I just sent a second newsletter on the Jared Lee Loughner shootings in Arizona. I posted a blog on my BP Magazine blog. I’ve posted two blogs here. That is enough for myself and my health.
I know when I have reached a saturation point and need to let go of things that are upsetting. There is nothing more the news can say to me. I think all of us with brain disorders know what will happen now. I will leave it to the courts and try not to be upset of how this will be handled. I wrote this before and would like to say it again:
I know the country is behind the victims of Jared’s terrible crime. I am too. I can’t imagine losing a loved one in that way. But my fervent hope is that Jared and his family be treated with compassion and understanding regarding his illness. Justice will be done for the crime victims- let’s hope that justice for a very mentally ill man can be done as well.
Those of us with bipolar disorder as well as those who care about people with bipolar disorder have to be so careful of what we let in our lives. Sometimes life comes to us and we can’t ignore it, such as these shootings.
I really mean it when I say: If you find all of the coverage upsetting, it really is ok to stop reading the news- including my posts! I stopped reading on the web after I had enough information to know what was going on. I never watch the news or listen to the news on the radio. It’s how I protect myself when I’m down. Take care of yourself if you need to. Sometimes just a little information is all we need. Hearing it repeated over and over by the ‘experts’ is simply not good if it makes us ill.
Julie
If you are up for reading another blog, here is my BP Magazine link. So many family members read this blog for help- your comments would be greatly appreciated.
its the reason why I don’t watch the news at all, I find it too depressing and end up getting myself up in arms about everything I see and hear.
So I think its best to leave it there, no use upsetting other people by continually hashing out a topic that can literally go on forever.
I’ve learned to really distance myself that way, cos I really feel its a bad bipolar trait to get into, and when I start giving into that part of it, it just makes my life hell and all those around me, because it becomes a new kind of rationale, not a normal healthy rationale, if that makes sense.
I appreaciate your words on the subject, but yes its time to move on.
Hi Julie,
I don’t agree his diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia, but rather bipolar. Before I was diagnosed and treated for biplor and psychosis with medication in 2005, I had a bad affliction of erotomania, which is when you think you have a connection to a celebrity. I thought a celebrity was communicating to me on the internet and in the media. It took me 4 years to recover my life and stabilize my sleep and depression. Were it not for concerned friends, and the support of my family after I had a diagnosis, I do not know where I would be today. Jared Lee Loughner was not so lucky.
I was listening to the Diane Rehm Show on NPR this morning as I drove to work near Washington, D.C. She had three guests on her show representing different points of view of gun control.
One of the guests spoke quite eloquently that there had been multiple opportunities for the police to have intervened and had Mr. Loughner involuntarily committed for a psychiatric evaluation. He said that mental illness just isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. The web address below will lead you to the show’s web site. You can listen to it – just click on the loudspeaker above the title of the show.
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-01-12/renewed-calls-gun-control
The national press’ dialogue is all wrong on this incident. This is not a “right-wing” issue as many of the Left would like it to be. (His politics were actually described by friends as Leftist.) It is not a gun issue, as even some of the first-responder citizens were carrying. This is not something that was deserved, as some twisted sources have suggested. It is simply a mentally ill person snapping.
This is about Jared falling through the cracks as several blatant warning signs were ignored by those who came in contact with him, much like the warning signs of Hussein in Killeen Texas were ignored. I think this stems from a politically correct stigma that causes people to ignore signs of mental illness, in part because to label someone as having a mental illness places them in a category of illnesses considered taboo by the rest of society. Heaven forbid we should have a backbone and get him the help he needs and possibly injure his self esteem in the process. The teacher who had him removed from class did the right thing to protect the rest of the class, but the administration of the college bumbled the next step – getting him evaluated and treated. Instead they just told him, essentially, leave us alone until you’re better. That’s sticking their head in the sand and it is what leads to things like this. Ultimately, Jared was the shooter and Jared is responsible for his actions. It is sad those around him missed the wanring signs – 6 are dead and 14 wounded as a result. It’s time we start treating mental illness as an illness and not a stigma that prevents action. Treatments have come a long way from the sanitariums of the early 1900’s. Yet we still treat people with the same stigma as a society as we did back then. We need to adopt a new mentality regarding mental illness and leave the old one back in the 1900s with the sanitariums.
KM
Texas
I wrote a note to the third grade teachers at Christina’s school this morning. I’d opened with condolences for them and their students and mentioned that I didn’t know what it must be like to lose a student. Since I’d read in The Washington Post this morning that children in Tucson are frightened because of what happened to Christina, I shared my experience teaching on 9/11 in an elementary school 30 miles from the Pentagon as well as during the months that two gunmen stalked our area shooting randomly at multiple targets – a man at a gas station, a woman at a crafts store, that sort of thing. That affected every child in the entire northern Virginia area.
I imagined that the students are wondering how something like this could happen, so this is what I wrote:
If I were teaching in Tucson today, I would have to reflect on my own experiences to share what Mr. Loughner’s world must have been like. You see, I have bipolar disorder. I distinctly know the difference between receiving an inaccurate diagnosis – and therefore inadequate treatment – and a correct diagnosis that led to proper medication and lifestyle changes. Those have made a world of difference for me and allow me to live a stable, successful life. I teach in a wonderful school for students who have learning disorders and I’m halfway through coursework to earn my master’s in special education. Of course I wouldn’t share my own story with my students, but I could draw on it to let them know that Mr. Loughner’s behaviors indicate that something is wrong with his brain – that he has a very serious mental illness that has never been correctly diagnosed or treated. No one has ever cared enough to get him the help that he’s needed, even though the people around him could clearly see something was wrong with the way he was thinking. It’s sort of like seeing smoke coming from a house but not calling the fire department to put out the fire. People saw Mr. Loughner’s problems but never called a brain doctor, a psychiatrist, to get him the help he needed to “put out” his mental illness. With the right medication, he can live a normal life like he used to. And then he could understand that what he did on Saturday, while a horrible tragedy, was a direct result of his illness.
We can hate what he did, because it has caused so much sadness and took away a person that your students admired and cared for and even loved. But it’s important to remember that Mr. Loughner is a person, too.
The link below is a Washington Post article that has specific examples of what I just shared about him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011206630.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
I hope I haven’t overstepped my boundaries in writing to you, but I thought a bit of personal insight might be helpful in explaining to your students why something so terrible could have happened.
My prayers continue to be with you all.
Sincerely,
Sandra J. Sweeney