Another shooting on another campus. A tragedy for the students, a tragedy for their parents.
Who would do such a thing?In the 24 hours after the shooting, the question was everywhere. Who had done this? What was his motivation? Why did he do it?
When the name of Stephen Kazmierczak was made public, he seemed to be as random as his crime. His friends were shocked and swore he hadn't shown any signs of being ready to snap. His family declined comment. Nobody knew anything and details coming to and from the media were few. Except for one:
He was off his medication.
While I was reading this in a news story online, my husband was doing the same. When we each got home from work, we compared notes. None of the articles we read mentioned anything about which meds, prescribed for what, in reference to any diagnosis. It didn't matter, though. Kazmierczak could have been taking Pepto Bismal and stopped, and the fact would still hang in the air: He went on a rampage because he stopped his medication. He was nuts. Or, he had heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea... In either case, he had had enough of it because he stopped taking the medication and became homicidal immediately after. Enough diarrhea will do that to you.
I am not making light of Stephen Kazmierczak's actions, so don't bother to send me hate mail. What I am doing, however, is pointing out how quick this nation is to blame every abberation of human behavior on mental illness, medication, or lack of medication. If the criminal hadn't shown any signs of illness before, it was obviously just an oversight because, as we know, only the mentally ill act irrationally.
According to the Associated Press,
Campus Police Chief Donald Grady said investigators recovered 48 shell casings and six shotgun shells following the attack in Cole Hall. ... Kazmierczak...was taking some kind of medication, Grady said. "He had stopped taking medication and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks,'' Grady said, declining to name the drug or provide other details.Well, apparently details don't matter if you can announce to the world that someone was "taking medication." Isn't the implication obvious?? Damn that Pepto Bismal. Everyone knows it only works if you take it, but it's so tempting to stop once you start to feel better.
It seems that at one time, journalists had to back up their comments with actual, oh, hell, what are they called...facts. According to ABC News,
The NIU gunman reportedly stopped taking medication, and the Virginia Tech gunman had a long history of mental health issues.Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but are they implying that Kazmierczak was suffereing from the same illness as the Virginia Tech shooter? They didn't say it, but they said it. Read that quote as two separate sentences and then tell me how the meaning changes when you add a comma.
The story that disturbed me most, though, came from the AP on Friday. The story stated that the shooter had a "long history of mental illness." Without providing details. Of course. Later in the story, though we get to the truth:
A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said Kazmierczak had been placed there after high school by his parents. He used to cut himself and had resisted taking his medications, she said.
Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in the late 1990s, former house manager Louise Gbadamashi told The Associated Press. His parents placed him there after high school because he had become "unruly" at home, she said.
Gbadamashi couldn't remember any instances of him being violent, she said.
"He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."So...Let me see if I have this straight. Unruly behavior = Mental Ilnness.
Not embracing one's mental illness makes you...unruly?
The kind and well-meaning folks at NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, believe that we, as a culture, have made admirable progress in our ability to, if not identify with, at least empathize with being mentally ill. Type in the search term "stigma" on the NAMI website and what you'll find are dozens of articles and campaigns meant to convince the world that there is no stigma attached to mental illness, nor should there be.
I want to believe that's true, really, I do, but reading the shady ambiguity with which the NIU shooting was reported leaves me feeling less than optimistic.
More than once, it has been suggested to me (it doesn't matter by whom--critical details are irrelvant, remember?--it's innuendo that counts, dammit) that I "come out," and let people know that I am mentally ill. There is a belief there that if people know that I, May Voirrey, over-achiever and personable person is actually sick in the head, then the world will change its attitude toward mental illness forever. People will suddenly be enlightened and forced to admit, "
Well, if May is the face of mental illness, then we've been wrong about this thing all along."
Yeah. Nobody would change their opinion about mental illness, they would only change their opinion about
me. ("
I always thought she was a little off. That must be what those good days and bad days are all about. Everybody knows that only the mentally ill express their bitchiness.").
To reiterate earlier posts: We are not mentally ill. We are just
ill. It's not in my head, it affects my head. Fuck off if you disagree. If you disagree, you wouldn't be reading this blog, anyway.
I am sure that in the next few days, all HIPPA laws will be circumvented and we will learn copious details of Stephen Kazmierczak's personal anguish, medical history, and mental abberation. He will be pointed to as an example, no, a
reason why people like me should be kept on a short leash and under close scrutiny.
No stigma? Where's the drama in that?
Kazmierczak was taking...Ambien...Xanax...and Prozac. He must have been very relaxed. He went off of Prozac, but it's not an anti-psychotic. Shit, Prozac and Ambien are so mainstream they're practically over-the-counter medications. Ambien is advertised on TV, for cryin' out loud. Xanax, well, he didn't stop taking that one, and god knows, plenty of upstanding American citizens are walking around with their next alprazolam hit right there in their shoulder bag, next to the laptop.
