Fear of misuse of such information, plus stigma, prevents science from moving forward with isolating genes and developing therapies to treat incipient mental illness.
I think it's ironic that I know by heart the four characteristics of a dangerous mole, thanks to public information dissemination but no acronym to help a parent recognize serious mental illness in a child. There is no mandatory reporting for violent children! I think this is a huge oversight, part of a mentality that says we can't solve it all, so let's not do anything.
Before he died, my son told me he wanted to kill strangers. "Why harm people who have done you no harm?" He answered, "So they will stop laughing at me." I took him to public health psychiatrist who would not talk to me at all --he said there was no money for that, they could only talk to the patient. Of course he didn't tell the doctor he was homicidal, so the result of that day's visit was the instruction for him to stop drinking and then come back and report if he still had any symptoms of anxiety.
Another time (one of many) I took him to the emergency room, on the way he said he would seriously injure the first tech who laid a hand on him. I wanted to tell the med tech and tried to take him aside and he said this to me, "There is nothing we need to talk about that we can't say in front of your son. Let's show some respect, shall we."
We do not have to have genome mapping to start taking the reports of parents and teachers that a child is DANGEROUS, that he loves causing pain and needs treatment.
Honestly, when he died I was relieved that my son did not take innocent people with him. Although the grieving was absolutely horrible, there was a fear that I had learned to live with, a tension that I never knew was there, it was lifted.
