involved in maternal-infant social deprivation syndrome. The sensory neurophysical processes that mediate the pathological behaviors resulting from the loss of mother love is critical to the motor regulatory system of healthy children.

The Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California has proven that the emotional state of a child can dramatically affect early brain development and learning. The article “What New Research on the Heart and Brain Tell Us About Our Youngest Children” by eminent neuroscientist, Karl Pribrim, M.D. and Deborah Rozman, Ph.D. provides new information on how the heart communicates to the brain.

The Institute of HeartMath in California for the last decade has studied the effects of love and affection on the seritonin level of the brain responses. The last decade has also produced an abundance of new brain research that is making many adults rethink traditional approaches to teaching and the way children learn. Alongside this new breaking information is a much quieter but perhaps equally significant collection of research on the role of the heart in learning and intelligence. Biologically, emotionally, and metaphorically, the heart is now being seen as a major factor in how children process information, how the mechanism of their memory works, and even how enhanced cognitive function comes about. Published scientific research by the Institute of HeartMath (American Journal of Cardiology) documents how emotional states literally affect the order of heart rhythm. Positive emotions like appreciation or care, create ordered heart rhythms while unhealthy emotional states, especially prolonged ones, created disordered heart rhythms. This is significant because these rhythms of the heart travel back up to the brain and affect brain function. Called by researchers ‘cortical facilitation’ or ‘cortical inhibition’, educators clearly see the link in the classroom because stressed or distraught students make poor students. HeartMath explains the physiological mechanisms by which the heart communicates with the brain, thereby influencing information processing, perception, emotions and health. HeartMath concurs with Dr. Prescott’s finding in that love, physical bonding and affection at early stages of development support the development of healthy human adults, decrease the likelihood of violence and anti-social behaviors, AND can actually alter DNA encoding.

Effects of Sensory Deprivation on Infants

Since medieval and ancient times, the knowledge that deprivation of sensory stimuli like the mothers’ voice and vision in early time of human life will cause irreversible mental retardation in the child. Also, the prevention of child free-play, will cause intellectual deficits in the adult. But eyes, ears and the nose are not the only human sensory systems.

Additionally, there are the two body sensor systems, the ‘somatosensors’. One is the vestibular sensor for maintaining orientation and upright walk. The other one is the skin, for sensing touch. These neglected senses are of overwhelming importance for the development of social abilities for adult life. Its deprivation in childhood is a major cause for adult and teen violence.

Brain-Mind Research

Much of the work at Stanford University by Carl Pribrim today on the holographic brain specifically conveys that children who are deprived of love and affection in the early years, develop a split brain phenomena. That is, the primal brain activates flight and fright and the fore-brain, the seat of intelligence, shuts down to a protective modality. Learning and fear do not exist in the same domain. If a child has emotional scarring from lack of a ‘safe’ environment, the child will not and cannot retain information and build neurons of the brain conducive to learning in the ‘fright’ modality.

Foreign Application of Research

In the late 1980’s, Swedish Pediatrics Associates became consumed with Dr. Prescott’s findings. Convincing legislators in that country of its significance, laws were mandated that mothers would be salaried to stay home and raise their children for the first year of the child’s life. Within a few years, studies conducted by the Pediatrics Associates concluded that the government was saving thousands of dollars with such a move, crime had diminished, as well as violence. The government then decided to extend the period to three years for a mother to stay home. The sayings to the government with this move were estimated to be $471,000 per youth offender ages 9-12. When American incarcerated youths are set in the equation, taxpayers pay $25,000- $30,000 per year per inmate. If only HALF of the inmates are deterred from this move, the savings in taxes would be staggering.

The following year, Sweden extended the law to fathers as well. Neighboring countries- Holland, Denmark and others- witnessing the effects on this legislation all formulated legislation that enabled mothers to stay home with their children for the first three years of life.

Bridging the Generation Gap in Child Care

Children MUST in the developmental years be raised in nurturing environments not the stranger based, factory environment of day-care. In older European, Oriental and Eastern cultures, when the mother gave birth and returned to the fields, grandmother raised the child. Our children need loving environments with which to grow. If children must be left in day care, then loving surrogates must be employed. With the senior population about to double in the next five to ten years, with the need for mothers to work both economically and psychically, with the rise of divorce, what hinders the merger of these factors? We can create one-on-one situations for children by encouraging seniors and elderly to volunteer in day-care’s or stay with grandchildren.

International Response

The World Health Organization and UNICEF recommended breast-feeding for ‘two years and beyond’ (Innocenti Declaration). For at least one full year, the American Academy of Pediatrics in their revised policy statement Breast-feeding and the Use of Human Milk advises mothers to do the same. This action was initiated due to mounting evidence that indicated that traditional ‘institutionalized day care” which involves ‘stranger care’ not only separates infants and very young children from their mothers and their nurturing love and affection, but also places them at ‘high-risk’ for abnormal brain-behavioral development. Day Care also impairs or prevents breast-feeding which is essential for normal immunological health and brain development. Breast-feeding is intimately linked to the child-care reform agenda. Yet, many newborns and infants are deprived of this best ‘head start’ because our socio-economic based child-care system discourages- if not prevents- women from being ‘nurturing mothers’ and from breast-feeding their infants for the time periods recommended by the WHO, UNISEF and the American Academy of Pediatrics. This dilemma is also recognized in breast cancer research that postulates that the inability for the mammalian glands to function normally in birthing mothers may clog and form growths leading to future breast cancer.

Of special interest is the loss of amino acid-tryptophan- necessary for brain serotonin development and other essential brain nutrients found only in breast milk and absent in formula milk which poses special risks for abnormal brain development in formula fed infants. Deficiency in brain serotonin has been well established in depressive, impulse control and violent behaviors. The report that millions of children and youth have been prescribed serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) to control depression is indicative of the magnitude of the problem. Prozac prescriptions alone have increased 46% for those 13-18 years of age. It is highly unlikely that any of these children have been breast-fed for two years or beyond. Prevention is easy if only we had the courage and wisdom to act on the common sense and hard science before us.

In Pediatrics, Dr. Horwood and Fergusson from the Christchurch School of Medicine, New Zealand noted:

“Breast-feeding is associated with small but detectable increases in cognitive ability and educational achievement. These effects are 1) Pervasive being reflected in a range of measures including standardized tests, teacher ratings and academic outcomes in high school; and 2) relatively long-lived, extending throughout childhood into young adulthood.

ANTI-DEPRESSANTS

The ONE thread that links all school shooters is the one unspeakable truth the media will not cover. ALL school shooters have been on or were detoxifying from one or a number of anti-depressants at the time of shooting. Antidepressants disconnect individuals from their emotional life and turn them into psychopaths while about 4% become maniacal. These disconnected and numbed youths usually take SSR5 drugs like Prozac, Zolophat or Paxal. Society as a whole has become complicit by finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity by drugging children into complacency instead of spending the time to uncover underlying problems or preventing them.

The information will never be revealed or connected directly to school shootings because the pharmaceutical companies are the major advertisers, contributors and sponsors for the major media corporations, politicians and medical professionals. Working in consort with the pharmaceutical companies, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has converted nearly all of life’s stresses and bad habits into mental disorders. Children are drugged accordingly. The long-term consequences and effects on the brain and behavior are unknown to professionals because only recently are the chemical, magnetic and electrical components of the brain under serious study. Individuals who are out of balance, depressed or suffering from one psychological dysfunction or another are tipped into violent behavior through the use of over the counter and prescription drugs.

Rather than changing the Industrial Infrastructure of Education that was designed to create good taxpayers and assembly line workers, some three years after the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Act was passed, broadening the definition of ‘handicapped’ to include ‘mental disturbance’. This gave psychiatry the green light to label and drug children into compliance. A whole new category for children emerged ‘Behavior Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence’. The Individuals with Disabilities Act was passed providing ‘special education’ classes for ‘learning disabled’ children. Within two years, the number of children labeled emotionally handicapped reached more than 782,000. This figure soared to 1.9 million in 1989 and by 1996, it reached 2.6 million. In 2015, the number soared to 6.5 million or 13% of the student population. Yet Kevin Dwyer, assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists admitted that the way ‘emotional disorders’ are diagnosed is ‘not a science’. The number of cases of children with emotional disorders has been out of control.

In 1990, the lucrative doors were opened to a cash welfare program to low-income parents whose children were diagnosed with ADHD. A family could get more than $450 a month then, now $750, for each child. In 1989, children with ADHD made up 5% of the disabled population. In 1991, education grants also funded schools additional $400 in annual grants money for each child. The same year, the Department of Education recognized it as a handicap providing children with special services. In 1997, 4.4 million children were diagnosed with ADHD. In 1996, $15 billion was spent annually on the diagnosis, treatment and study of these so-called disorders. Today, there are 6.2 million children ages 3-17 have been diagnosed 15% of boys and 8% of girls with $9 billion in SSI payments.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) first published in 1954 listed 112 maladies. In 1994, there are more than 370 disorders. In the 2013 publication, the DSM is converting nearly all of life’s stresses and bad habits into mental disorders. Almost everything we feel or do is listed somewhere in the DSM as an indicator of some dreaded disorder. Psychiatrists and psychologists are free to declare as many people disordered as they wish. This reinforces for us to look for psychiatric answers to every social and personal problem. Note that these illnesses have now become ‘mental disorder’ instead of ‘emotional’ because the ability to study the tangible aspects of the brain is far richer than the intangible of feelings and emotions. It is also more socially acceptable and politically correct to discuss the brain than feelings.

Between 1986 and 1994, the homicide rate by 14-17 year olds increased by 435% in Arkansas. The number of juvenile arrests for violent crime in the state between 1989 and 1995 increased 180%. What the media neglects to convey to the public is the fact that most of the children today committing violent crimes is or has been on prescription mind-altering drugs. Taking drugs and withdrawal from them produce side effects, one of which is violent behavior. In 1997, the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law published data on how the typical patient in prison is a 19 year-old with a history of substance abuse when treated on psychotropic drugs had ‘high incidence of aggression’ reinforcing the notion that youth crime and prescription drugs are interrelated. In 2015, some 85% get psychotropic drugs in prison perpetuating the abuse after leaving the institution.

SCHOOL SHOOTERS AND THEIR DRUGS

PLEASE NOTE: Prescription Drug tests are NEVER conducted on children. For the most part, the adult white male has been the recipient. The developing brain and body of a child who is subjected to drugs at earlier and earlier ages whose dosages and contents are meant for adults, is a travesty imposed on our children whose consequences are being felt both currently and generationally as epigenetics has revealed in multitudes of studies. That children are have been prescribed drugs for depression, anxiety, autism, and a host of other issues as a ‘quick-fix’ solution instead of uncovering the existing cause and developing coping and life skills, is causing this breakdown in youths today as well as their children and beyond.

In addition, most children are prescribed more than one psychotropic or antidepressant. Drugs are tested in isolation, not in combination. Therefore, no one can ever predict the consequences of mixing ANY two pills much less three or more. For a child, it could be lethal not just for life and mental health but also for bodily function breakdown. When administered a drug, there is often an additional consequence, like constipation or migraines. This next symptom prompts yet another prescription cure. The consequence is a cascade of tablets as antidote for each medication’s side effects.

THE SHOOTERS

December 12, 2012, Adam Lanza may have had diagnosed with both a mental illness and/or Asperger’s, combined with the drugs for it- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), Guanfacine (Intuniv), iprazole (Abilify), Guanfacine (Intuniv), all of which have serious side effects while taking as well as coming down off of them. He was placed in a nursery within six weeks of birth and then his mother, after signs of violence began to emerge during the pre-pubescent stage, mother decided to stay home and bond with the child but by then, it is too late.

February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz was adopted at an early age lacking bonding with the biological mother, diagnosed with autism, given anti-depressants and psychotropic drugs, his aggressive behavior escalated as his adoptive father and then mother died increasing his depression and anxiety. His dosage increased as well as his paranoid mind and his aggressive behavior. With access to guns, he relieved his confused mind.

It is time to be proactive rather than reactive.

Here are some of the profiles of other school shooters:

November 20, 1986: Rod Matthews, 14, beat a classmate to death with a bat in the woods near his home in Canton, Mass. Though Rod was extremely bright, he was put on Ritalin when he was in third grade.

September 26, 1988: 19 year-old James Wilson went on a shooting rampage at Greenwood elementary school in South Carolina. Two children were killed and nine others wounded. Wilson had been treated by a Greenwood psychiatrist since age 14, and given psychiatric drugs including Xanax, Valium, Vistaril, Mellari, Thorazine, Tofranil and Halicon. He was withdrawing from Xanax at the time of the shooting.

October 17, 1995, Brian Pruitt, 16, fatally stabbed his grandparents. The prosecutor in his murder trial said he had a history of psychiatric treatment and was prescribed medication for depression.

February 19,1996: Timmy Bection, 10, grabbed his three-year-old niece as a shield and aimed a shotgun at a sheriff’s deputy who accompanied a truant officer to his home. Becton had been taken to a psychiatrist in January to cure his dislike of school and was put on Prozac. His parents stated that when the dosage was increased, Timmy became violent.

July 1996: In Japan, a 16-year-old high school student was stabbed by two boys 15 and 16 who were taking sleeping pills because it made them feel ‘invincible’.

September 27, 1997: A 16 year-old New Jersey boy raped and strangled to death an 11-year-old who was selling door-to-door for the PTA. The boy took graphic pictures of the murder and told his mother he was trying to kill his doctor because he was not listening. The boy was heavily medicated on antidepressants.

May 21, 1998: Before going on a wild shooting spree in Oregon, 14-year-old Kip Kinkel had been attending anger classes while taking Prozac and Ritalin. He shot his parents as well as 26 others killing four.

April 20, 1999: Following the chain of events prior to the shootings, Eric Harris was planning his future in an attempt to join the military. Why would a youth who was contemplating murder and suicide plan for future careers? Mr. Harris of Littleton, Colorado was under psychiatric care for violence and depression and medicated on Luvox.

April 16, 2007; Was it mind altering drugs that were the tipping point, yet again, for Cho? DRUG RECORDS SEALED

Other suicides and homicides over the years since the 1960’s from prescription drugs: these are teens and individuals who had everything to live for….

August 1966 Texas mass shooter 16 people Charles Whitman- Amphetamines and Barbiturates

March 1981 Reagon shooter John Hinkley- Valium

April 1989 6 killed William Cruse- psychotropic drugs

1990 Del Shannon suicide Prozac

July 1991 killed 17 Jeffrey Dahmer- antidepressants and tranquilizers

May 1997 rape and kill 7 year old Jeremy Strohmeyer- Dexedrine

1998 Brynn Hartman killed husband and self- Zoloft

1998 Michael Hutchence hanged self- antidepressants

1998 Westside Middle School 5 killed 10 wounded- Ritalin

1998 Thurston High School 2 killed 22 wounded- Prozac

January 2000 Catlin McClintock hanged self- Zoloft

December 2000 Jacob Williams hanged self- Zoloft

2001 Bishop Neuman High School 1 wounded- Prozac

2001 Granite Hills High School- 5 wounded- Celexa and Effexor

2001- Centenntial High School- 1 killed- Effexor

June 2001 drowned her 5 children Andrea Yates- Effexor and Remeron

July 2001 Brandon Ferris hanged self- Zoloft

November 2001 kills parents Zoloft

2002 Appalachian School of Law 2 killed 5 injured- Psychtropic Drugs

February 2002 Cecily Bostock stabbed herself to death- Paxil

May 2003Sharon Gutshell- Paxil

July 2003 Matthew Stubing jumped off bridge- Lexapro

August 2003 Julie Woodard suicide- Zoloft

August 2003 Brandon Pingleton hanged self –Zoloft

October 2003 Beth Winter hanged self- Paxil

2004 Columbia High School- 1 killed

February 2004 Kaitlyn Kennedy- Zoloft

October 2006 Molly Miller- Paxil

Mind altering drugs have a serious and detrimental effect on the evolving child mind. Some of the effects listed in Facts and Comparisons include:

• Tranquilizers and anti-psychotics cause difficulty in thinking, poor concentration, emotional problems, nightmares, depression, tardive dyskinesia- sudden uncontrollable spasms in all parts of the body, akathisia- severe restlessness causing agitation and psychosis, neuroleptic malignant Syndrome- altered mental states, irregular pulse and heart beat. Other symptoms include confusion, hallucinations, and severe depression even seizures. Luvox carries a warning of mania, a dangerous and violence-prone mental derangement characterized by extreme excitement and delusion. Paxil warning label also includes mania, along with insomnia, anxiety, agitation, confusion, amnesia, depression, paranoid reaction, psychosis, hostility, delirium, hallucinations, abnormal thinking, depersonalization and lack of emotion among others.
• Anti-depressants can cause difficulty thinking, confusion, poor concentration, panic, extreme restlessness, delusions, manic reactions, delirium, etc.
• Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors can cause anxiety, agitation, bizarre dreams, confusion, suicidal thoughts, hostility and violent behavior.
• Ritalin side effects include nervousness, insomnia, hypersensitivity, and even Tourette’s syndrome.

RAMIFICATIONS OF DRUGS ON CHILD

The body is an extremely complex biochemical and electromagnetic mechanism that regulates itself into harmony and rhythm with every other aspect of the body. When these chemicals are introduced, the body must over compensate in other ways. A child, who is placed on an anti-depressant, submerges feelings rather than learning the life skills to deal with them. Like a pressure cooker waiting to explode, the feelings lie deep and hidden until the effects of the drug are countered by the body growing to puberty, adulthood or extreme stress. It is then that all of the minor conflicts and agitation come exploding to the surface in rage. Taunting peers, pressures of a growing body in puberty, early separation from parents, death of someone close, all compound the agitated state of a child on anti-depressants drugs. This coupled with images from violent television, computer games and movie viewing, creates a climate in this country to settle uncomfortable or angry feelings with violence through tragedies such as Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas.

RESEARCH STUDIES, TEST AND RESULTS

Research results must be viewed with a grain of salt and a clear investigative eye. Most research today is funded by the very individuals, groups, corporations that stand to benefit from the results. For example, pharmaceutical companies fund universities for prescription research or physicians for trials. Several professors have been fired for skewing results of tests towards partisan parties. So studies can often be incorrect.

VA TECH SHOOTER PERSONAL INFORMATION

Two hard working, quiet, law-abiding immigrant Korean parents, looking for the American dream for themselves and their children are wondering what they did to produce a mass murderer at Virginia Tech.

Here is a brief overview of what is known about the shooters history:

-According to Seung-Hui Cho’s great aunt, he was ‘cold, distant and didn’t speak’ BEFORE he left Korea.
-In addition, she stated that ‘he did not speak to his mother or his great-aunt’ the models of nurturing, love and compassion.
-When he came to the US at eight years old, a formative stage of development, he may have been diagnosed as autistic because of his silence and behavior but he was not.
-Both parents worked all of his life thus having him fend for himself in a new country and culture.
-He managed to function for at least ten years in the public school system in Virginia without speaking or calling attention to himself.
-In middle school, the same year of the Columbine shootings, he was suspended for a month for having a 15 member ‘hit list’.
-In his public speaking classes, he never spoke.
-At the age of 13, he wrote about pedophilia and child molestation in his papers- another red flag for any astute psychologist.
-All of his writings reflect more than unusual level of violence and anger for a child his age.
-In high school, he enjoyed the video game ‘Counter-strike’ and appears to have viewed violent films. In the dorm, he watched boxing.
-In high school, he voluntarily participated in the Science Club, was in accelerated and honors classes.
-He was always the observer and never the participant.
-In ’05, he was thrown out of a poetry class for his threatening writing.
-Around the same time, he was caught stalking girls, for which he was detained by the courts and put into a mental institution for 48 hours. He was of legal adult age so his parents may NOT have been notified of his actions.
-MOST LIKELY, while in the institution, he was prescribed anti-depressants or other mind-altering drugs.
-In February ‘07, he began plotting his attack.
-His destiny after graduation- continuing education and/or job is unknown.

This scenario alone gives credence for a study into the possibility of physical, mental or sexual abuse if not abandonment. Judging from the timeline when this all began as far back as eight years old, it would appear that this abuse occurred during the formative years and pre-verbal stages of life. Compounded by the Korean culture which is undemonstrative with regards to feelings and affection as well as non-recognition of emotions as a cause of illness, his parents may not have moved here for the American dream as much as an escape from something left behind. Pictures of the family’s Korean apartment, displays poverty and cramped quarters. Seung-Hui Cho appears to have lost his spirit and separated from his body long before he arrived on the Western shores. Seung-Hui Cho is a product of a world that lacks compassion, connectedness and empathy.

ACCESS TO GUNS

The combination of separation anxiety, disconnection and lack of bonding leading to anxiety, depression and stress subjugated by prescription drugs whose side effects are violence, agitation, paranoia, severe depression and delusions is exacerbated with the ability to purchase guns. The study of each shooter whether they are in schools or public establishments will demonstrate that prescription drugs are the underlying cause of mass shooters. If these automatic weapons were not available, the most harm that a person would inflict would be a knife, pipe or other weapon which would not inflict mass causalities.  As the opioid crisis has come to be recognized a national disaster implemented by the pharmaceutical industry, so is the mass shooting crisis yet another reflection of the prescription drugs available in the United States.

An automatic weapon fires a bullet at 2,182 mph or 332 feet per second. At that velocity, the organs in the body, everything it touches explodes into pieces. A hand gun travels 15 feet per second enabled the bullet to enter the body forming a tunnel passing through the body. At this rate, the majority of people survive. At the rate of an automatic gun, there is no chance of survival.

As a psychologist, the notion of arming former military to guard the schools is a nightmare. The military are trained to kill. They ‘react’ from their training; they do not ‘respond’. In addition, the numbers of former military suffering from PTSD themselves is staggering. Are these the individuals who would guard and protect our children when they suffer from mental illnesses themselves?

If the intent is to reduce these mass tragedies, then the removal of the kinds of weapons that destroy the body on impact is the appropriate solution.

EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Part of the problem is also that the infrastructure of the educational system which is still back in the industrial revolution that focused on creating tax paying citizens, good soldiers, who followed the leader and citizens who did not question authority and learned whatever they were told from the ‘sage on the stage’. In the age of technology, this infrastructure is obsolete. The structure requires teachers to have students sit in rows, sitting still most of the day (even though research demonstrates that their little bodies cannot tolerate this), keeping quiet and speak when spoken to, fitting the mold of how a ‘good student’ needs to behave. The curriculum is designed to teach from the ‘neck up’ or intellectual intelligence reflecting little concern for the emotional intelligence, the soul or spirit of the child, independence or creativity. Rather, everyone must ‘fit the mold’.

Consequently, in order for these 21^st century students who have access to information at earlier and earlier ages, who, at times know more on a topic than the teacher, who have access to information at a moment’s notice and use technology as an extension of their appendages, must conform to a static, autocratic instructor who has been inappropriately trained for the 19^th century learner.  Therefore, the faculty and administration with inappropriate training and skills who the need to comply with Federal and state regulations from lawmakers (who haven’t been in a classroom since they were in school), have nothing to resort to when a student does NOT follow the mold except full chord press against parents coercing them to therapize and drug the child into complacency or be expelled from school.

In order to meet the needs of 21^st century students, the educational infrastructure must find a better balance with independence and creativity, increasing intellectual and worldly students, emotional and soulful spirits of the child who cannot be restrained into the 19^th century mold. This is another reason the pharmaceutical industry has penetrated itself into the lives of our children at younger and younger ages.

CONCLUSION

Therapists spend their time taking people back to their childhood to rectify past feelings and behaviors. Yet, the majority of the public do not connect shooters with early childhood deficiencies magnified by prescription drugs. Without an affectionate and nurturing family, it will not be possible to reverse or eliminate the escalating domestic and social violence that is destroying the very fabric of our democratic society. We must organize reform necessary that would give equal value to the American Family. The Sandy Hook Promise and the Love and Logic programs are the stepping stones towards this end.

Therefore, we must conclude, the longer a child is exposed to the love, caring and physical stimulation of the mother, the more intelligent, social and able to respond or respond-ability to life’s challenges it will be. Let us learn from our European friends the impact to our culture, economy and environment infant-mother bonding with physical touch, exposure and movement to significant other is critical to healthy human beings for tomorrow.

The time has come for professionals to have a serious dialogue about the pharmaceutical companies, their integrity and influence on the lives of our children. Much has been written about the effects of inoculations and autism but again, professionals and universities who have research funded by pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to state the obvious. Parents and educators as well as health care professionals need to mobilize and call these companies to task for creating angry, long term drug addicted youths in our culture. WHAT will it take to recognize this? Aren’t all of these young lives enough?We are always so quick to react to situations such as these with knee-jerk responses without determining the root causes. It is time to be proactive and ‘respond’ rather than constantly ‘react’.

REFERENCES

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