Odessa and the DEMAND for more gun laws!

[Wildcat Diva]

If you deaden the sense of right and wrong in a person with a mental disorder killing a lot of people can seem to them as a good idea. Medication is given out far to easily and some individuals are capable of violent acts while on it. It should be much harder to get prescription drugs!

Do you routinely interact with people with severe mental illness, untreated and without yet any medications to help? Because I DO, on a daily basis. And it sucks.

Assaultive behavior, self harm, self hatred, panic attacks, psychosis, suicide. All this due to untreated mental illness.

Untreated mental illness sucks.

I’m NOT for making treatment harder to get. That will be BAD.

 

[mortdooley]

Drugs are over prescribed and profit the drug companies more than they help. If you are 100 pounds over weight you need to lose it, not take several pills a day to function! I know several people who's Doctors took them off their meds because they were no longer needed after losing a considerable amount of weight.

 

[easy rider]

Blaming the drugs is like blaming the guns. Is it the drug, or is it the person's condition? I'm not saying that a drug doesn't have an effect, but how can you know that many more people wouldn't be worse without it?

 

[mortdooley]

Do you routinely interact with people with severe mental illness, untreated and without yet any medications to help? Because I DO, on a daily basis. And it sucks.

Assaultive behavior, self harm, self hatred, panic attacks, psychosis, suicide. All this due to untreated mental illness.

Untreated mental illness sucks.

I’m NOT for making treatment harder to get. That will be BAD.

While I generally oppose more gun restrictions, no one in a home where the people you are referring to live should be allowed to possess any type of firearms! The chances of someone getting shot is just too great.

 

[Wildcat Diva]

Drugs are over prescribed and profit the drug companies more than they help. If you are 100 pounds over weight you need to lose it, not take several pills a day to function! I know several people who's Doctors took them off their meds because they were no longer needed after losing a considerable amount of weight.

Ok, so you tell the parents of a suicidal teen that we are not going to treat their problem with first line treatment. We will just risk their life instead. (Because these meds are shown to work when compared to placebo).

How about the kid that’s so depressed they are slicing their arms up? Or having so many panic attacks that they can’t even get into the car to make it to a therapy session with me? Just say no to treatment?

I would love to see proof that antidepressants and other psychotropics profit the makers more than they help. And I don’t even know how you would quantify that. Like what units of measurements are comparable with those two factors. I mean are we comparing $ profit margins to some perceived value of improved human life and subtracting to get a a total?

 

[mortdooley]

Blaming the drugs is like blaming the guns. Is it the drug, or is it the person's condition? I'm not saying that a drug doesn't have an effect, but how can you know that many more people wouldn't be worse without it?

No, guns are just tools, mere presents of an available firearm doesn't possess someone to harm others. Drugs can be mind altering and people can do things on drugs they would never do without them.

 

[Wildcat Diva]

While I generally oppose more gun restrictions, no one in a home where the people you are referring to live should be allowed to possess any type of firearms! The chances of someone getting shot is just too great.

There is no way I would be so bold as to restrict the people who have mentally ill family members from self protection with a gun. There are ways to secure firearms and in some crisis cases, have a trusted friends temporarily hold the firearm. It’s not my job to reign over them.

 

[easy rider]

No, guns are just tools, mere presents of an available firearm doesn't possess someone to harm others. Drugs can be mind altering and people can do things on drugs they would never do without them.

Drugs are tools also, under control of a good doctor they can have the desired effect. Many people take illegal forms of drugs daily and only harm themselves and those close to them. It's the psychology of the person that pushes them in the wrong direction.

 

[Wildcat Diva]

Look, the brain is a part of the body. The body has fails. Sometimes meds can help, either on a temporary or permanent basis.

My son has a chronic problem with his body. His eyes, either of them will become inflamed for no reason. To the point where his eyes are redder than someone with pinkeye and his pupils will develop adhesions to where the pupil gets stuck in places and is the shape of a four leaf clover.

They don’t know why his eyes do this, chronically. It’s an autoimmune thing, no infection. Called idiopathic uveitis. Five years now he has this. He’s on a med that had to have listed “lymphoma” under side effects. He has to have labwork regularly because the side effects of the meds make his neutrophils levels (part of the white blood cells) go low and if too low, his body won’t be able to fight off infection.

Medications don’t work perfectly. And doctors need to know what they are doing. They need to be held accountable for making good clinical decisions with diagnoses and meds.

But meds ARE needed. I know my son needs his autoimmune medication. I know meds are needed because his doctor gets the dose just low enough to not start a “flare,” which she can spot those cells in the eyes starting to happen in her scope if his medication dose is too low. A full on flare would mean (and has happened) the presentation of those symptoms observable to me which I’ve previously mentioned. Doctor doesn’t want him to have to take Humira, but it’s needed, and at the lowest dose we can manage due to the side effects.

Uveitis is the leading worldwide cause of blindness. My son doesn’t need to be blind. I’ll take the meds with their risks.

Why are we looking at psych meds any differently?

 

[rmantoo]

Why are we looking at psych meds any differently?

The general, non-clinical, belief (seemingly perpetuated by some media, and many politicians) is that long-term use of many of these drugs seems to exacerbate psychoses and other problems, perhaps making the situation worse.

I don't know if it's real, or not.

 

[Byrd666]

....But, the spoons made me fat.

....And the drugs made me do it

....And guns kill people

....And cars kill people

....And communism/socialism/fascism never caused a problem

People are given free choice by (insert whatever you fancy here) and people need to start taking responsibility for their own F'ng actions. I have NEVER seen an inanimate object act in a detrimental way without some sort of human input.

Yup, we have mentally ill and mentally deficient folk throughout the world, and the sooner the stigma against letting a person get help disappears, the better off ALL of humanity will be.

Yes, alcohol and drugs, all drugs, have side effects. Some can be beneficial and some can be detrimental. Does that mean either, or both, should be banned or not prescribed? That is not only ridiculous, it's downright stupid and ignorant. I know of a young lady that without one mood altering drug would be the living version of a walking nightmare. I also know of a guy that has a relatively unknown (disease is known, cause, care of, and cure are not) that deals with the flare ups on occasion the best he know how, through experimentation with drugs. Some with good results, some with bad results. Is he, or she, to walk through life in misery and chronic depression and anger, or in extreme discomfort and pain just because a drug company makes a drug with side effects yet still profits from it?

 

[easy rider]

The general, non-clinical, belief (seemingly perpetuated by some media, and many politicians) is that long-term use of many of these drugs seems to exacerbate psychoses and other problems, perhaps making the situation worse.

I don't know if it's real, or not.

Sure, but that's where a good doctor should be able to spot a change, and either reduce or change medication. Don't get me wrong, some drugs can magnify a problem in someones mind, but that needs to be identified.

 

[Wildcat Diva]

The general, non-clinical, belief (seemingly perpetuated by some media, and many politicians) is that long-term use of many of these drugs seems to exacerbate psychoses and other problems, perhaps making the situation worse.

I don't know if it's real, or not.

I don’t think people should be saying things like that unless there is evidence to that effect. Certainly there is long term data on the use of these meds. I’ve not seen any proof to that effect.

I don’t provide meds, I do the second line treatment. If I wanted to claim the meds were bunk and you should elevate therapists to the top of the heap instead and pay us more, that would SURELY financially incentivize me to make that claim, if there was something there to that. You don’t see me making that claim.

Most of these shooters were not engaged in long term treatment (with meds nor with therapy) to my understanding.

 

[easy rider]

The problem I've seen is that there are doctors that see a symptom and prescribe to that symptom and leave it up to a pharmacist to go over the side effects of a drug.
Drugs can work differently on each person, what works wonders on one person can possibly have an opposite effect on another. A "good" doctor treats the person, not the symptom, meaning they will talk and explain what a drug is supposed to do, and if it doesn't do that, will either increase or change a prescription to meet those expectations.

 

[mortdooley]

There is no way I would be so bold as to restrict the people who have mentally ill family members from self protection with a gun. There are ways to secure firearms and in some crisis cases, have a trusted friends temporarily hold the firearm. It’s not my job to reign over them.

It seems I have offended you, that was not my intention. There is no way to safely store a firearm and still have it readily available from outside threats! People with mental issues are not stupid and can defeat most ways of securing a firearm.

I know a family that takes special needs children to foster until they are adopted. The wife is an emergency room nurse who has devoted herself full time caring for profoundly damaged children due to the substance abuse by their birth Mothers. They have an eighteen year old son they adopted when he was six who is physically healthy but mentally troubled. His older brother moved out of the house and sleeps in a travel trailer on the property and the rest of the family lock themselves in the master bedroom at night because they are afraid of him killing them in their sleep. His Father died a few months ago and his only reaction was how it was going to affect his living conditions, other than that he feels no loss. Sometimes when medicated he appears to just have a buzz to keep the stress of life under control. The rest of the time he is little more than a zombie.

 

[easy rider]

Parents are afraid their son is a psychopath and they do anything about it?

 

[Wildcat Diva]

It seems I have offended you, that was not my intention. There is no way to safely store a firearm and still have it readily available from outside threats! People with mental issues are not stupid and can defeat most ways of securing a firearm.

I know a family that takes special needs children to foster until they are adopted. The wife is an emergency room nurse who has devoted herself full time caring for profoundly damaged children due to the substance abuse by their birth Mothers. They have an eighteen year old son they adopted when he was six who is physically healthy but mentally troubled. His older brother moved out of the house and sleeps in a travel trailer on the property and the rest of the family lock themselves in the master bedroom at night because they are afraid of him killing them in their sleep. His Father died a few months ago and his only reaction was how it was going to affect his living conditions, other than that he feels no loss. Sometimes when medicated he appears to just have a buzz to keep the stress of life under control. The rest of the time he is little more than a zombie.

I’m not offended. But who do you think should decide and require that a family with mentally ill family members should disarm themselves? I would have to go back and check your first post on the topic, but i seem to remember “should not be allowed to have” as being the wording? Who should decide who is mentally ill enough to not have a gun in their home, owned by anyone in that home? Should there be a law about this? I’m going to post this and then go back and see if I’ve misquoted you. One sec.

 

[Wildcat Diva]

Yep I was correct. Mentioned gun restrictions and then should not “be allowed” to possess.

Well, how are we going to go about interpreting exactly and enforcing that one.

Because diagnoses change. Symptoms change. You can have major depressive disorder one year and the next year you’ve recovered and you don’t anymore.

Sometimes doctors disagree about diagnoses too.

Sometimes they make gross mistakes.

My dad was recently at a psych hospital for a severe reaction to high doses of prescribed steroids, There were 5 diagnoses floated, and the one that was written on his discharge papers WAS completely wrong. He didn’t have even one symptom of that condition written. I called the program manager up on their bullshit, and confronted them on that and they admitted that a nurse had just written the diagnoses on the discharge papers. They agreed that the diagnosis was wrong. The correct diagnoses was buried on the middle of his medical record.

That comment about gun restrictions and mentally ill family members is going to need a lot of explaining of logistics how those restrictions going to be applied if they are not self-imposed.

 

[mortdooley]

Parents are afraid their son is a psychopath and they do anything about it?

Yes, he spent several months at a "camp" near Waco where everything was planned out to keep the "visitors" busy. They decided he was good to go home and when the family asked that he stay longer they were told to take him home or be charged with child abandonment! When he reaches adulthood his juvenile records will probably be sealed and he will be able to buy any gun the rest of us can. What a system!

 

[mortdooley]

Yep I was correct. Mentioned gun restrictions and then should not “be allowed” to possess.

Well, how are we going to go about interpreting exactly and enforcing that one.

Because diagnoses change. Symptoms change. You can have major depressive disorder one year and the next year you’ve recovered and you don’t anymore.

Sometimes doctors disagree about diagnoses too.

Sometimes they make gross mistakes.

My dad was recently at a psych hospital for a severe reaction to high doses of prescribed steroids, There were 5 diagnoses floated, and the one that was written on his discharge papers WAS completely wrong. He didn’t have even one symptom of that condition written. I called the program manager up on their bullshit, and confronted them on that and they admitted that a nurse had just written the diagnoses on the discharge papers. They agreed that the diagnosis was wrong. The correct diagnoses was buried on the middle of his medical record.

That comment about gun restrictions and mentally ill family members is going to need a lot of explaining of logistics how those restrictions going to be applied if they are not self-imposed.

If the person who has mental problems can't pass the questions on the 4473 because of his condition it should be the same as the rules regarding Felons. No firearm can be accessible to the restricted person, either locked in a truly secure safe or kept off premises. If the owner loses control of the weapon and it is used illegally he is as guilty as the person committing the murders.

I an sick and tired of Liberal Politicians proposing rules and restrictions against my Rights because people with known issues are able to become mass murderers. I do not agree to give up anything because of these disturbed individuals! No one in their right mind goes out and kills a bunch of innocent people.

The few people I know who suffer with depression suffer with it all their lives and when their medication stops working or they can't afford it any longer anything can happen. The person I know who seems to have the worst depression talks about killing herself often. Her ex husband was accused of stealing the handgun her father gave her but I believe he took it to make it harder for the mother of his child to harm herself.