Friends, teachers tell of Loughner's descent into world of fantasy

[cowcommander]

He played late-night marathon games of Monopoly with his buddies. He went with friends on family vacations. He would hang with pals at IHOP on Fridays. He had a girlfriend. He laughed and he loved and he knew things - about jazz, cars, fantasy games.

And then Jared Loughner slipped into a world of fantasy that was no online game. Slowly but steadily, his intelligence warped into a distorted, disconnected series of obsessions. He developed an illogical fascination with logic. Math, grammar, logic - the systems civilization has developed to make sense of the world became the means through which he expressed the confusion and pain in his increasingly lost mind.

The first sketches of suspects in horrific killings are usually scattered images of hate - an almost superhuman anger trained at others. But as the portraits gain detail, they generally reveal some toxic combination of frustration, abuse, illness and loss. Loughner, those around him say, had the whole package.

A picture of Loughner gleaned from interviews with more than two dozen friends, classmates, teachers and neighbors, as well as from his own writing in online forums, shows no evidence that politics or government were among his defining or enduring obsessions. Rather, his deepest, most disturbing questions were about the very nature of reality: He appeared to have lost any clear sense of the line between real life and dreams or fantasy.

And somewhere in that netherworld, between his dissolving sense of reality and the brutal truth of a sunny Saturday morning outside a Tucson supermarket, Loughner, according to police and a federal indictment, somehow latched onto his congresswoman, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. In Loughner's mind, she became a symbol of the system that he blamed for turning a bright, seemingly functional child into a frustrated, lonely, angry and frightening young man.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011206630.html?hpid=topnews

[Duer 157099]

1. Aren't they describing the onset of schizophrenia?

Sure sounds like it.

[LisaL]

3. Average age of onset in males is 18.

So he'd be the right age for the onset.

[kestrel91316]

2. Textbook paranoid schizophrenia, IMHO. And yes, I have a close family

member with it. I can spot it a mile away.

[BlueCheese]

4. I knew someone who became schizophrenic.

She was a brilliant student in high school, won national academic awards, and kept things together enough to graduate from Harvard, where the early symptoms manifested themselves. Five years later her former self was unrecognizable--lots of delusions, beliefs that people were trying to kill her, incoherent emails. I didn't know her well enough to know where her family was or what they had tried to do to help. Just an awful situation.

We really need to do better in terms of treating mental illness in this country.

[Warpy]

7. The problem is that a lot of the drugs have horrific side effects

and patients will stop taking them just to get rid of the side effects, trying for a short vacation from them. Once they've slipped back into delusion, they'll consistently refuse the drugs, paranoid and convinced everyone is out to poison them. Because of a too-narrow definition of "harm to oneself or others," the drugs can't be compulsory, nor can hospitalization.

Families are left with few resources as someone spins out of control.

[cowcommander]

8. How effective are medical treatments for mental disorders like these?

[H2O Man]

11. There's not a single

answer to your question. (It's a very good question, of course.) In some cases, the medications are very successful in treating major mental illness. In other cases, they are not as effective. And there are many cases with results somewhere in the middle.

Even the best psychiatrists often have to fine-tune the dose they prescribe, and/or try different medications.

[LisaL]

10. No evidence he ever tried any drugs for any mental disorders.

[Warpy]

12. Who is this "he" you refer to?

The post I replied to very clearly said "she."

In any case, parents who are watching a child spin out of control are unable to force medication against that child's will. If that child is extremely paranoid, she will always think her parents are trying to poison her.

Given the side effects of most of the drugs, she'll have a grain of truth.

[BlueCheese]

13. I don't know what the answer is.

I'm almost at a complete loss.

[dkf]

5. I wish this is what we focused on...a human being's need for help

I can't help but feel that we failed him. What can we do to make sure this doesn't happen? And should this be a state by state thing where some fall through the cracks?

I can't imagine what it must have been like to live that life. He wanted to be accepted and craved being with others. So sad.

[tblue37]

6. Look at this from page 2 of that article:

"It was pretty messed up," said Nasser Rey, 21, a friend from elementary and middle school. "Somebody taped a sticker on his back and it said, 'Kick me,' and people started kicking him. They just started trying to trip him. But he wasn't being bullied. He didn't start crying or nothing."

If that isn't being bullied, then what is?

[Last Stand]

9. I can't help but wonder if he had killed people at a Republican rally

if there would be so many articles built on empathy. I think it's good to take a fair-minded approach, but not too many spree shooters get a soft shoulder from Republican rags.

The part of the article that makes me doubt the intent is the outright dismissal of politics for a motive. Don't know how you can do that and stay credible. He didn't shoot clowns; he shot Democrats. Troubled, yeah. Democrat-hater, yeah.