We use the terms “mental illness” when we write and talk about these behaviors in the media. We know them by less dramatic terms as sadness, hopelessness or agitation, obsessive thinking, difficulties with anger management, etc. Phrased this way, we recognize these mood disorders and the occasional hallucinations as part of the stress of everyday life and so we try to minimize them and worry what we should do if they escalate. With the Navy Yard case, the shooter had contacted police to say that he thought he was being watched. His family was aware that he was having trouble. What each case has in common is:

1) Family members had recognized and reported to police that they had disordered thinking in the form of paranoid hallucinations and odd statements.

2) Family members had reported family and emotional stress.

3) All three had had previous episodes of emotional dysfunction.

4) Both women were in  hormonal flux as evidenced by pregnancy and/or recent childbirth. (See Post Partum Depression info.)

5) In all cases, the police were the final line of preventive contact and in each the methods used by police responders to ascertain the mental status of these individuals did not adequately identify their risk levels or provide a means of humane resolution.

6) In all cases the subjects of concern were not provided an adequate means to keep themselves safe until they endangered someone else’s life. At that point they were treated as criminals needing to prove that their behavior was  the result of mental illness.

7) All three were black.

In thinking about these cases, it’s important to understand that dysfunction in the brain can happen in a split second, over several days, as it does with hormonal irregularities such as PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) and Post Partum Depression, periodically as it does with Bipolar Disorder or chronically as it sometimes does with other forms of depression.