WSJ: Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger refused to take his prescribed anti-psychotic.

[pnwmom]

***This doesn't mean that mentally ill people are a general threat or that they are responsible for the crimes of other mentally ill people.***

But when an adult who needs an anti-psychotic refuses to take them, and is posting threats of great violence online, and his parents and therapists are concerned enough about his "paranoia" and his "hearing voices" to call the police . . . why can't something be done to get him evaluated and possibly committed for treatment?


http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304811904579586152879924542?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304811904579586152879924542.html


According to Mr. Rodger's circulated document, his parents last year took him to a psychiatrist, who prescribed Risperidone, an anti-psychotic commonly used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But Mr. Rodger believed it was the "the absolute wrong thing for me to take," and refused to take it, he wrote.

[uppityperson]

1. And has a bunch of guns.

[pnwmom]

2. Right. But there was no way of connecting the dots, since his parents

weren't aware of them, and police can't just go in without cause.

[KittyWampus]

3. I believe every state has different criteria for when you can have an adult committed

against their will.

When I checked regarding a family member about 10+ years ago in NY it was if person didn't eat, clean themselves or posed a physical threat to themselves or others.

In some states it can be very difficult to have an adult committed.

[LittleBlue]

4. Risperidone is some heavy sh**

My old boss took it.

He must have been in bad shape.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Any adult has the legal right to refuse medication.

Since he was not observed stating intent to harm himself or others, at the time he saw the doc, no one could force him to take meds, and he could not be forcibly committed as a danger.
However, in his manifesto, he did mention intent to overdose on Xanax and other meds, during his killing spree, with the idea that he would shoot himself and in case of lingering coma, the meds would end his life.

Unless he signed a release of information form, his doc could not even tell his parents what his diagnosis was.

Later on, apparently the doc did call his parents with a warning.
Such info. is the required "duty to warn" others if a patient does make a threatening statement about harming someone specifically.

It was pretty clear in his manifesto that he was careful to avoid beng specific about threats, that he was choosing to do that per the video just before the killings.
He had made earlier videos that made his parents and police think he was suicidal, so the police came and checked him out, he denied any ideations and he pulled the videos, realizing that he might have been prevented from his plan.

[pnwmom]

6. True. But should an adult who is legally refusing to take prescribed anti-psychotic

medication be allowed to legally purchase an arsenal?

[JJChambers]

9. Only a person who is involuntarily committed, which requires a judges signature, loses gun rights

Due process and all that.

The problem is the threshold required to involuntarily commit someone is set so high that it is an near impossibility to achieve if someone really doesn't want to be committed.

A person must express, either verbally or through action, that they are a danger to themselves or others, in order to be committed. When the police showed up at Elliot's door, I can guarantee they asked him the standard protocol questions: does he want to hurt himself or anyone else? Has he attempted to hurt himself or anyone else?

All Elliot had to do was say No to both of those questions.

That's how broken the system is.

He was psychotic and off his meds and he should have been institutionalized.

[Crunchy Frog]

25. Maybe the threshold for losing gun rights

should be ever so slightly lower than the threshold for being involuntarily committed.

Naaaaaaah.

[blueridge3210]

27. Certainly a possibility worth investigating.

If a judge can order a person to turn in weapons while a Protective Order is pending I could see a temporary order requiring the same pending a full MH evaluation; it could also include a temporary NICS flag w/ a sunset clause to prevent a "temporary" hold being permanent while no action is ever taken. Due process should still be followed in any case.

[customerserviceguy]

38. You gonna institute

a background check for getting a knife or a car while you're at it? His mayhem spree included those things, too, and I have zero doubt that he would have found any number of substitutes for a firearm if it were impossible for him to have obtained one.

[dixiegrrrrl]

30. Taht is one of the debates going on now, esp. in Cal.

I will tell you tho...there are lots of people who agree to take their meds, they re-fill them on time, but go off of them, usually for side effect reasons, and no one is the wiser until they have a full blown attack of symptoms.
So the issue gets to how far the state wants to step in to monitor and enforce compliance.

[pnwmom]

31. And others go off them because they can't afford to go to the doctor or refill their scripts.

Hopefully the Medicaid expansion will help with that.

[treestar]

35. Being an adult doesn't matter

It's not whether he's an adult. It's whether he's competent to carry out his affairs. One thing they could have done was gotten a guardianship for him when he turned 18. Making him incapable of acting for himself, including buying the guns or spending money.

Had he not done the shooting, that manifesto could have been the grounds for creating a guardianship for him.

[Union Scribe]

7. That can't be.

I saw from experts here on DU that us nutbars on medications for psych disorders are the cause of mass murders including this one. There was even proof from a Scientology front group. I wonder if it's safe to unchain myself now.

[woo me with science]

8. Risperidone is often prescribed in autism spectrum disorders

when there is no psychosis present.

It's used to treat irritability, limited coping skills, behavioral issues.

Many, many children and adults on the autism spectrum have been prescribed this drug, never having shown signs of psychosis.

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2009/0615/p1104.html

[pnwmom]

10. In children the symptoms of autism and early schizophrenia overlap.

Based on what we now know about him, my guess is that the symptoms they first thought were autism (which is much more common) were really childhood schizophrenia. And that when they prescribed that drug it was to treat him for psychosis, not just autism.

People with Aspergers don't talk about hearing voices.

[woo me with science]

13. I don't know about this case.

Everything I've read about him has referenced Asperger's, not psychosis, so your certainty here seems out of line to me.

The only purpose of my post was to correct the implication in your post that his taking the medication indicates that he was "an adult who needs antipsychotic."

It does not.

The medication is widely used in autism spectrum disorders, and it is prescribed for children as well as adults.

[LisaL]

14. Considering he supposedly had a form of autism (Asperger's) and behaviorla problems, it could very

well have been prescribed for that.
And he refused to take it anyway.

[pnwmom]

15. And maybe the diagnosis of Asperger's was incorrect and he actually had

childhood schizophrenia or adult pre-schizophrenia.

[pnwmom]

17. There has been one report of him hearing voices, which would indicate that the drug

was prescribed for psychosis.


http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/05/ucsb-mass-shooter-refused-psychiatric-medicines-parents-in-hiding/

His parents, Hollywood director Peter Rodger and his ex-wife, Li Chin, are now in hiding, staying at a hotel, as they try to come to grips with what their son is believed to have done.

“Elliot has always been troubled and couldn’t express himself,” the source tells us.

“His parents did everything they could to help him. It seemed that Elliot suffered from extreme paranoia and heard voices, but it was impossible to properly diagnose because he just wouldn’t talk. Having been prescribed psychiatric medication, Elliot refused to take it.

“Before moving from L.A. to Santa Barbara, he had been seeing a mental health professional for years, and his parents got a team of doctors for him to continue to see after his move. Their hearts break for the victims and their families.”

[dixiegrrrrl]

32. thanks for that info.

Had not heard about the voices before.

[LisaL]

11. He wrote about it in his manifesto.

This medication has multiple uses. One of the uses is behavioral problems in persons with autism.
It doesn't prove he had schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

[pnwmom]

12. No, it doesn't prove anything. But the symptoms of autism significantly overlap

with the symptoms of childhood schizophrenia or pre-schizophrenia. They might have thought he had autism when he was younger, and changed to a different diagnosis when he began to exhibit psychotic symptoms.

His manifesto reads like that of a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, not a person with Aspergers.

[LisaL]

16. I read things written by a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and his manifesto doesn't sound

anything like that to me.

[pnwmom]

18. You think it sounds more like something a person with Aspergers would write?

I think the Aspergers was an early misdiagnosis. It happens.

[PeaceNikki]

20. It read like "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" to me, but I am no Bill Frist.

[pnwmom]

21. But they don't prescribe anti-psychotics for that. n/t

[PeaceNikki]

22. Like I said, I am no Bill Frist.

[dem in texas]

19. In most states it is difficult to get a mentally ill adult treatment if they refuse it.

It usually takes a court order to have the person declared a ward of the state. I know this happened to my daughter's best friend when she was in college. She had an episode of schizophrenia and imaged voices were talking to her. She was over 21 and refused any help from her parents. Luckily her parents could afford to go court to and get her committed and with a lot of care, she recovered.

I wonder why the parents weren't more alarmed sooner. My daughter was having problems with a stalker at her apartment building. After one of several incidents, I called my husband, said take off work and get your truck and I called my office and said I would not be in that day and we went and got that 22 year old girl who thought she knew it all and loaded her belongings in the truck and brought her home to live for a while. She was very mad at us at first, but came to realize that we'd done the right thing.

[pnwmom]

23. It sounds like they had him in treatment for years, so how do we know they haven't been

alarmed for a while? But as you point out, they haven't been able to force him to get treatment since he turned 18.

[moriah]

26. It doesn't cost money, at least in Arkansas, to do civil commitment.

As I said, I've had to help have someone involuntarily committed for suicidal ideation.

It took two witnesses and going before a judge, not even the recordings we had of this threats and the evidence that he'd tried to buy a gun.

[moriah]

24. California has civil commitment procedures just like every other state.

BTW, I'm on an anti-psychotic. Not for psychosis -- for an adjunct to my Prozac and because it helps me sleep. Risperdone is also prescribed for sleep, irritability, and agitation related to autism and Asperger's, which he was diagnosed with.

Why someone who cared about him did not proceed with that process I don't know.

[PasadenaTrudy]

28. His writing is too clear

and organized for someone with schizophrenia. I think.

[pnwmom]

29. So was the Unibomber's. nt

[steve2470]

33. just *maybe* if he had taken the Risperidone, everyone would still be alive

Yes yes, anti-psychotic drugs are not a 100% panacea, but for the right people they reduce or eliminate irrational thoughts, like murdering people.

Such a senseless tragedy. I can't imagine the grief of everyone involved, especially the parents.

[moondust]

34. 5150 hold

5150 (involuntary psychiatric hold)

Can be extended to 14 days with a 5250 and 30 days with a 5270.

[magical thyme]

36. Since his parents were financing his life

I can't help but feel they were in a position to control him more than they did. Turn of the money spigot, make him come home and make him take his medicine.

Regardless of his being the age of majority, he was not working.

[Louisiana1976]

37. +1 million

[McCamy Taylor]

40. He seemed very manipulative and functional. Hard to lock them up

if they tell the cops that they are not a danger to themselves or anyone else.

[magical thyme]

43. again, his parents were funding his lifestyle and never taught him to accept the word "No."

If he was manipulative, it was because he was taught to be manipulative. Kids aren't born manipulative, they are taught that others will give them their own way because they don't care enough not to.

They rarely said no to him, and when they did, they gave in to his "2 year old" tantrums. Every time. They didn't want him living where he lived, but they gave in and *paid* for it. They paved the way for this. Not intentionally, but they did.

If they hadn't been paying for it, he wouldn't have had the money to buy those guns, he wouldn't have had the car to drive over people with (several of the injured were run over), he would have lived in their home because he was too spoiled to make it on his own, and to spoiled to be able to live without all his little luxuries.

Had they taught him to accept the word, "No" back when he was 2 years old, then being told "No" by young women 14 years later wouldn't have been inconceivable to him.

He couldn't conceive of being rejected and told "No" because he was taught, by his parents, that no matter what, he would get his own way.

Kids need limits. Too many people today don't "get" this. They feel guilty because they're too busy with their careers or they feel guilty over a divorce, and so they give them their own way, over and over, to assuage their own guilt. And the kids get worse and worse, and more and more manipulative, because they *need* limits set. Limits give a sense of security. They tell the kid that you care enough and they give them a "place." We rebel against the idea of "being put in our place," but the upside of it is that you have a place (in the sense of having a position in the family, in the society). That place changes over time, as you grow your responsibilities and independence grow -- from being safe and warm in swaddling to the playpen, to the room, to the house and yard, etc. But kids need to have a place and a position, and they need to know what that position and place are.

And they know when they are being bought off. Buying a kid off tells them that you care more about assuaging your own feelings of guilt or you care more about getting them out of your hair and space than you do about caring for them. That is the root of the majority of dysfunction today.

[McCamy Taylor]

39. And he played WOW. Don't forget that distraction.

He had a right not to take meds. He didn't have a right to own guns if he wasn't going to take his meds.

[killbotfactory]

41. Thankfully he still had access to guns.

Think of the horrible tyranny that would result if that wasn't possible...

[1000words]

42. Don't forget, he didn't need a gun to take out half of his victims.

And it's not too much of a leap to say he was capable of using that snazzy BMW he was so fond of, as a killing device.