Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Texas Governor Greg Abbott saying that eighteen year old Salvador
Ramos does not have a history of mental illness, those
who knew him paint a very disturbing picture. One friend
says Ramos would use knives to repeatedly cut his face
just for fun. We have learned that Ramos was bullied
over a childhood speech impediment, started wearing all black clothing
and combat boot combat boots to school, and then stopped
(00:23):
showing up to school altogether. The eighteen year old also
had numerous run ins with his drug addicted mother, some
of which involved police. The mother's boyfriend called the relationship
tumultuous and called Ramos a weird kid. Oh man, Half
to two thirds of kids get bullied at some point
in school. I'm guessing a lot, and yeah, dang it.
(00:46):
Uh So we're gonna focus on the mental health angle here.
For a while I realized that, Uh, part of the
divide we've got going on in the country is some
people think that's a dodge to avoid the gun conversation.
You're just being a coward by not taking on what
actually is the problem the guns. I think there are
(01:07):
so many examples that mental health is, if not the issue,
a very large issue with everything we've got going on,
with record suicides and people on the street and the
shootings and the everything in the number of people on
antidepressants that's unprecedented and everything right, well, and I just
I find that that argument that, for instance, idiot Joe
(01:29):
Scarborough was making to be so incredibly unwise and and
just belligerently stupid. If you want to discuss gun laws, good,
let's do it. That's perfectly fine. But how profoundly disturbed
and detached from a functioning human soul does somebody have
to be to kill a bunch of children, well, to
(01:49):
shoot your grandma? Well, right, you can start there, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's a dodge. What a horrific argument. Sorry, anyway, I
thought this was really interesting. Uh both Jack and I,
for new listeners to the show, have real life experience
dealing with the UM mental health professional world, industry practice,
(02:17):
and uh, I will speak for myself. I found it.
I continue to find it highly imperfect and frustrating, lee
difficult to get anywhere UM, specifically with family member. UM.
Not not useless, but not the way you picture it,
not at all. There's a huge element of mental health care,
(02:41):
that's just a pill dispensary, for instance. And if you say, well,
what about cognitive behavioral therapy, al about let's uh, let's
reform thoughts and stuff like that, It's like, yeah, the
appointment's over. Yeah, Well, I don't know. I don't want
to take up all your time here, but I can
tell you from personal experience. You can have a situation
where you're in a crisis, like a crisis like we
(03:04):
don't know what to do, how is this? How are
we going to function as a family? And you can
make thirty phone calls and find one person that might
say we can get you in in two months, and
you think, what am I supposed to do? Like tonight,
let alone for the next two months. So you know,
(03:24):
if there's one thing we do around here, it's trying
to get to the reality of things, get past the
shouting and the spin and the rest of it. We
certainly have a point of view. I don't I don't
claim neutrality, just that we're trying to figure out what's
actually happening. Got this note from uh dock anonymous. I
am a physician and wish to relay an incident that
happened in my office the day before the Texas school shooting.
(03:46):
A fourteen year old boy, yes I will use gendered language,
he throws in, was brought to the office accompanied by
his mother. In the exam, he specifically noted homicidal tendencies
with clinical signs of depression. His mother concurred that he
had his expressed homicidal ideation. He has been seeing a
(04:07):
counselor at school. The mother was concerned about his depression
and wanted a prescription for an antidepressant and then to leave.
I immediately contacted the local police. They came and did
nothing but suggests evaluation by mental health. I was going
to call the school administration and notify them of the
risk he poses to the school. I was informed that
that would be a hip hop violation to notify the
school without the child's permission. After the police left, the
(04:30):
mother and child stormed out of the office. This is
an example of a potential shooter. Red flags all over
the place and nothing. We've gone way too far toward
being concerned about the privacy and everything like that that
gets in the way of so many things. I have
(04:51):
personally dealt with that so many times. Just recently got
one psychologist. I've been dealing with who's who insists upon
this in co did messaging system rather than just emailing
back and forth, because you know, we have to keep
everything secret, and even though I've said I'm not worried
about it, can we just email back and forth because
it's so much easier, because you gotta have a pass
code that never works, and you need to be able
(05:13):
to get into the site, because everything's got to be
encoded in a secret system, because of hip, and because
keeping everything in private. I don't care about that. I
wish you could just declare for the rest of my life,
I don't care if everybody in the world knows me
and my family's medical history. If we can just cut
through like nine layers of bs in terms of oh
and if you want to have one other therapist learn
(05:34):
about the background on this therapist. The number of forms
you gotta get signed and run around it's just crazy
again the bad Bad Choice awards, um. But it's just
it's such an impediment we were are how many of
you are that worried about your medical history? Are you
really that you can't have a conversation with the therapist?
I got a crisis right now. But I can't get
(05:54):
a message to you, and you can't get a message
back when they're just talking about there with the whole hipothing.
I can't tell them about this situation because it be
a violation of their their medical privacy. I hate that.
Hate that. That's a side note, but it gets it's
gotten in my way this week. I wish I knew
more about the particulars of the doctor's note and how
(06:16):
that stuff works and what the rules and REGs are.
It seems shocking to me that I understand why, you know,
I can't, as a doctor pick up the phone and
alert the local newspaper. Hey, John Smith is really depressed. Yeah,
he's fighting some terrible depression. Is his wife is worried
at him, worried about him, and the love has gone
(06:37):
out of their marriage. I mean, I totally get that,
and I'm glad that you know, my privacy is protected
in you know, pretty thoroughly. On the other hand, the
idea that there's no carve out for homicidal tendencies among
troubled youths, that we can't. You gotta ask the kid,
Is it okay if I tell the school you're homicidal? Nah?
(06:58):
I don't think so. Nope, I'm what what kind of
society is that? It's just you know what it is.
It's a society crafted and shaped by attorneys abs freaking lutely.
So the best organization in the country for taking a
look at these sorts of things as a secret service,
because of many, many years of they have investigated any
threat against a public office holder, any threat of any kind,
(07:22):
and they go and investigate it, and they compile a
lot of data. Were starting in two thousand twelve, because
we're having so many of these, they applied the same
techniques to any threat against a school, So the ones
that do happen and the ones where somebody talks about
it and it doesn't happen, and they compiled all the
data on that. And there are a number of things
that we can learn from that, including what one person
(07:43):
pointed out to me. Always, not even most of the time.
Always these people tell somebody that they're going to do
this more or less. It might not be as specific
as tomorrow at three here, but it you know, this
guy posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot
up a school. Now, how do you catch that with
(08:05):
a random post? You don't even know who it is,
where they live, and all that sort of stuff. But
they they these people need to express it for some reason,
and they do. But also this which I found troubling
in terms of trying to identify these people. All attackers
experienced social stressors involving the relationships with peers and or
romantic partners. Anybody ever have a period where they didn't
(08:28):
have social stressors when they were in high school with
either parents, peers, or romantic partners. Attackers experienced stressors in
various ways of their lives, with nearly all experiencing at
least one in the six months prior to the attack,
and half within two days of the attack. In addition
to social stressors, other stressors experienced by the attackers were
related to families, conflicts in the home, academic or disciplinary actions,
(08:51):
or other personal issues. All school personnel should be trained
to recognize students in this sort of crisis. I go ahead, Well,
I think we're probably about to say the same thing
unless I misunderstand some of the definitions of those terms.
I mean, there's a club for people who that describes
were called humans, right, I mean, if you're gonna broaden
it to six in the last six months. Did you
(09:13):
go through high school without any major stressors in a
six month period of high school, whether being bullied or
getting dumped by a boyfriend or a girlfriend or or whatever,
or something at home. Um. Yeah, that's I mean, that's
that's a tough one to try to narrow it down.
I get it, like this guy had some four sort
of fight with his mom and then his grandma. Um,
(09:35):
but I don't. I don't know how we're gonna identify
these things. I don't want to be in the same
category as other people who act like there's a simple
solution to this. We just we're ignoring the mental health
problem because God Danny, don't want every you don't want
ever every kid who goes through a moody period in
high school come on teenage school exactly. Um, all of
(09:57):
a sudden identified as a possible shooter. And I know,
put in a I don't know what you'd even do,
And I have no idea how to get this going.
Is there some psychological work up that we can do.
I mean, to be dumped by a girlfriend, for instance,
may amaze you. It happened to me more than once. Um,
And but well, it's one way to put it um,
(10:21):
but the idea that that hurt maybe even there's some
resentment whatever there wasn't just mostly hurt. The idea that
that would express itself in wanting to hurt others who
were utterly unrelated to the situation. I mean, that's I've
never felt an iota of that. Just that's the way
(10:42):
I'm made. It doesn't make me better, it's just the
way I'm made. Um. Well, I think the vast majority
of us are that way. We're very very hurt, very
very upset. It's the worst thing that's ever happened was
at the time. We're not gonna hurt anybody about it
for ourselves, right, or at least that used to be.
Maybe I don't know what the average young person today
is thinking or feeling because of all the things that
(11:04):
are going on, whether it's something literally in the water
or staring at our phones or whatever. People are different
today than they used to be not very long ago. Yeah,
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man,
I know the society I grew up in was much
more oriented toward happens to everybody. It's not a big deal.
Don't take it personally as opposed to the smallest. They
(11:25):
even have a term for it. Micro Aggression is to
be treated like a disaster, a monumental disaster, and you
are expected to go to pieces. As uh Jonathan Heighten
Greg lukianof wrote in a Brilliant, Brilliant Piece of journalism
which became a book, we are teaching mental illness to
our children,
Texas Governor Greg Abbott saying that eighteen year old Salvador
Ramos does not have a history of mental illness, those
who knew him paint a very disturbing picture. One friend
says Ramos would use knives to repeatedly cut his face
just for fun. We have learned that Ramos was bullied
over a childhood speech impediment, started wearing all black clothing
and combat boot combat boots to school, and then stopped
(00:23):
showing up to school altogether. The eighteen year old also
had numerous run ins with his drug addicted mother, some
of which involved police. The mother's boyfriend called the relationship
tumultuous and called Ramos a weird kid. Oh man, Half
to two thirds of kids get bullied at some point
in school. I'm guessing a lot, and yeah, dang it.
(00:46):
Uh So we're gonna focus on the mental health angle here.
For a while I realized that, Uh, part of the
divide we've got going on in the country is some
people think that's a dodge to avoid the gun conversation.
You're just being a coward by not taking on what
actually is the problem the guns. I think there are
(01:07):
so many examples that mental health is, if not the issue,
a very large issue with everything we've got going on,
with record suicides and people on the street and the
shootings and the everything in the number of people on
antidepressants that's unprecedented and everything right, well, and I just
I find that that argument that, for instance, idiot Joe
(01:29):
Scarborough was making to be so incredibly unwise and and
just belligerently stupid. If you want to discuss gun laws, good,
let's do it. That's perfectly fine. But how profoundly disturbed
and detached from a functioning human soul does somebody have
to be to kill a bunch of children, well, to
(01:49):
shoot your grandma? Well, right, you can start there, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's a dodge. What a horrific argument. Sorry, anyway, I
thought this was really interesting. Uh both Jack and I,
for new listeners to the show, have real life experience
dealing with the UM mental health professional world, industry practice,
(02:17):
and uh, I will speak for myself. I found it.
I continue to find it highly imperfect and frustrating, lee
difficult to get anywhere UM, specifically with family member. UM.
Not not useless, but not the way you picture it,
not at all. There's a huge element of mental health care,
(02:41):
that's just a pill dispensary, for instance. And if you say, well,
what about cognitive behavioral therapy, al about let's uh, let's
reform thoughts and stuff like that, It's like, yeah, the
appointment's over. Yeah, Well, I don't know. I don't want
to take up all your time here, but I can
tell you from personal experience. You can have a situation
where you're in a crisis, like a crisis like we
(03:04):
don't know what to do, how is this? How are
we going to function as a family? And you can
make thirty phone calls and find one person that might
say we can get you in in two months, and
you think, what am I supposed to do? Like tonight,
let alone for the next two months. So you know,
(03:24):
if there's one thing we do around here, it's trying
to get to the reality of things, get past the
shouting and the spin and the rest of it. We
certainly have a point of view. I don't I don't
claim neutrality, just that we're trying to figure out what's
actually happening. Got this note from uh dock anonymous. I
am a physician and wish to relay an incident that
happened in my office the day before the Texas school shooting.
(03:46):
A fourteen year old boy, yes I will use gendered language,
he throws in, was brought to the office accompanied by
his mother. In the exam, he specifically noted homicidal tendencies
with clinical signs of depression. His mother concurred that he
had his expressed homicidal ideation. He has been seeing a
(04:07):
counselor at school. The mother was concerned about his depression
and wanted a prescription for an antidepressant and then to leave.
I immediately contacted the local police. They came and did
nothing but suggests evaluation by mental health. I was going
to call the school administration and notify them of the
risk he poses to the school. I was informed that
that would be a hip hop violation to notify the
school without the child's permission. After the police left, the
(04:30):
mother and child stormed out of the office. This is
an example of a potential shooter. Red flags all over
the place and nothing. We've gone way too far toward
being concerned about the privacy and everything like that that
gets in the way of so many things. I have
(04:51):
personally dealt with that so many times. Just recently got
one psychologist. I've been dealing with who's who insists upon
this in co did messaging system rather than just emailing
back and forth, because you know, we have to keep
everything secret, and even though I've said I'm not worried
about it, can we just email back and forth because
it's so much easier, because you gotta have a pass
code that never works, and you need to be able
(05:13):
to get into the site, because everything's got to be
encoded in a secret system, because of hip, and because
keeping everything in private. I don't care about that. I
wish you could just declare for the rest of my life,
I don't care if everybody in the world knows me
and my family's medical history. If we can just cut
through like nine layers of bs in terms of oh
and if you want to have one other therapist learn
(05:34):
about the background on this therapist. The number of forms
you gotta get signed and run around it's just crazy
again the bad Bad Choice awards, um. But it's just
it's such an impediment we were are how many of
you are that worried about your medical history? Are you
really that you can't have a conversation with the therapist?
I got a crisis right now. But I can't get
(05:54):
a message to you, and you can't get a message
back when they're just talking about there with the whole hipothing.
I can't tell them about this situation because it be
a violation of their their medical privacy. I hate that.
Hate that. That's a side note, but it gets it's
gotten in my way this week. I wish I knew
more about the particulars of the doctor's note and how
(06:16):
that stuff works and what the rules and REGs are.
It seems shocking to me that I understand why, you know,
I can't, as a doctor pick up the phone and
alert the local newspaper. Hey, John Smith is really depressed. Yeah,
he's fighting some terrible depression. Is his wife is worried
at him, worried about him, and the love has gone
(06:37):
out of their marriage. I mean, I totally get that,
and I'm glad that you know, my privacy is protected
in you know, pretty thoroughly. On the other hand, the
idea that there's no carve out for homicidal tendencies among
troubled youths, that we can't. You gotta ask the kid,
Is it okay if I tell the school you're homicidal? Nah?
(06:58):
I don't think so. Nope, I'm what what kind of
society is that? It's just you know what it is.
It's a society crafted and shaped by attorneys abs freaking lutely.
So the best organization in the country for taking a
look at these sorts of things as a secret service,
because of many, many years of they have investigated any
threat against a public office holder, any threat of any kind,
(07:22):
and they go and investigate it, and they compile a
lot of data. Were starting in two thousand twelve, because
we're having so many of these, they applied the same
techniques to any threat against a school, So the ones
that do happen and the ones where somebody talks about
it and it doesn't happen, and they compiled all the
data on that. And there are a number of things
that we can learn from that, including what one person
(07:43):
pointed out to me. Always, not even most of the time.
Always these people tell somebody that they're going to do
this more or less. It might not be as specific
as tomorrow at three here, but it you know, this
guy posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot
up a school. Now, how do you catch that with
(08:05):
a random post? You don't even know who it is,
where they live, and all that sort of stuff. But
they they these people need to express it for some reason,
and they do. But also this which I found troubling
in terms of trying to identify these people. All attackers
experienced social stressors involving the relationships with peers and or
romantic partners. Anybody ever have a period where they didn't
(08:28):
have social stressors when they were in high school with
either parents, peers, or romantic partners. Attackers experienced stressors in
various ways of their lives, with nearly all experiencing at
least one in the six months prior to the attack,
and half within two days of the attack. In addition
to social stressors, other stressors experienced by the attackers were
related to families, conflicts in the home, academic or disciplinary actions,
(08:51):
or other personal issues. All school personnel should be trained
to recognize students in this sort of crisis. I go ahead, Well,
I think we're probably about to say the same thing
unless I misunderstand some of the definitions of those terms.
I mean, there's a club for people who that describes
were called humans, right, I mean, if you're gonna broaden
it to six in the last six months. Did you
(09:13):
go through high school without any major stressors in a
six month period of high school, whether being bullied or
getting dumped by a boyfriend or a girlfriend or or whatever,
or something at home. Um. Yeah, that's I mean, that's
that's a tough one to try to narrow it down.
I get it, like this guy had some four sort
of fight with his mom and then his grandma. Um,
(09:35):
but I don't. I don't know how we're gonna identify
these things. I don't want to be in the same
category as other people who act like there's a simple
solution to this. We just we're ignoring the mental health
problem because God Danny, don't want every you don't want
ever every kid who goes through a moody period in
high school come on teenage school exactly. Um, all of
(09:57):
a sudden identified as a possible shooter. And I know,
put in a I don't know what you'd even do,
And I have no idea how to get this going.
Is there some psychological work up that we can do.
I mean, to be dumped by a girlfriend, for instance,
may amaze you. It happened to me more than once. Um,
And but well, it's one way to put it um,
(10:21):
but the idea that that hurt maybe even there's some
resentment whatever there wasn't just mostly hurt. The idea that
that would express itself in wanting to hurt others who
were utterly unrelated to the situation. I mean, that's I've
never felt an iota of that. Just that's the way
(10:42):
I'm made. It doesn't make me better, it's just the
way I'm made. Um. Well, I think the vast majority
of us are that way. We're very very hurt, very
very upset. It's the worst thing that's ever happened was
at the time. We're not gonna hurt anybody about it
for ourselves, right, or at least that used to be.
Maybe I don't know what the average young person today
is thinking or feeling because of all the things that
(11:04):
are going on, whether it's something literally in the water
or staring at our phones or whatever. People are different
today than they used to be not very long ago. Yeah,
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man,
I know the society I grew up in was much
more oriented toward happens to everybody. It's not a big deal.
Don't take it personally as opposed to the smallest. They
(11:25):
even have a term for it. Micro Aggression is to
be treated like a disaster, a monumental disaster, and you
are expected to go to pieces. As uh Jonathan Heighten
Greg lukianof wrote in a Brilliant, Brilliant Piece of journalism
which became a book, we are teaching mental illness to
our children,
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