Rhonda Benson, executive director of the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), said while mass killing is unthinkable, it doesn’t mean the shooter is mentally ill.
“It’s also very possible that he is just a very angry young man,” Benson said of Cruz, 19. “Every time something like this happens we automatically assume the person has to have a mental illness because it’s so bizarre, it’s so outside our range of what we see as normal behavior… but there are so many other underlying causes that are just systemic to our society anymore.”
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She said these alleged shooters could be trying to send a message or seeking notoriety because going into a school and shooting people has become kind of “a cool thing to do.”
Less than five percent of people who suffer from mental illness commit violent acts, according to a position paper by the Butler County Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services Board.
The percentage gets smaller when talking about mass shootings, according to Dr. Princess Gaitawe-Johnson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with Beckett Springs Hospital in West Chester Twp. She said according to the American Psychiatric Association, mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent one percent of all gun homicides annually.
“In my experience most of the children and adolescents have thoughts of suicide but they rarely voice homicidal thoughts towards others, especially towards groups of people,” she said. “For them to have thoughts about a group of people that they intend to harm, that is typically rare.”
Following the events in Florida, students from Hamilton, Middletown and Ross Twp. high schools have allegedly made threats referring to Cruz’s actions. Gaitawe-Johnson said those threats are not all that surprising given the barrage of news reporting on the incident, especially if a child is already experiencing issues.
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“Someone who is already feeling sad, depressed, lonely, anxious could watch these things on television and feel like that may be the proper way to solve their problems,” the doctor said. “But with parental supervision and encouraging children to talk and discuss the issues they may be dealing with, may be a way of preventing these tragedies from occurring.”
Benson said NAMI has developed a program called "NAMI Basics" for parents and caregivers of children 17 and under who suffer from mental illness. There are six classes that cover everything from understanding mental illness and the different diagnoses, communication skills and managing difficult behavior, plus how to interact with the school and juvenile justice system to name a few topics. http://nami-bc.org/our-programs/nami-basics
“It’s overwhelming to have children period, it can be a lot of work, but when they also have issues of anger management or whatever they’re dealing with it becomes doubly hard,” Benson said. “So this provides a support system for these parents and also some education around how best to deal with their child.”
NAMI is an advocacy organization whose mission “is to improve the quality of life for families and individuals impacted by mental health disorders through education, support, advocacy and stigma reduction.”
Fairfield resident Debbie Stanton, who has battled bipolar disorder for 40 years, is active in NAMI, telling her stories to help others understand there is hope and help for those suffering. She is an active member in the community and has a part-time job helping those with developmentally disabilities.
She said incidents like the one in Florida frustrate the goals of NAMI, which is to debunk many erroneous ideas about the mentally ill.
“I think it’s only three percent of the population that is dangerous to themselves and others, so in my opinion it’s negligible,” Stanton said. “It’s a serious matter but we don’t get the publication of the wellness and the treatments that are available, it’s simply he did it, he’s mentally ill. They don’t take into account all of the people that are non-violent.”
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