"Our research team, which consisted of a death-row lawyer and psychiatrists from Stanford and the Icahn School of Medicine, found that many perpetrators of mass shootings not only suffered from undiagnosed mental illness but were, as children, psychologically discarded by society. In many cases, their social unease caused them to separate from peers for self-protection, which only made them more isolated-and ripe for radicalization for violence online."
"The case of Thomas Crooks, the Pennsylvania man who tried to assassinate Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania last year, is a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of untreated mental illness. As detailed in The New York Times, 1,2 Crooks, a bright engineering student, showed signs of deteriorating mental health-talking to himself, dancing in his bedroom at all hours, searching online about depression-yet no intervention came in time to prevent his descent into violence."
Nearly half of all mental illnesses begin by age 14, yet stigma and delays in care prevent timely psychiatric intervention. Delayed treatment can necessitate more extreme therapies and cause lasting brain damage. Parents must treat violent ideation and signs of psychosis in children as psychiatric emergencies rather than phases or attention-seeking. Undiagnosed early-onset schizophrenia and other serious brain illnesses in youth can escalate into violence when warning signs are ignored. Many perpetrators of mass shootings showed clear psychiatric warning signs, experienced social isolation, and were vulnerable to online radicalization when early intervention did not occur.
Read at Psychology Today
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