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Mental Illness and Young White Terrorists

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I've spent my entire life working in the field of juvenile justice.  I'm not a psychiatrist, nor a psychologist, but I do have a degree in Social Work and I've testified as an expert in hundreds of cases in which teens under age 18 get arrested as adults.  I've also reviewed thousands upon thousands of psychological and psychiatric evaluations through the years to assist in making treatment recommendations for youngsters.

Today I had the opportunity to listen to two highly skilled experts testify (one a clinical psychologist, the other a very well respected forensic psychiatrist) at a hearing in which the defense attorney argued that his client, who stabbed 21 students at a school here in Pennsylvania, was mentally ill at the time (one year ago) but now, with treatment he has received while pending trial and this decertification hearing, his depression and schizotypal/psychotic episode is in remission, he is doing much better on medication since October 2014, and is now a "very low risk" to ever recidivate with such violence in the future, as stated by the psychiatrist in her testimony.

With all of which, I must say, I agree.  I do not believe he will ever again, in his lifetime, commit such a heinous and violent act which testimony revealed was connected to his paranoid and delusion thinking that he was somehow being a follower of the Columbine murderers who were communicating to him from "Hell" and encouraging him to commit these offenses.  By the way, he also wanted to die in this incident.  Not dying, not being killed by police after his rampage, was not part of the plan, as he envisioned it.


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