On Tue, 25 Dec 2012 05:00:44 +0000, nestork
wrote:


I'm one person who questions the notion that anyone who takes a gun and
kills a whole bunch of people, is, by definition, mentally ill.

The guy that shot up the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado was a PhD
student for crying out loud. He certainly had enough gray stuff between
his ears, and he knew the difference between right and wrong.

Doing something horrible does not automatically mean that person is
crazy. Perfectly level headed people can decide to throw their life
away if they feel their life is so screwed up that it's not salvagable.
It's a stupid decision, it's desperation, but it's not mental illness.

Killing large groups of people then is normal? I have to disagree.
Taking your own life may be desperation, but taking a bunch of people
with you is some sort of abnormality.

Being very intelligent is not a guarantee of saneness either. If you
look back in history, many of the smartest people in the world were
out of our accepted definition of "normal" Take a given odd behavior
with a poor person and he is crazy but a wealthy person is eccentric.
Taking care of mental illness is one of the points brought up with the
recent shootings. Problem is, how do you diagnose and know who is
going to do such a thing? It is not so simple as looking for people
with a blue dot on their nose.