The common remedy is time, communication, and loving support from parents and peers. The two teen boys at Columbine apparently received no such guidance. Their emotional distress was so lengthy and persistent that they had lost any hope for future relief. The sad fact is that no law can banish the human failings of parents or peers who are unable to heal all the injuries that life has to offer. But there is one very important failing that we can repair.
Human sanity can only take so much torture.
When we subject anyone to prolonged, persistent, and seemingly endless exposure to abuse and psychological deprivation, we can be certain that they will eventually crack. That is precisely what we do to many students by imposing on them a compulsory public education. This is not a righteous political assertion, but rather an apparent and difficult fact. Prisoners of war are treated better than those youngsters who are forced, totally beyond their parents control, to subject themselves to daily doses of cruel and unusual punishment by heartless peers. There is no escape.