life circumstances and diagnosis ranging from multiple forms of posttraumatic illness mild to severe mood disorders including bipolar disorder all forms of anxiety o c d other obsessive disorders  substance use disorders to psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia so the conversation today really is about school shootings and weird does psychiatry or could psychiatry have my opinions about where that belongs or doesn't belong but i'd love to hear your point of view well it's very very disturbing obviously what we're seeing today i remember growing up and being in high school still and i'm sure you probably had a similar experience that this just didn't happen so when we like when we go into the news and we see such frequency of these events not only frequency but amplitude of events you know especially since the late ninety's it's very concerning because i feel for the students going to school these days because they should even have to have it in their mind that something violent could happen the most violent thing that happened when i was growing up is if you were dealing with bullies and you got into a fight of some sort and nobody died and that has really changed a great deal so when when i had the opportunity to speak with you it was intriguing to me because i feel that there hasn't been enough conversation about multiple aspects that i think of lead to the problem and it's not just mental health but it's obvious i think to most people that mental health and mental street meant diagnosis identification of the problems that might lead to this or one of the important factors in hopefully us being able to find some way or conduit to progress in this area yeah you know there are so many issues that we could take a look at you know the opioid epidemic and and again as human beings we tend to look for quick solutions because we want to fix the problems quiver and but their solutions are very complex you know it's not just doesn't come out of nowhere right nothing happens in a vacuum so what happens inside of a society so the whole issue of and you know i've done some reading about this the whole issue of mental health predictability you know that someone from mental health professional can predict behavior there's no evidence really to support that true and the quickstep to i think there's a place for it but the quickstep to it really starts to stigmatize any kind of mental health issues and statistically four percent of violent crimes are committed by mental health you know who have been diagnosed as mentally health and you know with mental health illness and violence but people who are mentally ill are sixty five percent more likely to be abused by the public by the police so if we're looking at like how do we fix this where is the role of mental health in their we also have to look at the mental health of the law enforcement the mental health of the teachers you know who's standing up to these the rules the game plan sure and you  know in the florida school shooting there were all sorts of signs along the way and and they were rewarded and reported and reported so like do we need more reporting i think not and today i was talking to someone who said that they were talking about like an nationwide psychiatric database like oh my god where do we go the n r a is speaking about that yes that that's insane yes reminiscent of control programs from the past yes here and there was a shooter in las vegas who had no signs of mental illness he was successful in  life you know again for from our point of view you have to be crazy ok too but and they're so crazy inside the context of that's not seeing behavior sure but there would have been no way to predict what he true and i think it goes beyond diagnoses sometimes when we talk about mental health we limit it to simply what can be diagnosable and tracked when we talk about people we're so much more complex than that so one piece that i think figures in very strongly with this and i don't think has gotten enough press although we were talking about it when we talked earlier the idea of empathy and how even though you cannot diagnose someone with empathy problems it does factor into several diagnoses that do exist but everybody i meet with and people i know who don't meet with who are family members friends we all have a different level of empathy the amount of time and effort and ability we have to consider the needs and feelings of others and how we can factor that into decisions and behaviors when we take a look at that issue we then can see where if that has gone down which i would propose that it has gone down over the decades in our society we can have a discussion of that i think it opens up the door for violence where there would not have been violence in the past kids today i again get back to the idea that it's different these days you can be exposed to violence in so many different ways  you can look at the news you can look at video games you can listen to music you can also sort of appreciate the idea that going to school these days sometimes is  violent i have so many cases of bull being that i see in the schools and outside the schools with social and social media now that it's sort of conditions people to be less sensitive to these issues and then if we're less sensitive to them and i include myself in this as a danger we become less reactive to it we set a stage for it so that it can have more of an expression you know i absolutely agree  the question is where do we start because ok so we've diagnosed it there there is less empathy and they've done studies and all of that but again our way of reacting or  responding is usually reacting and we're not looking at the core issue like we have to make societal changes and people throw up their hands and say ah you know you can't change this idea well we have changed it usually by default  han you know we can intentionally bring in those soft skills as opposed to computer skills you know and we seem to have thrown away the baby with the bathwater you know it's interesting and this is kind of a non sequitur but i speak in one segment the they talked about you know to the media latches on to schizophrenia sure and they said the media latched onto the fact that the guy in florida took steroids ergo steroids causes violence as opposed to all the people who didn't take steroids so they talked about how schizophrenia in the let's say mid century was diagnosed as kind of a dust sile  illness and then in the sixty's seventy's it was the diagnosis was changed to violence what's interesting about that is they've released these papers that the f b i then used to u se against you know malcolm x and you know so black leaders who were protesting political points of view they could then just undermine that dismiss it and say he's mentally ill so that's the scary part about it is the mental ill diagnosis yeah becomes a civil rights issue for sure because you are right you know people with mental illness just in the fact that there are diagnoses that exist certainly does not make them dangerous you are right that most of the time that makes them more likely to be a victim and and the thing that's happening now is that those who are bantering mental illness as being the problem don't have the skill set to even be able to know what you just mentioned about by about schizophrenia i treat patients with schizophrenia and they certainly as a whole are not a group that i would even consider for this sort of thank you know but again the movies frame a lot of ideas that people have about these things instead  of real experience in that area you know again i think one of the reasons i'm happy to have this conversation with you is you have to talk to every segment of the population because everybody has some stake in it and we all have to become stakeholders conscious stakeholders and so there is that from your point of view of working with people with mental health issues but looking at the overall problem of you know lack of empathy and there are things that we can become more active in bringing it into school systems we tend to again just jump to you know snippets of news snippets of diagnosis let's do the quick fix and and really we cause more damage yes we do and we live in a context of a violent society and then you know so people say there are people who say you know oh yes i watched  violent movie well so did you know one hundred million other people and they didn't all go out and kill somebody but again if we start to explore why are we glamorising violence why are we glamorize if it does impact society read but i like the insinuation you made in that there has to be a cultural change yes really it's gotten to a point where it's become obvious for anyone who really looks at the statistics and looks at the changes that we've had culturally we don't care as much about each other i remember growing up how common it was to be able to see someone in a parking lot and they would catch your eye and those people would even just give a brief smiling oh i measure that now when i'm out in the public eye i keep a mental note of how often it happens and i can confirm anecdotally of course that in my experience it just does not happen as much we have so much more generalized paranoia in our culture this idea that somehow if we open up someone's going to take something from us oh i love that i love that i love responsive they are in because what happens is if you live in that paranoia you create your own reality because somebody is looking at you and you're thinking oh they're unfriendly they're thinking unfriendly as opposed to and of course you see what you're looking for so it's just something as simple as and i grew up you know knowing all my neighbors and and we're not necessarily going back to that but we can create small communities inside of a city inside of a work force and there has to be a certain decorum that we expect of those who take the lead in our society so public figures we can't be allowing bullying going on name calling these sorts of things are very impacting to young people they pay attention to these things they see it they copy it without even realizing it they are imitating it and yet it continues to happen and we have more of that going on now than what we ever have it really does disenfranchise people and i think that is the word that i keep coming back to when i think of school shootings is the idea that that person whoever is perpetrating that that particular day became so disenfranchised with not only their own life but the lives of everyone surrounding them that they were willing to do something that heinous and one thing that everyone could notice if they really really looked at these cases no one seems to have an escape plan who who perpetrate these arrests which brings in the whole thought of underlying suicid yes and suicide is up twenty four percent since the turn of the century which is a lot in my world for percentage twenty four for science is huge and people we've been sort of condition to think of suicide as someone who's privately sitting in a room and contemplating how to end their life by themselves but clearly today that's not always the the modus operandi of a person contemplating suicide sometimes depending on how much frustration how much disenfranchisement how much feeling that i've been taking advantage of by society at large sometimes you get that projected out in the form of a violent suicide and we see all the death and we focus on that rightly so but sometimes we forget what precipitated it happened and in some context yes and  you know for me again the whole including the opioid and including all the ills of society it starts with inclusive it that's and what we keep doing is excluding ok now we have another group to exclude and now we have another and it's them versus us and if we continue this way we're going to destroy each other and ourselves because even if it's not a volitional or calculated event yes mistakes get made can happen nationally these can happen in communities these these can happen locally it is almost a given of that there it eventually serious things will continue will will actually go with my own experience but i remember say with race relations i remember what the biggest impact for me growing up this is going to be maybe funny i was watching fat albert  cartoon of course created by bill cosby but the whole idea of it was there were these black teenagers who were interacting with each other you know african americans who looked very much like be and my friends talked very much like me and my friends and had the same sort of conflicts as me and my friends and it taught a very very very simple lesson but one that was so poignant for me is that it doesn't matter what the color of your skin it's what matters is what you have inside and it it would make some people laugh that i just said that because it sounds in today's culture hokey pokey oh that's so what are you talking about but it really is that simple and the same is true in this subject you know can we appreciate other individuals can we learn to see their strengths rather than their weaknesses or even ignore their we can raise your sad again we don't have to like everybody we just have to treat each other civil way and you know it's interesting i've traveled around the world and lived in you know far away countries that most people don't go to and the biggest lesson i came back with is we're all just human beings and here what country you're in what language you speak all just human beings and we are all connected we have the opportunity to connect and most people actually really that's all they want so you know invited into people's homes treated like royalty even in a simple peasant house you know it's civility it's respect for the other human being and i think you are right in that and again you know i wish we were the answer king and queen but we're we're ok with it and we just we just accept it as the norm oh yeah a scandal about so and so and oh yeah scandal about so and so and it has become the norm and i think the way we have to do it is we actually with our children have to start in the home intentionally counteracting what's going on out there because when you walk out the door you are not walking into a society that supports that right so i think that's that's huge what you just said i oftentimes when i meet with parents because i do have a large number of adolescent patients and it even happens of course earlier than adolescence but the fact that part of the role of being a parent is to be a teacher and you must teach your children now for the world that you want for them but the world the world that actually exists and how they can have a positive impact on the world it's a tough chore tough choice being a parent today yes but you know again i think and it may sound simplistic but i just read something where celery to some one can cure stomach is few who knew so well there are some simple answers or we can train our teachers we can do things like you know when i see these things on you tube and facebook and whatever else the children creating a bench where if you feeling lonely  sit on the bench and somebody sees you on that bench they immediately come over and say oh will you be my friend sure our children will eat that up right you know all we have to do is teach it to them but you know we're so cold and callous  we think we overcomplicate things all everybody really wants is to feel heard seen embraced part of something accepted accepted that sort you  know i interviewed this and i've mentioned this on other shows but it was very compelling i interviewed a former white supremacist who ran a hate line ok and he's now part of the head of a group life after hate so you know he had his childhood trauma center you know all like we all do yes and but again it's inside of a context of society if you were having childhood traumas and society was more supportive the impact might not be the same so it's all about consciousness raising but anyway so he joined you know angry teenager blah blah blah and he joined this hate group and i said to him was there anything anybody could have said to you along the way that would have woken you up and he said no absolutely not he said because what he gave me  suddenly he rejected all those principles he just didn't have the time and then actually you know he went into therapy and he became a dad and he sure yeah but again identity and belonging you want to be part of something that we keep driving people away and to be part of something that is louder and more extreme but not helpful the loudest gets the the microphone yeah yeah that's unfortunate yeah agree with you so we have a couple of minutes what would you like to say well i think it's a great thing that people are you know that we're talking about this today i'm hoping that if when people catch this show that they think about these things and i hope that in respect to since this is what i do for a living in in respect to seen your children and friends of of yours at school if there are any children watching to know that there are people hurting out there and hurt doesn't always look the same hurt is not always the person crying in the corner by themselves hurt sometimes can be that person who just pushed cheery and pushed your through something or broke something and to be try to exercise a level of empathy and understanding as to why that might be  were a parent to not take things for granted to yes not be it's very very appealing to play something off well he had a bad day but to pay attention to all the communications and reach out and it doesn't matter in the end when you reach out to you too whether it's a psychiatrist a therapist a counselor a life coach it doesn't matter who it has has experience in that area because it is about the report that's built and but do reach out yeah whoever that is reach out and get that person whether it's a child a friend get the help that they need or at least suggest to them yeah you know we're spending time and the reality is we're all in this together and we have one planet the spinning or we have a limited time on all of us and so it's you know and again people do reach out but they may not be skilled at reaching out right and so i want to add to that if someone doesn't respond in the way you want to reach out to somebody else there are enough people on the planet that if you keep reaching out you'll find someone who will understand it's true whether it's a professional a neighbor whatever yeah it's just remembering that we are all in this together yes i agree yes so  i think that's it i think so i'm happy you came on and i think it's important for people just to start percolating and asking questions it's not like there's one person who can find the solution but if we're not asking the questions and if we're not asking the right questions and if we're not willing to be proactive we're going to end up with what we have now and then worse and then we have to suffer the unfortunate consequences without even having to say you would be nice to actually have a structured response rather than one that is reactive yeah so thank you so much for coming on thank you great having this conversation with you very nice spending th time with you thank you my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us