New research being released soon links decreased bloodflow in the prefrontal cortex of the brain to murderers and serial killers.  With the tragedy in Virginia followed quickly by that at NASA, this study should be of great interest. 

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is associated with forethought, planning, and impulse control.  Deficits here indicate a relative inability to utilize resources involved with inhibition, self-censorship, planning, and future consequences. The results of this research suggest that murderers who commit acts of impulsive violence show a marked inability to utilize important cognitive resources when challenged by emotionally neutral tasks.

SPECT images of the brain, which measure blood flow, reveal that murderers and serial killers have decreased blood flow to this area of their brains.  Brain trauma, toxic exposure and decreased blood flow to the prefrontal cortex were 3 common factors researchers discovered in this study of those who kill on impulse, such as the young college student in Virginia and the man at NASA.   

The good news is that many of these brain patterns are amenable to treatment with therapy and medication! 

  Branded/Labels

Years ago the child was branded for all to see and hear. Much like Hester Prynne's letter "A" embroidered to her chest, the child carried her invisible though clearly seen brand both privately and publicly. The brand, the label became a Procrustean bed, which the child always fit into so nicely, for she never grew. Instead, she remained shrouded in and the size of the label.

Somehow the dreaded labeling words got sprinkled into her cereal, dissolved in her tea, rinsed into her clothing, and stuffed between her sheets. They were in the glancing blows of the quickly averted eyes, the hands held close or entombed in pockets so as not to reach out and touch, and the silent battered dreams no one will ever share.

Betrayal, disempowerment, disconnection, and hopelessness breed in her desolate, branded heart. A heart that once silently screamed for intimacy, a sense of identity and value, for someone to trust.that heart now lies alone, clinging to the last vestiges of an unbranded little girl.

  Thoughts On The Month Of April 2007

      And Our Broken Mental Health System

In the same month that Seung-Hui Cho killed and injured scores of people at Virginia Tech, a researcher at the University of Washington was shot to death in her office by a former boyfriend, who then killed himself. Rebecca Griego had obtained a restraining order against Jonathan Rowan. When he showed up at her office he fired five shots into Rebecca. A colleague at the university said it was a "psycho from her past."

In Mandeville, La., a man who had just been placed under a restraining order filed by his estranged wife ambushed her and their three children. Police say James Magee chased his wife's gray Toyota Scion for several blocks, ramming it repeatedly until the car crashed into a tree. As Adrienne Magee tried to get out of the vehicle, James Magee stepped out of the truck and shot her in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot, killing her instantly. He then opened fire on his children as they tried to flee the vehicle, killing his 5-year-old son and striking his 7-year-old daughter in the chest.  Magee had never received help for previous violent outbursts.

And in Queens, New York, a man killed his mother, a wheelchair-bound man and a home health care worker before shooting himself dead just minutes after the mother called 911 pleading for help.  The murdered mother, Sonia Taylor, had called police twice Monday during fights with her son Wade Dawkins.  The police had been called to the home eight times since last May. During an incident this past October, Taylor told police her son, a drug abuser with no rap sheet, was throwing things around the house and acting violently.  The police took him to a local hospital for an evaluation. He was quickly sent back to her house.

The Virginia Tech murderer was very ill. He fit the dreary profile all too familiar from the shootings at Columbine High School near Denver and the Nickel Mines School in Amish country near Lancaster, Penn. Cho was an angry outcast, preoccupied with thoughts of violence against those whom he saw as bullying, victimizing or just plain ignoring him. From the tapes he made of himself, it is obvious that he was in the grip of paranoia. He had profound social withdrawal, suicidal thinking, destructive fantasies and was a known stalker. He scared people. But he fell through the cracks of university bureaucracy and a hodgepodge mental-health system.

State and public mental health systems have all but disintegrated across our nation.  For those who served in Viet Nam and now for those who serve in the Gulf War and Iraq, the military's mental health system is far from adequate - understaffed, overwhelmed, and underpaid.  The debate about gun control will likely heat up in the next weeks and months.  When the damaged and the deranged amongst us go undiagnosed and untreated in a world of guns, then fatalities result.

While debating gun control, it is also time to begin repairing a mental-health system that serves too few, costs too much, protects too little and cannot even find the means to help those who clearly are in desperate need.  I cannot do much, but can do my part.  I am presently giving between 1/3 and 1/2 of my time in therapy to those who cannot afford treatment.  While we wait for a broken system to be fixed, I encourage others in the mental health system to make some sacrifice. ~ gordon