The Tragedy in Newtown CN

Our hearts go out to the families of the dear children and their educators who were so brutally killed at the elementary school near Newtown CN last Friday. We can hardly imagine the pain they must deal with. Also our sympathies go to the first responders, who were traumatized by the events.

  

It is human to try to make sense of the event, to look for causes or messages or lessons. Ending the lives of first graders holds no meaning whatsoever. It is yet one step more vicious than a number of vicious mass murders which have occurred in recent decades.

  

Like our President, we want to look harder now for ways to prevent these events. And a number of ways have been mentioned. I would like to discuss the most prominent.

  

First, is the recurring and contentious theme of gun violence and gun control. Why, in what we consider the most advanced nation in the world and in a time of peace, do we lead the world in killings with guns, so many more than in other advanced countries and even more than less advanced countries? I hope there will be a serious reconsideration of appropriate gun control policy at the city, state, and federal levels to help keep mass-killing weapons out of the hands of those likely to misuse them. It has been noted however that these events have increased even during a time when gun controls have increased.

  

And this takes us to the second discussion, about how to help those who have mental problems serious enough to drive them to suicide or homicide or both. We as a nation are very poor at finding out who might be in such a mental state. We could point to a lack of professionals and accurate diagnosticians who might be able to help a family dealing with a young person who is showing signs of being unable to deal with people in safe, consistent ways.

  

But even more important I think is the breakdown of community and the breakdown of the core family group. It is the adults immediately surrounding a child who are the models and stimulus to a young child.  And too many parents are more absent than on the scene. Likewise, our schools are generally too understaffed and over-burdened to recognize and help those children who avoid or resist the norms of behavior.

  

The fact is that more and more parents lack the time, money, knowledge, and support to meet the real needs of their children. There just is not enough parenting going on. It is not only parenting quality that is at stake but "parenting quantity." That is, time spent with the child, from day one to year twenty-one.

  

Research is showing that many youngsters today, in ever increasing numbers, are just not getting the necessary sequence of interpersonal and other stimulants and environmental factors to get normal brain development. But of course most of such children never turn to extreme violence.

  

This leads to a third discussion which rarely gets mentioned but may be at the heart of these extreme violent acts, Most of the perpetrators in these horrific incidents are on some kind of psychotropic drug. The stupendous growth in the use of these drugs over the last several decades coincides with the growth in the frequency of these incomprehensible acts of violence. 

  

Even the ads on TV list suicidal or violent tendencies as possible side effects for many of these mind and mood altering medications. They wouldn't have to mention these dangerous effects unless the drug researchers had seen them in their studies. Yet people continue to ask for these drugs and physicians seldom monitor people's thought patterns once they are taking the prescriptions.

  

Experts have noted that many of these drugs work by stimulating patients to become more active, which looks like they are becoming more functional, but on the down side, by stimulating them into action, the drugs also make it easier for them to carry out their more desperate feelings. For example, a patient who might otherwise be troubled by suicidal thoughts may be more prone to take action on them. After many if not most of these horrible shootings we learn that the shooter was on some kind of psychotropic medication. We seldom learn which one without major sleuthing.

  

The last area I want to look at is the media. Our 24/7 live coverage of these incidents obviously has the potential to give people who are already feeling the kinds of feelings that lead to violence against self or others new ideas about how and why to commit these crimes. Gun specialists have predicted a rise in sales of the rifle the shooter used in Newtown, ostensibly for self-protection against someone else who already has one or in order to get it before it is outlawed in reaction to the Newtown massacre. For these reasons, some have suggested that law enforcement try not to give so many details about these tragic events. But it seems unlikely that such information can be kept secret.

  

Another influence of the media which I think we need to look at is the constant barrage of advertisements which imply that if you are feeling bad for any reason, a pill will fix it. Depressed? Anxious? Grieving? Feeling disconnected? Shy? Nervous? Anti-social? Disoriented? They have a pill for you. But few studies have been done to find out if these medications really work for any length of time or in what proportion of patients their mental effects are detrimental.  .

  

Meanwhile, these drugs cover up symptoms which otherwise might lead a person to get real help, from someone professional, religious, or simply supportive, to help them through a difficult junction in their life, a period of mourning, a time of confusion, anger, or despair, and so on.

  

A number of doctors have come forward to complain that it is wrong to cover up relatively normal reactions to life by overmedicating. It is no wonder then that some people's troubles reach fever pitch and drive them to do horrific things.

  

In a nation of over 300 million people, we are bound to have some very deranged people. But they are a tiny minority. Yet it is said that over 100 million Americans are currently taking a medication which alters their mind or moods. It is likely that when a troubled person, a drug reaction, and a gun come together we have a problem. It is probably a case of the perfect storm.

  

What we see in so many cases is this perfect storm: A person who has not had their developmental or emotional needs met and who has not been able to get appropriate help gets on a medication which changes their anger and depression into actionable rage and gets access to a weapon of massive destructive power. 

  

All these factors need to be addressed in a civil society which cares about the safety and quality of life of its citizens and about the future of its children..

Getting to the Cause of Depression and Anxiety

Family First | VoiceAmerica™

It seems that more and more people today are being diagnosed and treated for depression and anxiety. The media advertisements for pharmaceuticals for these emotional states have increased dramatically. At the same time, the ads warn not to drive or work with dangerous machinery while under the influence. Yet people who are being medicated for anxiety and depression can’t afford to stop their work and home functions. And often the effects of the drugs shift over time. Is there another way? My guest this week on Family First is Dr. Jonathan Brower, who has pursued life-long study of the inner-workings of the unconscious and of how people suffer when they put up walls to avoid being conscious of their real feelings and impulses. His counseling practice focuses on helping people to discover the source of their anxiety or depression, so that they can overcome it by addressing the root cause. He specializes in a therapeutic process which can have dramatic results in a very short time.

To hear the program, simply click on the link above or this link::http://www.voiceamerica.com/show/1916/family-first Friday at 1 PM PT, 2 PM MT, 3 PM CT, 4 PM ET, or any time afterwards on demand, for podcast download, or RSS.

 Dr. Jonathan Brower experienced important people in his early life being “nervous.” He didn’t have the word "anxiety" in his vocabulary, but what he experienced was very real and disturbing. In addition to the nervousness, some of the people around him had low energy and would withdraw from others. He wanted to know more. At ten, he became a voracious reader of biographies and novels that involved the emotional struggles people tried to overcome. By age 16, he was reading books by and about Sigmund Freud. For the first half of college he was a psychology major, but he found that many courses were not about the human struggle toward optimal mental health. He changed his major to sociology, where he learned about the social psychology of emotions and relationships. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Says Dr. Brower, “We all have had some degree of emotional pain during our lives, but we don’t have to let it cause us to suffer.”

To hear the program, simply click on this link::http://www.voiceamerica.com/show/1916/family-first or the link above, on Friday at 1 PM PT, 2 PM MT, 3 PM CT, 4 PM ET, or any time afterwards on demand, for podcast download, or RSS.

Take Home Tip from Randy Rolfe: Emotional states which cause pain and suffering need to be addressed first by seeking the cause and getting help to reverse the cause. Too many people today, even youngsters and young adults, are being medicated without proper attempts to correct the underlying causes. Teach your children that pills are a last resort except in crisis situations and seldom have long lasting relief without serious side effects. Emotional conditions instead need to be worked out with a trusted relative, friend, or professional if at all possible.

Do our kids have nature deficit disorder?

Listen in this Friday 1 PM Pacific, 4 PM Eastern, to hear World Ambassador for Family Randy Rolfe interviewing a leading nature education expert and author, Ellen Haas. Ellen will show you how important it is for our children's overall well-being, physical health, and mental development to get out in Nature! If you miss the show you can listen to the recording anytime or download it later to your portable device. Simply connecting with Nature has been shown to help with obesity, sleep, depression, anxiety, attention and focus problems, learning challenges, and more. Any parent can enlist the help of Nature!

Simply go to this link to get the details!

http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/54356/do-our-children-have-nature-deficit-disorder

Take Home Tip from five time author, family therapist, and longevity trainer Randy Rolfe: Send your children outside, even if they want to finish their video game or do some more texting or grab another snack. Send them outside without earphones so they can get not only the visual but also the the audio portion of Nature and let them tell you about any odors of Nature they detected. Let them play in sand, mud, or meadows. You will have a more cooperative child!

Get in touch with your child's social media habits now!

Social media is one of those areas where your child is unlikely to appreciate the risks until they already are deep into the habit of devoting a great deal of time to it. It is new area parents must be vigilant about. Not only should a parent know how much their child is using Facebook, for instance, but they should also have a regular dialogue about what is going on and how the child is reacting.

Furthermore, use should be restricted so that non-cyber activities predominate. And for younger children, the use of social media needs to be prevented, since the child needs to have a grounding in reality before he or she begins to participate in the what some are now calling the "Fakebook" scene. One 16-year-old in a newspaper interview said it was like a giant popluarity contest. It can exaggerate the already stressful effects of artificial competition for popularity in the school or neighborhood environment.

Here is the latest news.

CHICAGO (AP) — Add “Facebook depression” to potential harms linked with social media, an influential doctors’ group warns, referring to a condition it says may affect troubled teens who obsess over the online site. A NEW CONDITION?

Researchers disagree on whether it’s simply an extension of depression some kids feel in other circumstances, or a distinct condition linked with using the online site. But there are unique aspects of Facebook that can make it a particularly tough social landscape to navigate for kids already dealing with poor self-esteem, said Dr. Gwenn O’Keeffe, a Boston-area pediatrician and lead author of new American Academy of Pediatrics social media guidelines.

Parenting Tip for Today: Randy Rolfe, author of The Seven Secrets of Successful Parents, recommends that parents be in touch with their children about their use of Facebook. For kids under 18 living at home they need to limit the child's time spent on social media or any type of cyber screen. And they should get their child to agree to let them have access to their Facebook and other pages. Things that go on on these pages are in fact public and a parent has the right and duty to guide their child's public activities for the sake of their child's reputation and future.