Virginia Tech Tragedy and Trendy Psychobabble
Posted on April 16, 2007
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 Here’s a Google News link. Should be up to date whenever you click it.Virginia Tech, what a mess. There’s nothing funny to say about this, as the death count is up to 31 now. The shooter is dead as well. No one yet really knows for sure what happened there today. |
Who was the shooter, why did he shoot, how many are going to be dead when the counting is done?
Don’t ask, there’s no time for answers! No time for understanding, people: Go get closure! Go get counseling!
The university is planning a convocation for tomorrow at 2 p.m. at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.
Counseling is available in the Bowman Room on the fourth floor of Jamerson Athletic Center, accessible from Jamerson or the Merryman Athletic Facility, for employees who seek assistance following today’s events. -VTU Website
What kind of Shirley MacLaine, new-age hippie crap is this? How can you “deal” with a tragedy you haven’t even completely gotten the scope of? How can anyone be thinking of closure and counseling when the blood is still slickening the pavement of VTU?!?
Fuck, go do something. There’ll be time to mourn later. People tend to dust off their trendy psycho-babble whenever there’s tragedy, and that is not right. It trivializes the real loss. “Closure,” “stages,” “phases,” talk of “coping”; people use these words as crutches, and use them because they’ve heard others use these same words in this same situation. It becomes expected, like saying “how are you?” when you really mean, “I greet you.”
Its no better than cliche, and it doesn’t.. help.. anyone.
And another thing: you know what? I don’t want to know why that homocidal maniac did what he did. What difference could that possibly make? I don’t even want to know his name. He doesn’t deserve the recognition that would represent. His family doesn’t deserve to have their lives destroyed because of what he’s done–unless they programmed him from childhood to be a killing machine. Then they should probably be punished.
Maybe he WANTED to go down in history as the most deadly school shooter ever. Well screw him. He’s going down in my book as a bad piece of meat with no name and no soul–whatever that might be in this Godless world.
Comments
Right on.
And nice leg.
The silence was deafening, Jagd. I don’t think this was a very popular post.
well fuck ‘em then.
I agree with you on this safe t, although I’ve come too late to the post, I guess. The psychobabble makes the whole thing seem even more unreal somehow.
NBC shouldn’t have given the kid the platform he wanted so the next nutter can feed off it like he fed off the Columbine pair’s notoriety.
The thing it does highlight though is that sometimes public safety concerns might well trump an ill individual’s rights to full autonomy. In Britain, doctors are able to admit to psych. wards patients considered a danger to themselves or others. It’s called sectioning because the provision allowing for it is under section blahblah of the Mental Health Act, 19bleeblah.
This might well impinge on the patient’s individual rights and freedoms but very often that individual is no more capable of being responsible for himself that a toddler. But he still has a bank account and a house and the ability to hurt himself or others in a way a toddler wouldn’t be allowed to.
I say this as somebody with a mother who’s been sectioned (several times apparantly, although I was too wee to know that’s what was going on) and as someone who’s spent some 3 weeks in a psych. ward herself. I didn’t have to be sectioned but I wasn’t bloody happy with it either.
My friend’s dad had to be sectioned 2 years ago. It was horrible and upsetting for them all at the time but it was clear to everybody that this is what it would take to prevent anything far worse from happening. Everyone except for the patient himself, hence the sectioning. He is alive and well and a proud new grandad in Yorkshire these days because the law saved his life. The law saved my mother’s life. The law could have saved some lives in Virginia if rights and responsibilities weren’t left burdening people who cannot deal with them. It’s not discrimination; it’s just a society looking after its most vulnerable. It could be taken in much too an Orwellian direction, there is that risk, but there has to be a middle way in this day and age where common-sense decisions can prevail.
Sam, involuntary treatment is very difficult to do in Michigan. Not least because there is absolutely no budget for treatment.
In the 60’s, the idea was to stop institutionalizing the mentally ill, and to replace the institutional treatment with group/foster homes, case workers, and community education. The mentally ill would do better that way than they will in virtual prisons.
This makes sense, but only if the proper resources are applied to taking care of the patients in the community.
If done properly, the new way wouldn’t necessarily be any cheaper than the old, but would be better
Instead, the state used it as an excuse to save money. The mental patients were discharged into the public often with no supervision or follow up care. The money saved by closing the mental hospitals went to other things, and the mentally ill became bums.