Virginia Tech. Massacre

[petek]

The worst part is now we have endless days of CNN parading out grieving families and friends. Not to mention conjecturist extraordinaire Dr. Sanjay Gupta who in true CNN fashion can parlay a simple response into a 10 minute diatribe before he's finished and Wolf moves on for more re-hashes of the same videos and interviews once again before ushering in Lou Dobbs all a mind-boggled with his take and re-hashes of the same videos and interviews which only gets you warmed up for Larry King to do it all again.

 

[58limited]

That is why I'm not watching the news for the rest of the week.

 

[~sudsshane]

Sick of TV News in general

I will be watching my Bewitched and Maude DVD's until further notice. It absolutely sickens me that the families of these victims had to be exposed to this madman and his rantings. NBC News should be ashamed for opening pandora's box and the other networks as well for jumping on the bandwagon.

 

[panthera]

stigma

At least of here in Germany, something like one out of one-hundred university level students attempts suicide every year.
A shocking number succeed.
I doubt that things are much better in the 'States...
It is enormously hard for a "healthy" person to accept that they need to talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist; the first question most students ask in the counseling center here is:
"Will this go on my record?"
The second question is:
"Will my parents find out?"
And these are, legally, adults who can not be coerced into anything - thanks to the atrocities of the Nazis in post-war Germany it is damned hard to get intervention for someone who is desperately mentally ill but won't seek help.
Lawrence is right, by the way - mental illness is a term like allergy - it covers a very wide range...
After all, if you ever have had a cold sore...technically, you have VD!
My own students have wanted to talk about nothing else all week and this is one reason I so firmly refuse to have an opinion. I made a point of "running into" a group of the Americans over here. Poor kids.

 

[dalangdon]

I was the night manager at the University of Iowa's student union for three years. During that time, we had two or three suicide attempts per year just in that building. They were all unsuccessful (thank God) and were mostly students. One was a visiting doctor's wife who swallowed too many pills. The doctor threatened to have me fired if I called 9-11 (he said he could handle it), but I did it anyway (and kept my job).

And of course, not all mentally ill people are violent. Each mental illness is unique in its effects. I just wish our society were more willing to address this problem. There would still be incidents like this, but surely some could be avoided.