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[Fwd: LET IT BEGIN: Brain Awareness Week/BRAIN BOYCOTT]

Andrew P. Ray aray at emory.edu
Sun May 26 14:53:50 EST 1996


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Date: Sun, 26 May 1996 15:47:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Andrew P. Ray" <aray at emory.edu>
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To: Star Bright <abrowne at chardonnay.niagara.com>
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Subject: Re: [Fwd: LET IT BEGIN: Brain Awareness Week/BRAIN BOYCOTT]
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On Sun, 26 May 1996, Star Bright wrote:

> Andrew -
> 
> >Frankly, I'd like to keep these people's minds numbed - I don't want to
> have some Jeffrey Dahmer type 
> >running around free because people like you think that it's OK for him to
> think differently (that people 
> >are a food source).  A lot of the people you think are being oppressed are
> locked up to protect the rest 
> >of us from them.  Don't forget that. 
> 
> But Jeffrey Dahmer was found to be "sane" in ther courts.  Also, please note
> that most people who commit mass or multiple murders and are therefore, at
> the most risk to us, are deemed to be free of any significant `psychosis' or
> `major psychiatric illness'. 

Of course the law found him sane.  First, the legal system has its own 
version of sanity which is not the same as the mental health profession.  
Second, declaring him insane would have been a bad political move and 
could very likely have produced a vengeful response from people who were 
disgusted by the decision.  They HAD to bring him to trial, if for no 
other reason than to try and keep some faith in the legal system.  No 
psychiatrist or psychologist worth his salt would say the man was sane 
(off the record, that is).  He was a sociopath - he could tell the 
difference between right and wrong (the def. of legal sanity) but didn't 
give a damn about it (probably a prefrontal lobe dysfunction, based on 
previous case studies of people with traumatic prefrontal brain damage).  
There is a very good body of research that suggests that personality and 
social interaction (e.g. inhibitions on extreme behaviors) are mediated 
primarily by prefrontal cortical areas.  If a PET scan could have been 
done while he was alive, I'll  bet you would see decreased prefrontal 
activity.  Autopsies won't show functional problems very well, unless 
there is gross structural abnormality.
Who deems most mass murderers sane and free of psychotic problems?  No 
one ever gets to check them, because you can't police their thoughts 
until after they've committed their crimes.  And with the exception of 
gang warfare, which is a significant source of mass murders, the random 
acts of violence of the type committed by Dahmer usually result in the 
criminal turning the gun on himself at the end of the crime (Scotland's 
recent massacre for example).  Only rarely do these people get caught.  
When they do get caught, it's even money  whether they go to trial.  The 
man in New York who opened up on the people in the subway train, for 
instance, would have been found insane had he not chosen to defend 
himself.  The judge just wanted to try him and be done with it, but after 
the trial several psychiatrists and psychologists were interviewed, and 
all of them said he was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. 

  Also, the reliability of psychiatric
> expertise in determining who is and who is not going to become violent is no
> greater than that of the rest of us.   

Read an FBI psych. profile on one or two of these cases (like a serial 
killer)  someday.  These profiles are about 80% accurate in predicting 
violent behavior based on a person's history and information gleaned from 
acquaintances or other sources.  The problem, again, is that most of 
these people tend to keep to themselves for long periods of time, so 
there is limited contact, and there are very few public violent episodes 
that might bring attention to the person in question. 


> 
> >Depressives think differently than you and me, but they aren't locked up
> because they aren't going to 
> >hurt other people.  And I don't think the antidepressants they get are
> imprisoning their minds.  
> >Generally, if someone is getting Thorazine, they usually need it.
> 
> If Thorazine and other meds were helping these recalcitrant depressives, why
> would they so badly want to be free of these drugs?  That would defy common
> sense.  I think the decision of whether or not to use drugs should be up to
> the individual, not the state.
> 

Do you even know what Thorazine is?  Thorazine is an antipsychotic, not 
an antidepressant.  If you know any depressives who are on thorazine, 
they need a different doctor!  As to why they would want to be free of 
the drugs, let me use a personal example.  My GF had a friend back in 
high school who started out OK, but slowly became more violent and 
paranoid throughout school.  Finally, he was committed after he nearly 
murdered his parents.  They put him on antipsychotics.  The drugs made 
him drowsy much of the time and interfered with his creative abilities.  
But he was lucid and would and could call her from the hospital during 
the weeks right after his medication (monthly injections).  Then, as the 
med. wore off, his phone conversations became less and less intelligible 
- he would go off on tangents, become unfocused, and more and more 
violently angry.  Toward the end of the month, she couldn't talk to him 
because he would get angry and threaten to kill her. But for brief 
periods even during these conversations, he could be lucid and still be 
creative (he was a musician).  He never wanted to get the next injection 
when he had these brief periods of lucidity, but then he'd go off into 
his paranoid delusions again, claiming she was part of the "conspiracy" 
to get him (as he had with his parents) and threatening to kill her.  
Then he'd get the next injection and be dulled, yet lucid enough to know 
what was going on.  I'll admit they probably gave him too much per 
injection, and probably should have titrated his amount to give him less 
per injection and more frequent injections (2/month maybe).  Would you 
say this man would not be a threat if he could voluntarily stop taking 
his drugs?  Considering that he had already nearly committed two 
murders, I'd say he would have been.
>From what I have seen working in a biological/psychological 
field, this is pretty close to a typical case.  The nonviolent 
schizophrenics usually are let loose onto the streets due to lack of 
funds, and so are unmedicated.  Many wind up as homeless street denizens 
because they can't hold a job or focus well enough to function in 
society.  Some do commit violent acts, but this is rare.
Oh, and most depressives prefer the way they are on the drugs.  Yes, some 
prozac users don't like it because they lose some of the "good"  affect - 
they become emotionally flatter - but the majority who use it are just 
happy not to be depressed anymore.  
So while there may be some abuse, I doubt it is as rampant as you seem to 
think. And before you let somebody decide whether he wants to take these 
drugs, somebody has to decide if he NEEDS them.  The rights of the 
community to be safe can't be ignored for the sake of the individual.  To 
use another example, consider DUI laws.  Is it right to abolish these 
laws on the basis that someone should be able to decide if he can drive 
after he's been drinking heavily?  Do you think his decision making 
processes are intact?  Considering how many injuries and fatalities occur 
due to drunk drivers, I'd say they probably aren't.  And before you say, 
"But the drugs are being forced on these people against their will...", 
that's what the DUI laws are doing.  They're forcing him NOT to drive 
even against his will.  The big point here, is that there has to be 
balance between community rights and individual rights, especially where 
the potential for death to members of the community is concerned.  What 
it boils down to is, who decides whether these people are making 
judgements based on impaired decision-making abilities.  I'd rather put 
my trust in a person who's been immersed in psychology and medicine for a 
few decades, and who has himself/herself been evaluated objectively by 
someone else, than in a person who has not been evaluated by anyone and 
is making a subjective decision based on his own personal feelings.  Just 
like when you sometimes need outside advice on a bad relationship because 
you're too close to the whole mess - seeing the proverbial forest, rather 
than the trees..

Andrew Ray
aray at emory.edu
Emory Unversity Neuroscience Program




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