Autistic 8-year-old Randle Barrow killed by his mother

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Most people who kill are both sane and normal.

That's a scary statement, but it's true--a sane, normal human being has the capacity to become a murderer. It doesn't happen out of the blue, but it doesn't require insanity. All that's required is for a person to give in to hate for long enough, and care more and more about themselves, and less and less about others. If a person doesn't fight against that, then sooner or later, they become capable of planning murder. It is not because of insanity, but because a person has learned that they are more important than others, that others are not quite human, or that fully giving in to anger and hate is okay.

Most people do not commit murder, because in addition to selfishness and anger we also have the impulse to care about others and to contribute to their welfare; we have the ability to understand others rather than redefining them as not-quite-human. Listen to that instinct, and you keep yourself from drifting toward selfishness, anger, and hate.

We already have a word for the choice to kill. It isn't "insane" or "abnormal"; it's simply "evil". Killing is wrong, but people are perfectly capable of choosing to do things that are wrong. We don't need to excuse it with insanity; and, anyhow, all the self-respecting insane people of the world, who are no more likely to kill than anyone else, would prefer not to be painted as potential murderers.

I DO honestly believe that stress is what drives it.

What I DON'T believe is that the kids, or their needs, generate that stress.

What generates that stress, I think, is all the "You must make them this way" and "You must make them that way" and "They must be WXYZ," and "You're a sh***y parent if you don't do ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP" and "Why aren't they better??" and "They're not better enough" and "All they need is a good beating" and "Get your MONSTER out of our store/park/neighborhood" and all the rest of the s**t.

Not to mention all the propaganda that does, indeed, encourage people-- outsiders, and parents, and friends and family members-- to think of autistic kids as broken things to be fixed or grieved, not people with faults and issues and redeeming qualities. Hell-- I've had people talk about MY kid that way-- as if he was just a disease and an annoyance to be fixed, with nothing to recommend him whatever-- and he might or might not be on the spectrum-- and if it's ADHD instead, it's pretty darn mild. SHEESH!! !!

That DOES NOT make it OK, and I don't have any sympathy for them. I've thought about it before...

...and that's bad enough, trust me if you've not had the experience of retching over the toilet with those thoughts running through your head while you pray to God that SOMEONE who can get the damn intrusive thoughts out of your head will answer the freakin' phone at one-thirty in the morning...

...but thoughts are thoughts, and actions are ANOTHER ANIMAL ENTIRELY. I can have empathy for thinking about it, sobbing about it, screaming about it (even screaming about it on the Internet if all your friends have to be at work by 8:00 and can't answer the phone at 1:30 this morning). I've thought about a lot of black-assin' things. DOING it?? NOT f*****g OK. NOT OK AT ALL. Hey-- I can see where Lanza was coming from, too-- can even feel for him, hey man he was one massively hurting kid, had to be, because happy people don't kill 20 first graders, they just don't-- but I still hope the f****r rots in the darkest pit of Hell. They say there was one kid in that class-- one autistic kid, a little boy I believe-- who died in his aide's arms-- and she died with her body wrapped around him, trying to protect him-- now isn't that poetic-- yeah I can empathize, but I'd still be happy to walk through Hell to spit in Adam Lanza's face.

I digress. Majorly. Thinking is one thing, acting on that thought something else entirely...

...and the upshot of this is that we, as a society, need to start thinking about where those thoughts and attitudes and especially those choices come from. Lack of support?? Not so much. Lack of hope?? Seems more likely. We need to be asking these questions. [i]It's time for the attitudes that make even well-supported people abandon hope to change. Past time.

I'm not calling every crazy person in the world a killer. Hell, I'm batshit crazy my damn self! Don't act like I don't have my share of mental illness so I'm sitting up on my high and mighty sane throne and insulting those with mental illnesses. Ya'll here don't know the half of my craziness, and it might just make yours and some other people's look like a walk in the park. Or vice versa. Who really knows unless we sit down and do a dicksizing compare the craziness conversation and I don't want to do that and neither do you. Mental illness isn't always crazy and crazy isn't always mental illness either. Some s**t is on a level so far removed from everything that it just doesn't even have something in the book. Diagnose them with whatever is the closest you can find. Dahmer. He ate people. For fun and not because he was in a plane crash in the Andes ok? That's some serious crazy. Andrea Yates. Drowned her five kids in the bathtub so they would go to heaven. Yeah she had PPD, but that's a brand new season with big surprises! Lanza, killed all them kids because he was pissed at his mother, supposedly. Again, he had problems but those weren't normal mental illness problems. Level up Lanza!

Just because I say that it's crazy to kill your child, don't go getting all huffy for the mentally ill people of the world, of which I am certainly a card carrying lifetime member. It's not sane to kill your child. There is no way you can say it is that actually flies.

Yes, I'm being politically incorrect and I'm lumping people into categories. So what? Sometimes it's true! Not all mentally ill people are killers, not all killers are mentally ill, but it's f*****g crazy to kill your own child. Even if you could see how someone would feel pushed to that point, or have felt almost there yourself, you know it's crazy to do and you didn't do it. Not because it's crazy but because you're not.

There is something wrong with them, but it isn't that they're crazy. They might be psychopaths (which isn't a mental illness) or they might be pretty normal otherwise.

How do you define crazy and how do you define mental illness and when do you think they overlap? How do you define sane and normal?

Mentally ill people are no more likely to be violent than people who are not mentally ill, and are significantly more likely to be victim of violence. Mental illness is useless as a predictor for violence. So, while sometimes it's true that a mentally ill people kills someone, correlation is not causation and trying to make it be so is actively misleading and a blatant (whether intentional or not) falsehood.

You're arguing something that basically has no merit, no facts to back it up, and no basis in reality.

Want to argue there is something off about people that leads them to mass murder or serial killing? Sure. Want to argue that it is specifically "crazy" or "mental illness?" That's not even remotely accurate Mayors Against Illegal Guns reviewed 56 recent shootings and only four of those indicated mental health issues. That means 93% of those shootings there are no indications that mental health was an actual issue for the person doing the shooting.

Oh, and being "politically incorrect" isn't being blunt or edgy or telling the truth or telling it like it is. It's basically treating people like crap and trying to make it sound like the only reason one might not want to treat people like crap is for political reasons, and not because treating people kindly (as in, not like crap) is actually a decent, reasonable thing to do. Political correctness is a label that people apply to the idea that being respectful to people is an insincere political ploy, and that there is actually something wrong with the idea of being respectful to people. When people say they're being politically incorrect, it seems to me they're saying "I treat people like s**t, and I am proud to do so" because in general, their statements and actions seem to support that premise.

I define mental illness as crazy and crazy as mental illness. I dislike using the word crazy because of its broad association with mental illness as well as its pejorative usage.

Defining people who kill for apparently no good reason as crazy because they kill is circular and self-referential, and thus useless.

Nope, I'm all for being respectful. I never said that mental illness equaled craziness or that they had anything to do with each other. You are the one assuming it and taking the word crazy to be some horrible way of talking about those of us who have problems and issues that don't involve any nonthinking body parts. It's not.

Oh, I can answer that one. It's taught to us in psychology 101 on the first day.

A mental illness is a condition that causes distress for you or others, or causes dysfunction, and is unusual enough to be diagnosed.

For example:
Hypomania causes dysfunction, but not distress, and is uncommon; therefore it's a mental illness.
Antisocial personality disorder causes distress for others, but not for you, and is uncommon; therefore, mental illness.
Being gay does not cause dysfunction, and the distress associated with it can be eliminated by eliminating prejudice; therefore, despite being unusual, being gay cannot be diagnosed as a mental illness.
Grieving a loss causes both distress and dysfunction, but it is a reaction that happens to almost anyone in that situation; therefore, it is not a mental illness.

Many murderers can indeed be diagnosed with "antisocial personality disorder". But since ASPD has criteria that describe a person who commits crimes, manipulates others, and doesn't care who they hurt, that's kind of redundant.

We need to avoid this circular argument:
"That guy who killed someone is insane."
"How do you know?"
"He must be insane--he killed someone!"

But that's not the end of it. There's the legal angle, too.
"Mentally ill" and "Insane" are not the same thing.

"Mentally ill" means "having a diagnosable mental illness".
"Insane" means "Mentally impaired, through no fault of one's own, to the point that one cannot understand that one is breaking the law."

You can be mentally ill but not insane. That is, in fact, the usual state of affairs. Even people with severe mental illnesses often do not lose the ability to tell right from wrong--and when they do, they are often so impaired by their mental illness that they are incapable of planning a crime.

Murderers are sometimes mentally ill, but it is extremely rare for a murderer to be legally insane. The insanity defense is rarely attempted and usually not successful.

When someone chooses to kill an innocent human being, yes, there is something very wrong. But I do not think we should call it "insanity" or "crazy" or any mental-illness-related word. That is factually incorrect, because mental illness (unless you count drug addiction) does not raise the risk of violence; nor do violent offenders universally have mental illnesses.

I use the word "evil" to describe the act of killing an innocent person. It is more accurate than "insane". Maybe you want to use some other word, such as "violent" or "malicious" or "cruel". It makes sense to want to emphasize that killing is not something a human being should be doing. After all, it's not something ordinary or excusable. I just don't think that terms like "insane" are valid ways of doing that.

But it doesn't mean mental illness. OK? Not all the time.

Or, should I be extra careful with my words so as to not offend someone who has killed their child?

You can call it insanity all you want but in the end. It sounds like to me that she was under a lot of pressure and it push her to the breaking point. Everybody has there breaking point. It's just a matter of whether or not circumstances push you pass that threshold.

I didn't say she was insane or mentally ill. She may not have been either. I said she was crazy. There is a difference. Nobody seems to get that. I had a long conversation with another member earlier tonight and we both agreed on that. In fact, we both have mental illness and we both used the same term "batshit crazy" to describe this woman. She may have been the most mentally healthy person out there disorderwise, and organic problemwise, but she was still batshit crazy and that doesn't mean mentally ill. It's it's own thing.

That's what I keep trying to tell you. Mentally ill is one thing. Legal insanity is another thing. Crazy is something entirely different and really has nothing to do with mental health because you can be crazy if you are mentally healthy, mentally ill, legally sane, or legally insane.

This is what I'm trying to explain about the use of the word "crazy" by quite a few people. It's not a slur on all of us with problems. It's about one particular set of people who do certain things.

::sigh::

I give up. Nobody is going to get this if they don't already understand the difference.

My ex husband, he was never diagnosed by any psychiatrist and he saw several because of some of the s**t he pulled as a kid, a teenager and an adult. He was always found to be fine. The dude has no mental illness. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. He couldn't hide it from so many shrinks over the years, so well, under stress and not under stress. He didn't have any.

Yet he was crazy. He was f*****g crazy. He pushed me out of a VW Bug and ran over me with it and left me in Phenix City, Georgia for "mouthing off". He did a lot more crazy things. He shot this guy he used to work for because he heard that the guy said something about him. Pulled an Amy Fisher before Amy Fisher. Then talked the guy out of pressing charges and into paying for his lawyer.

Yeah, he sounds like a psychopath but he's not.

Then a few years ago, his little brothers cellie got out and they had met him while visiting the little brother, and helpful people that they are, they let the cellie stay with them when he got out.. One day, the day before his wife, one of my best friends from high school who I had kept in touch with, got her monthly retirement check, and they had no food or cigarettes for my ex (he was really huge fat by then and smoke about three packs a day - he did NOT look like that when I was with him) and the guy who was staying there had no weed, those two got in an argument. The ex shot and killed him, then went and shot at her. Then walked over and turned himself in to the people at the place across the street, gave them the gun, told them what he did and to call the cops.

A sandwich, a pack of cigarettes and a bong hit would have prevented that whole killing.

Batshit crazy. I can use so many terms of "crazy" to describe him, but you get the gist. He's not mentally ill. He can't fool that many people for that long. And he did have emotions. I saw them, she saw them, when he didn't think anybody else was around. He's not evil, that's just giving him too much credit. He's plain out and out crazy. But he's mentally healthy as can be.

No he wasn't legally insane. No he wasn't mentally ill. No he wasn't evil. He was just crazy.

Do you see the difference at all now?

And before somebody gives me examples of psychopaths who weren't detected until too late, I lived with him, many MD's have evaluated him over the years. My friend lived with him for close to 30 years. I trust us and the doctors more than people who wouldn't know him if they saw him on the street and are just going by these few stories I've told you about him. I know the whole family. They are all crazy. But not a one of them is mentally ill. They have all been checked! Many times over cause you would think they would be. But they aren't.

Just crazy, although not mentally ill in any way.

I'm so glad someone took psychology 101 so they could inform us all about what a clinical term "crazy" is, and so on.

Good to know someone is around to police the semantics of the conversation in an inconsistent and incomplete fashion! ^_^

If you want to get technical, evil requires some sort of spiritual, magical or metaphysical intervention to remove it. You can't just say somebody is actually evil and that's why it happened. If you believed that then you would be wanting to get the evil out of them. You also don't have to be Christian to believe in evil and it being in people. Lots of religions have exorcism, banishments, cleansings, etc. For evil.

Should we get a priest, a witch, a hoodoo woman, a ceremonial magician, a shamen and a chick with a Celtic tattoo and a sage stick to come fix all the killers?

Cause if they are messed up from evil, that would actually do the trick.

From googling the word crazy and this is what I got.

So it looks like to me crazy is being correctly used here.

I can't believe this thread has completely shifted towards discussion of the 'correct' terminology of this woman's actions. After this woman just murdered her own child, that really matters so much right now? I think you can call her actions evil, some informal context of crazy or even claim that she's probably legally insane -- it matters not at this moment. All I think matters is that we can find out exactly why she committed this unspeakable act. It's a terrible thing regardless of what it's called.