Minnesota's mass school shooting
About 24 months ago in a small town in Minnesota, another young man with serious mental health issues, an outrageous and frightening website (homicidal/suicidal ranting), prescribed psychotropic medications*, and not being regularly treated for his chronic and severe psychosis went on a terrible rampage killing many students in his school and himself.
www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog (A Normal Kid posting 4.2005)
As a long time child advocate (county guardian ad litem) I have become increasingly aware of the great void in services for at risk children.
In Red Lake Minnesota Jeff Weise killed seven people, wounded seven more and then killed himself.
Afterwards the community raised money and built a child and family friendly mental health facility to make it easier for troubled people to get help. It would have been a far better investment (at a much reduced price) had it been built just a year or two earlier.
* A Hennepin county judge has provided me with the prescription regimens of children in her courtroom taking Ritalin, Prozac, and other psychotropic medications. Most of these children are under 12 years old and did not receive therapy. During that period of time Minneosta had only 15 child psychiatrists in the entire state (with a population about 4 million)and the ratio of counselors to students in our schools was 900 to 1. www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog | 