Chantel Garrett’s “Three Steps to Fix Our Mental Health System and Prevent Violence”

Brain images from people with schizophrenia. Photo by Flickr user http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca.

In the month since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary (which as far as we know, was not committed by someone with mental illness), I’ve been encouraged by how much of the conversation has been framed around mental health and the lack of services for those who need them. We saw that front-and-center with Liza Long’s powerful “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” post. We’ve seen it elsewhere, too. I want to call attention another such story today, because it makes great points about what’s missing and what society needs to do — not only to curb mass shootings, but also to help the many, many nonviolent people who struggle with mental illness daily but can’t get the help they need because it doesn’t exist or isn’t available to them.

Chantel Garrett wrote this piece about her brother, Max, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. In her article, she doesn’t just talk about how difficult it is for Max to stay afloat. She also offers concrete steps for repairing the system so that Max and others like him might hope for functional, fulfilling lives.

Mostly, I want to let Garrett do the talking here, because she does it well:

2) Change the law to more easily help an adult loved one get involuntary care when they desperately need it – before anyone gets hurt.

We must begin to fill the gaps in the mental health care system that could have potentially helped to prevent recent massacres at the hands of people in need of psychiatric intervention. Studies show that early intervention greatly improves the prospect for recovery. In my own experience with my brother, a first dose of anti-psychotics during a psychotic episode palpably reduces paranoia and hallucinations.

A few years ago, Max went off his medication, barricading himself in his apartment and warning his family to stay away. In an extremely psychotic state, he plastered the Web with terrifying words and images, predominantly aimed at the people who love him most. While punishing to read, as the time and severity of his symptoms wore on, his posts became our only proof that he was still alive – our only hope that he could still get help.

For two months, my parents and I campaigned the local police to knock down his door and get him to a hospital. My dad became a fixture at the police station. We sent the police chief Max’s blog and threatening emails. We explained his diagnosis, his years of involuntary hospital commitments and dire need for care before he did more permanent damage to his brain. His neighbors also called the police to complain. The police went to his house multiple times but said they didn’t have cause to forcefully enter. Their response was always the same. “We understand that he’s very sick, but what has he done? Call us when he’s done something and we’ll pick him up.”

…

Males with schizophrenia most often become symptomatic in their late teens to early 20s. From a legal standpoint, parents hands are often tied trying to get help for their sick child who is of legal age, with the current standard of “danger to oneself or others” far too hazardous.

The “dangerous” bar is too high to get someone with acute psychotic symptoms care when they need it most – and when they are the largest threat to themselves and, potentially, their family and community. Why should it not instead be a standard of gravely disabled – unable to care for oneself or for others? Surely, if the police could have somehow glimpsed at him and his apartment, they would have immediately seen that he was unable to care for himself.

We need to change the law, and create a mental health workforce working alongside officers and families to provide more proactive, onsite assessment of people who are credibly unable to care for themselves – before it gets to the point of “dangerous.”

Do you know someone who’s mentally ill and prone to violence when they’re in their darkest periods? If so, what do you think would help them the most?

Should the news industry be regulated?

Regulation for the news? Some say yes. Photo by Flickr user NS Newsflash.

Here at Backward Messages, I spend a lot of time writing about how journalists get it wrong, whether it’s playing up someone’s Wicca or Satanism faith or linking mass shootings with violent video games or heavy metal music. In some cases, they’re not getting it wrong by accident, but willingly focusing on “sexy” angles that will get more people to read or view a story, even if journalists are bending the truth in the process.

Over in Britain, where many journalists have been charged with crimes in the large-scale phone-hacking scandal at News Corp., a judge has recommended some changes in the way news agencies are run.

This week, Judge Brian Leveson delivered a long-awaited report sparked by British journalists’ misdeeds, and one of his top recommendation is for the news industry — in Britain at least — to establish a regulatory agency to keep reporters on the straight and narrow:

The British press should be regulated by an independent group supported by law and with the power to fine … Leveson said he was not recommending that Parliament set up a press regulator, but that the industry should create its own, which would be backed by legislation to make sure it meets certain standards of independence and effectiveness.

News International, a subsidiary of News Corp., responded with support for the idea in a statement, saying, “We accept that a new system should be independent, have a standards code, a means of resolving disputes, the power to demand prominent apologies and the ability to levy heavy fines.”

Rightly so, there are concerns that such an agency could stifle freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which are highly valued in Britain even without the backing of a doctrine like the First Amendment in the U.S. But the idea is a reminder that, other than laws against libelous or slanderous reporting, the news world is very lightly regulated, and journalists get away with a lot — even though their task is to properly inform the populace.

So, what do you think? Should the news industry — in any country — be regulated? If so, should it be regulated by peers, by the government, or by someone else? Share your thoughts in the comments.

What’s behind the dead children and beheaded women in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?

One Skyrim player beheaded several of his “wives” and placed their heads in a trophy case, then offered this video.

The new Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, has been out less than a month, but a number of controversies have already earned it some headlines. With some 7 million people playing Bethseda’s Skyrim, some of them are bound to be minors — and that’s got to be making parents worried about what they’re hearing.

Before we get into those controversies, it makes sense to talk about the game itself. Skyrim is an “open world” game that allows players to do just about anything imaginable. They can follow a storyline or strike out on their own, exploring the game’s richly designed landscapes. If you play the game according to the story, you’re supposed to defeat a god named Alduin, who (according to one of those prophesies that seem to crop up in so many fantasy games) is going to destroy the world. But you can put that off indefinitely, if you like.

Jorge Albor, a writer for PopMatters, offers some insight into the reason so many gamers are flocking to the world of Skryim:

For the most part, everything seems to make sense in Skyrim. Visit the alchemist’s shop and you will find books about herbalism of course, the texts of her trade. Plumb the depths of a dungeon full of demon worshiping mages and you will find books about necromancy, detailing the practices of their dark art. Adding book shelves, stoves, and beds to a bandit hideaway adds a nice touch to the environment. …

There is no better example of the game’s logic than a burned down house just off the side-road somewhere in Skyrim. Inside the home, a charred corpse—presumably the now deceased tenant—clings to a spell book that when used summons an otherworldly flame demon. We can paint a small history: a farmer, looking to become an adventurer—or maybe just protect his crops—dabbles in magic beyond his power and loses his life and home in the process. You, a legendary hero, stumble upon the poor man’s lodgings and take the book for yourself, using the fiery conjuration to save the world. You could walk past this house and never encounter this piece of Skyrim.

Perhaps the biggest Skyrim controversy so far is two player-created modifications. One allows players to undress female characters. The other allows them to kill children non-player characters in the game. As Gamebandits writes:

It cannot be denied that the children of Skyrim are among the most annoying NPCs ever created in the history of gaming, but does that mean that a player has the right to dispatch them? Censorship laws in some countries forbid games from allowing the player to harm children, but there have been some games that have allowed this. Bethesda title Fallout (the original Fallout) is in fact one such game.

Now, just to be clear: the game, as written, does not allow players to kill children. They have to go out of their way to install the mod in order to do this. But it sounds like many people can see the appeal in such an option.

Interestingly, many of the folks who commented on the story agree that on the one hand, it’s a little disturbing to be able to kill the children. But on the other hand, most realize it’s fantasy and fiction — nothing more. One even pointed out that it’s not realistic for the children not to die when whole villages are torched. Another (a parent) said, “For the 99% of us, who know this is a game and these are not children, just lots of 1s and 0s and just want to stop hearing an annoying line being said again it’s fine.”

In line with the mod that allows players to render the female characters naked, one player went even further, beheading his “wives” and placing their heads in a trophy case — and then making a video tour of his home available (see above). This, understandably, unsettled some people, who said they didn’t want to encounter the player, Symixable, in real life.

Here’s the thing: humans — maybe not all humans, but some — are curious. Some would try just about anything if it weren’t illegal, if there weren’t consequences. Or maybe they still wouldn’t, but that doesn’t keep them from wondering what it would be like. That’s one major appeal of open-world video games: they allow you to experiment in fiction with what you would never, in a million years, do in real life.

In real life, children do die. Some are even murdered. And, unfortunately, sometimes women are murdered and their bodies used as “trophies” by very sick, violent people. Such acts make us afraid: afraid for our safety, or the safety of our kids, sisters, mothers, wives, girlfriends, and friends. But fear takes us away from our power. Exploring these ideas from the perspective of the perpetrator — in a totally fictional way — can take some of the sting out of that fear. It can give us some of our power back.

A serial killer murdered and skinned women in The Silence of the Lambs, written by novelist Thomas Harris and directed by Jonathan Demme. A dead baby crawls across the ceiling in Trainspotting, directed by Danny Boyle and based on the book by Irvine Welsh. I don’t think many people questioned the sanity of these creators, who nevertheless put very unsettling ideas into films that were ultimately watched by millions of people, grossing $273 million and $72 million, respectively.

Not all of us get to be Dany Boyle, Irving Welsh, Thomas Harris or Jonathan Demme. Sure, we can write in private — but our ideas might never reach an audience. And, not all of us are writers to begin with. So video games provide other ways to spin a world, and explore ideas — however taboo — that might frighten or intrigue us.

And, given the choice between a gamer who uses women’s heads as trophies in a video game and a killer who does it in real life, I’ll take the gamer every time.

Why do so many gamers heed “Call of Duty?”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 alone has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. What makes this series so popular?

Ten years ago, a group of men working with Al-Quaeda hijacked four American airplanes. They crashed two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, toppling them. A third crashed at the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed over Pennsylvania. Within weeks, American troops had invaded Afghanistan and declared war on the Taliban. By 2003, the military had moved into Iraq as well. A decade of messy, complicated war followed.

It may be no surprise, then, that the Call of Duty franchise has become one of the all-time best-selling video game series during this decade. Many Americans were justifiably angry, but couldn’t go to war themselves. Others wondered what our soldiers were going through, but the news reports just weren’t enough. The Call of Duty games feed just those kinds of emotions, providing lifelike and detailed versions of military operations in spots around the globe.

As the world looked back this month on September 11, 2001, The Denver Post’s John Wenzel spoke up for Call of Duty, saying the games helped players make sense of the terrorist attacks:

Instead of promising escapism, they provided an outlet for ordinary Americans to vent their rage and frustration by aiming virtual weapons at otherwise nebulous foreign enemies.

Video-game environments are entertaining and tidily self-contained — unlike real war, where the blood lingers long after players switch off the Xbox 360. But as funhouse mirrors of the past decade, “Call of Duty” and other war games have reflected a certain distorted collective therapy that, at times, makes for an eerily lifelike portrait of the aggression and anxiety that violence breeds.

The new Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, is due out next month and is likely to be a top seller at Christmas. The #2 holiday pick is another military game, Gears of War 3. Clearly there’s a hunger for war games in this long era of military exercises in far-flung places.

With such brisk sales, it’s inevitable that some teens and younger kids will play Call of Duty. And there are some who say they shouldn’t. But kids were just as effected by the terrorist attacks and the vagueries of war as adults were — and they have a right to explore these ideas as well.

Call of Duty players: what attracted you to the game? Did playing it help you process the 9/11 attacks or the “War on Terror” in any way? Has it helped you understand your feelings about war and military action better?

Science gets spicy: is it violence, or competitiveness, that makes gamers act up?

Do video games make people more likely to serve spice-haters hotter hot sauce? Some do, apparently. Picture by Flickr user jennecy.

I’ve talked to a lot of parents about whether they think violent video games make their kids more aggressive. Although some have noted a relationship between gaming and surly behavior, most don’t think it’s violent games per se that are the culprit. At most, they theorize that something else about the act of playing a video game — any video game — might make teens have a hard time coming back to reality, where the reward system is murkier.

Paul Adachi and Teena Willoughby, researchers at Brock University in Canada, thought it was high time that a study on video games and aggression looked beyond violent video games. In a new paper, published by the American Psychological Association, the duo describe how they looked at whether it’s gaming’s competitiveness, rather than its violence, that makes players act up after walking away from the game controller.

So far, studies have failed to prove that such behavior is due to in-game violence because, as Adachi and Willoughby put it, “it is unclear whether participants view their behavior as competitive instead of aggressive, in that participants’ motivation to give intense punishments may be to slow their opponents’ response time on subsequent trials, thus allowing participants to win the competition (Lieberman et al., 1999). Furthermore, because violent games generally involve more competition than nonviolent games, violent video games may prime competitive schemas more than nonviolent video games.”

To tease out the competitive angle, Adachi ran two trials: in the first, he had had 42 college students (25 men, 17 women) play Conan (a violent first-person-sworder) or Fuel (a nonviolent racing game) for 12 minutes. Apparently, the games are equally matched for competitiveness, although Conan is more violent. Then, gamers had to make up a cup of hot sauce for a “taster” who supposedly didn’t like spicy food. The “Conan” players didn’t make up spicier brews than the “Fuel” players, suggesting that violent content alone was not a factor in aggressive action (or, in this case, passive-aggressive action).

In the second round, Adachi had 60 college students (32 men, 28 women) play one of four games: Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe, a violent, competitive fighting game; Left 4 Dead 2, a violent, moderately competitive zombie shooter; Marble Blast Ultra, a nonviolent, noncompetitive game; and Fuel, the highly competitive, nonviolent racing game. They then did the hot-sauce experiment again (I wonder who came up with that idea) and found that the Mortal Kombat and Fuel picked hotter sauces for their “tasters” than the Marble Blast and Left 4 Dead folks. They also had significantly higher heart rates, according to electrocardiogram readings.

“These findings suggest that the level of competitiveness in video games is an important factor in the relation between video games and aggressive behavior, with highly competitive games leading to greater elevations in aggression than less competitive games,” wrote Adachi.

Interesting, though these kinds of trials have the same problem that other studies: namely, that they only show the short-term effects of playing pre-selected video games in a lab setting, which is not likely to resemble how gamers actually play or behave in a real-life situation. (Hot sauce? Really?) The gamers were tested immediately after playing, but nobody followed them home to see whether they put hot sauce on their loved ones’ food that night out of lingering aggression. Or, you know, actually harmed anyone as the result of the gaming session.

Note Adachi’s careful language in that statement above. “Important factor,” “relation between video games and aggressive behavior.” He’s not saying anything causes anything. Just that there are factors and relations. In his closing remarks, he admits that the findings might be limited to the college-age subjects he studied. And, he added:

Although this study addressed the short-term effect of video game competition on aggressive behavior, we did not examine long-term effects. Thus, longitudinal research examining the relation between video game competition and aggression is needed. Finally, findings may not generalize to other geographic regions, including those with differing ethnic and/or demographic mixes.

Right. I’ve met more than one person from a culture that favored spicy food who would serve you extra hot sauce, thinking they were doing you a favor.

Could video games have kept teen from killing great-grandmother, stabbing grandmother?

An Atlanta teen (not pictured) killed his great-grandmother and stabbed his grandmother with a sword after they kept him from playing the video game Halo. Photo by Flickr user Aidan.Morgan.

In the big debate over whether minors should play violent video games, there are parents who let them play, parents who don’t let them play, and parents who say it’s okay for a while — and then try to cut kids off from such games when they become a problem. We don’t know why an Atlanta 15-year-old’s family told him to stop playing Halo. What we do know is, most kids who are separated from their video games don’t get so angry that they kill. One did.

Douglas County sheriff’s officials say the teenager used a 36-inch sword to stab his grandmother, 55-year-old Laura Prince, in the arm and to kill his great-grandmother, 77-year-old Mary Joan Gibbs.

Officers arrived at the home Monday afternoon and found the grandmother barricaded inside a room and the great-grandmother lying lifeless in the front yard, Douglas County Sheriff Phil Miller said.

The teen was standing in the doorway with what officers described as a full-sized sword and a pellet rifle, Miller said.

Officers used a stun gun to take the teen into custody after a standoff.

It turns out that this teen had already been evaluated twice after violent episodes, but was released. The question isn’t why was he allowed to play violent video games. The question is, why was he allowed access to a sword and a pellet gun? I doubt very much that question will be answered during the teen’s murder trial.

In the realm of the everyday, parents struggle with what to let their kids play. One San Diego mom said she doesn’t like her 9-year-old son playing violent video games. However, she works long hours and can’t supervise him at home. Fair enough. For child care, she’s relying on her brothers — who spend all their time playing video games. Not a great situation for a mom with her values, right?

Unfortunately, the article, from Latin in America, uses this tale as a springboard for a cornucopia of random, unfounded claims about video games. It starts by referring to an unnamed study that found that by age 21, boys have played some 10,000 hours of video games (and then calls this an “addiction”). If boys begin playing at 5, as the article suggests, that’s 16 years of gameplay. 16 years contain more than 140,160 hours. 10,000 hours is 14 percent of that — a little more than 3 hours a day. That’s not nothing, but it’s not “addiction” levels by any means.

The article goes on. Allowing kids to explore aggression and violence in a consequence-free way “sends the wrong message,” it claims — despite the fact that many teen gamers appreciate that opportunity. And it ends by warning parents that “video games are the new tools of sex predators.” What the?

Thankfully, there have been some voices from the other side of the fence recently. Let’s start with Chris Martucci at What Blag?, who offers “In Defense of Call of Duty”. Martucci takes on the idea that video games are the cause of real-life violence by pointing out:

1. As Lewis-Hasteley states, as popular as violent video games are, bad people are bound to play them at some point.

2. There is no “violent gene” or unitary “violent part of the brain.” Certain emotions are associated with certain parts of the brain, which are thus associated with violence. There is therefore no simple way to prevent your child from becoming an axe-murderer with Gattaca-style eugenics. What I mean to say is this: if violent video games are merely associated with something that is associated with violence, how much is that really worth to us?

Bad people play these very popular games, just as bad people go to church, drive cars, eat at McDonald’s, watch sports on television, swim in the ocean, have children, and breathe. We wouldn’t blame any of those other behaviors on violence, so why gaming?

Over at Reason.com, Peter Suderman extends his own defense of video games, again citing the dropoff in real-life violence that has coincided with the rise of violent video games. As with all data on video games to date, this is correlational — there’s no way to determine whether one caused the other. However, boredom and free time are frequently cited as reasons for juvenile delinquency, and, as Mike Ward has discovered, kids who are busy playing video games aren’t bored.

In general, it pays to listen to kids themselves. Over at Radical Parenting, 16-year-old gamer Monique shares her love of violent games as a way of safely exploring, expressing, and purging anger.

The media is so quick to jump on violent video games being the cause of aggression, however never stops to think that maybe a violent video game can help lesson aggression. When asked if he thought violent video games caused anger and aggression 16-year-old Edwin McGuffin replied by saying, “No, I don’t. I find that video games actually help reduce it. When I get mad I just jump on my Xbox instead of taking it out on others.”

What if that Atlanta teen had been playing Halo that day, rather than taking up his weapons in anger?

Welcome, SheWriters, to Backward Messages

Forgive me for straying a little off theme, but I’m participating in a She Writes blog hop this weekend and would like to welcome my fellow She Writers to my corner of WordPress. Have a look around, make yourself comfortable, and jump into the conversation. More opinions are always welcome!

Fox News Launches A “Bulletstorm”

Oh, dear. If Fox News didn’t want people playing the new game Bulletstorm, due in stores February 22, then the outlet should have kept its mouth shut. Maybe the folks at Fox aren’t aware of this, but calling something “The worst video game in the world” is a fantastic way of making a lot of people want to play it, particularly rebellious teens. (One wonders whether the game company might’ve paid Fox for the privilege. They wouldn’t, would they?)

Bulletstorm is a gory new first-person shooter in which many of the high-skill moves are given sexually suggestive (and sometimes violent) names: topless, gang bang, rear entry, etc. The game is rated “M” by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, whose page on the game includes plenty of detail about its content for anyone who wants to check it out before they spend any money.

To make matters worse, author/psychologist Carol Lieberman told Fox News that “sexual situations and acts in video games — highlighted so well in Bulletstorm — have led to real-world sexual violence. ‘The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,’ she said.” Not only are her claims totally bogus, since there’s no evidence that gameplay leads to violent behavior, but they aren’t even statistically accurate — at least not in the United States, where reports of sexual assaults have decreased steadily since 2006, according to data collected by the United Nations (.xls spreadsheet). Yes, it’s possible that incidences have gone up while reports have gone down, but if that were the case, Lieberman better have some pretty good evidence to back herself up.

(Lieberman, it’s worth noting, is the author of “Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets” (2010) and “Bad Boys: Why We Love Them, How to Live With Them, And When To Leave Them” (1998). One wonders how Fox News selected her to comment on the video game in the first place.)

Oh, and? The the lead producer of Bulletstorm is a woman, Tanya Jessen, who said she was heavily involved with every aspect of the production and even pushed for it to be more hardcore than her male co-creators wanted. She also fought for one of the lead characters, Trischka, to be “a strong female character that wasn’t stereotypically hot.”

Lastly, one of the experts interviewed for the Fox News piece, Billy Pidgeon of M2 Research, says his quotes were taken grossly out of context. It looks like Fox was picking and choosing what it wanted to boost the sensationalistic quality of the piece (shocking, I know). Check out the link to see what kinds of questions they asked their subjects, as well as the full answers he gave.

Since Bulletstorm isn’t out yet, it’s hard to tell how popular it will actually be. It’s worth noting — and some writers already have — that ultraviolent games aren’t traditionally all that popular. Many gamers were put off by games like Postal and Manhunt, either because they were too violent, they weren’t much fun to play, or both.

What’s the most violent game you’ve ever played? Did you keep playing — why or why not? What’s the most violent game you’ve played regularly? Did it influence your mood, thoughts, or behavior? If so, how?