Before I dive into my next diatribe, I do want to make it clear I’m far from anti-gun and actually own lots of them, rifles, handguns and at least one firearm, a 30 cal. M1 semiautomatic with a 30 shot clip, which would have to be considered an assault rifle. I’m not about to jump on the ban the guns bandwagon for reasons I’ll leave for some other time. However, a most recent movement to arm teachers serves only one good, and that’s demonstrating how ignorant and out of touch legislators are when it comes to issues regarding education and schools. Teachers packing heat? Good God, how wrong can this idea be?
Actually, I got up close and personal with this issue a few years ago and suffered a moment of temporary insanity myself very similar in many respects to the current dementia afflicting large segments of our nation today, for the same reason, raw fear and a desire to protect children. Please allow me to share my own bout of get-your-gun-itis, a disease we need to earnestly treat before it gets epidemic. One might think public insanity as state policy in a country like ours verges on the impossible, but a study of the rise of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany demonstrates how easily a sophisticated society can run off the cliff in total absence of sound reasoning.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve considerable exposure to extremely disturbed adolescents, both at home and at work. In my many years working with troubled students, it was not at all uncommon to have daily encounters with seriously unbalanced minds, and just as common, most of the troubled teens I knew who needed professional help received little or none. Steven, not his real name, was one of these.
Initially, I thought Steven only mildly odd, discounting a colleague’s assertion, later proved completely accurate, that he was extremely disturbed. Many times the telling points are the eyes, given the name “windows into the soul” for good reason. When Steven had a bad day, I could almost see the devil dancing inside of his corneas and trying to get out to cause whatever trouble he could make for Steven or anyone near him. Sincerely, I’ve grown to believe that in some cases demonic possession is real as I’ve seen signs up close and personal way too many times.
When Steven’s brain cells misfired he became totally irrational and completely capable of bizarre behavior. He’d babble in disconnected words and look about the room tracking invisible spirits, issuing commands and gestures even he probably didn’t understand. My limited psychological training led me to suspect schizophrenia. Initially, I thought the behaviors mostly harmless, although extremely weird, but the behaviors gradually worsened over time and grew increasingly aggressive.
Steven frequently found it impossible to cope with even a minor conflict, in this particular case a dispute over erased contents of his digital music player he blamed on another student. After repeatedly trying to bring peace, and Steven adamantly continuing to threaten physical harm to his perceived enemy, the administrator in charge sent him home to prevent a fight and, hopefully, cool down and regain emotional control.
Earlier, I had stepped between Frank and Steven when their argument erupted, and convinced Frank to stop his macho posturing prompted by Steven’s threats and instead leave the room and go to the office. Steven was sent home vowing revenge and still extremely agitated. The administrator in charge notified the family, but beyond that, there was nothing else in our arsenal of coping strategies, and there should be as this is at the exact point we needed some sort of intervention.
Ideally, we need to be able to quickly notify what I’ll call for lack of better words, the Mental Health Emergency Squad. Some police forces actually have something like it, officers with training in mental illnesses and the ability to cope effectively with the problem. Steven was very sick. He needed to be hospitalized and treated, but his illness is one we just commonly ignore in America today. Actually, Steven needed help a lot sooner, but I’m a realist and know with our limited resources it’s best to start small, and that’s advocating for some sort of mental health alarm we can trigger much like the alarms we have for fires. I’d have pulled that alarm way before the the incident detailed in this story.
People who shoot others for senseless reasons don’t just wake up one morning and explode. There are almost always numerous warning signs and a very clear progression of symptoms. Our problem in working with disturbed poor people is that there are few or no resources available for treatment, especially when prompt intervention is clearly needed. Even people with medical insurance find it difficult to secure emergency help. Poor kids like Steven have no recourse and often self-medicate with illegal drugs, often making the situation even worse. The night school where I worked didn’t even have a nurse, much less a mental health professional on staff.
The following morning after we sent him home, Steven brandished a handgun on another campus, the nature of this dispute unknown to me, and a warrant for his arrest was issued. However, his whereabouts were still unknown when I arrived at school at around 11am, normal hours for me at the time I worked in an extended day and night school program. We didn’t have a police officer in the evenings, but one from the day program was retained on overtime for this particular episode as a precaution.
When I arrived at school, I was told by the police officer and principal that Steven was last seen armed and angry, and I didn’t have to be told he was dangerous. Actually, I probably took the matter even more seriously because I knew Steven well and was a personal witness to his behavior the night before as well as his escalating difficulty contending with the world around him. Steven’s fuse was lit and burning very close to its end.
I’ll finish this story tomorrow as well as offer my ideas for logical, proven solutions to a very real problem that just seems to be getting worse.