Black coat, white shoes, black hat, Cadillac
Yeah, the boy’s a time bomb.
~ Rancid
Who is James Holmes and why should you care? He’s the 24-year-old guy in Colorado who allegedly shot and killed 12 people in a movie theater more than a month ago, and left 58 wounded.
News media have been desperately trying to piece together information about Mr. Holmes’ life, because he had so little of a digital footprint. And because the neuroscience graduate program he attended at the University of Colorado, Denver has been tight-lipped about his short time there.
So the New York Times did some good old-fashioned reporting, digging into his friends, social life, and even talking to a few of his professors to cobble together a glimpse of the life and personality of James Holmes.
What emerges is a list of traits that — while they could be associated with a mass-murderer — could just as easily be associated with any introspective, quiet person in America. And that’s what makes such arm-chair psychologist profiling especially dangerous.
The overwhelming sense of the person who is James Holmes that you get from the Times profile is a very smart but very shy and somewhat awkward first-year graduate student. Interviews with people who knew or had contact with him before the attack tell a story of a man struggling with a mental illness and losing his footing, according to the Times story.
Those who worked side by side with him saw an amiable if intensely shy student with a quick smile and a laconic air, whose quirky sense of humor surfaced in goofy jokes — “Take that to the bank,” he said while giving a presentation about an enzyme known as A.T.M. — and wry one-liners. There was no question that he was intelligent. “James is really smart,” one graduate student whispered to another after a first-semester class. Yet he floated apart, locked inside a private world they could neither share nor penetrate.
And that’s really the entire gist of what the Times uncovered. There was no smoking gun. There were few telltale signs that suggested he was about to escalate. Because as every mental health professional knows, it’s one thing to talk about awful, unspeakable thoughts one has — and which mental health professionals and therapists hear everyday from different patients. It’s quite another to actually carry them out.
Some students claimed he got “quieter” and even less talkative or joking in the spring semester. But since apparently nobody ever really got close to him, these are simply retrospective beliefs inescapably colored by what we now know about him. Isolating oneself is not a sign of someone about to commit murder — it’s more often a sign of a person about to commit suicide.
In any case, professionals were alerted, but since he didn’t meet any of the legal requirements for a forced commitment, little else could be done. After all, you can’t imprison people in the U.S. based upon suspicion alone.
The worst part is that some of his acquaintances believed they could have or should have done more to help him before he deteriorated. Some said they wished they had tried harder to break through his loneliness, a student recalled and told the Times. But that’s just 20/20 hindsight speaking. Multiple students tried multiple times and in multiple ways to reach out to him, to make a human, social connection. He just wasn’t interested.
Maybe it was due in part to his mental illness — he texted a fellow student about “dysphoric mania” in the months leading up to his alleged rampage.
But maybe it was also just due to his personality.
Or maybe it was just due to someone who had criminal thoughts and then acted on them. I suspect it’ll be a long time — if ever — before we know the real answer.
Read the full article (lengthy, but worth it if this topic interests you): Before Gunfire, Hints of ‘Bad News’
4 comments
Man I think its so sad. Really, there is a big problem with people turning the blind cheek in the USA. I appreciate your article, finally someone shows a bit of compassion. What happened was horrific, no doubt. It makes me sad just watching the stories on YouTube and reading about it. We Americans and others cannot forget. Mental illness can ruin lives in ways we cannot fathom. Everyone is afraid of stigmas and such. Hate to say this but his Dad a Dr. And mom. Psychiatric nurse should have known better and helped him. God Bless all the lost souls.
I’m sitting here waiting to watch Romney’s acceptance speech, and read at the bottom of the News’ site ticker that Holme’s attorney releases the shooter tried to reach his psychiatrist moments before he committed his heinous act. He didn’t get through.
2 points to reading that anyone who is uncertain what should have happened:
1. No psychiatrist, much less any mental health care provider wears a shirt under our clothes that has a red letter “S” labeling us super people that will save the world, much less those patients we try to help.
2. There is no drug or magic phrase that imparts appropriate insight and judgment. That is not the job of a psychiatrist nor other provider to instill in the heads of patients. We try to impart wise choices and goals, but, it takes a village to raise a citizen.
This revelation is not going to help Mr Holmes in his defense of the indefensible, and it will not find an alternative villain to successfully lynch to save those who have been victimized by a senseless, unjustified tragedy. And I say this as a psychiatrist who is tired of watching my profession be crapped on by anyone who thinks the profession is just taking advantage if not just hurting anyone who crosses our path: life is about needs and choices, so if people are struggling to figure out how to make healthy and responsible needs and choices, don’t lay it at my feet alone.
No good deed goes unpunished. That is an adage every health care provider needs to consider on their walls these days the way some try to force on health care professionals in this time of blame, entitlement, and the direction to be laid by PPACA.
It’s understandable that you would have an interest in sharing your views on mental health issues and the greater picture of how we’re all involved in the science of the mind in one way or another. Yes, James Holmes is a tragedy, it’s just that I see the larger tragedy that has occurred since.This time around, the media is doing nothing but inventing the story in little, acceptably vague or deliberately misleading terms.For example, “Holmes was under the care of a Psychiatrist specializing in Schizophrenia?” If you do only 1 thing today, it should be to analyze what the minimum criteria would be to comport with this phrases meaning.In short, Holmes had one appointment with this doctor as a requirement of all tuition students. But, this isclearly not what the reporting intends to imprint us with.I should add that, this doctor did phone campus police as the news reports. However, the actual statement was “she called them with concerns FOR James.”The Aurora theatrics and urgency of the James Holmes situation compelled me to take an interest almost immediately. However, in observing how law enforcement and the media have operated since I became both enraged and saddened. That’s the reason I created this video P.S.A.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpJRl0kuIe0Let's quickly form groups and begin to exchange information. The goal should be to take action in some way, at some time.The window of opportunity to save James is closing, however the clock is frozen in time for us to expose the extent of corruption and prevent the secrecy that virtually eliminates our ability to locate and stop it.Visit the Tyranny News Network Blog for an associated article…http://tyrannynews.com/?p=1713
I most certainly can empathize and sympathize with Mr. Holmes as 17 years ago I saw into the mind of the mass murderer. I am female and I know there are female mass murderers, but fewer than males. I never planned to kill anyone nor intended to, but wanted to kill everyone around me, however, it was really the system I wanted to kill, no individuals, but I did not separate them in my mind. I hallucinated, was delusional, my body split in two and my twin (me) was walking beside me, but as crazy as I seemed to be, I held on to a thread of realty and I believe I knew right from wrong. I seemed to go in and out of psychosis. I did not drink, nor do drugs. I got myself out of it, or maybe time took care of it. It never happened again. Because of my experience, I can understand the mass murderer. Not that they should be excused for what they have done.