CA - Elliot Rodger kills 6, injures 13 in Isla Vista, Near UC Santa Barbara, #2

[ATasteOfHoney]

I heard the family's attorney say that ER was taking Xanax for six months (not clear if it was the last six months or not). I doubt the attorney would have admitted to the family having knowledge of ER taking pills, if they were illegally obtained.

JMO

So then who prescribed the Xanax? If he had a prescription then a mental health care provider wrote the script like a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist. Which then the presumption is that he was under a more active therapy treatment than what has been stipulated?
And if this is the case, I wonder what this mental health caregiver is thinking now?

Tough spot. Sad every way you look at it.

 

[CARIIS]

They didn't seem to do much of anything after deciding he was polite. Haven't they heard of Ted Bundy?
Yet apparently this was all well and good, according to your link.
Wow.

LE got a call from either mom or therapist. All a therapist (confidentality) says is I have been working with X and I have concerns he may be suicidal. We can't be giving all kinds of detail about our session. LE, needs to respond to a mental health professioials concerns, and do not typicakky "question" us. They are not trained for that dialog There role was to go out , and see if in their opinion he was close to taking his life. If he opened the door with tears running his face, his clothes were on backward, he looked like had not slept in a week, stunk, slurred his words, threatened them they might of gone further.

But there was no probable cause for them to search his house - its againist the law. If the call was I have concerns he is planning on killing others - they might have gone in . This was a suicide call - they found a together verbal individual who acknowledged he was having a hard time at school. You dont transport for eval a collage kid, put together casue he is having problems in school!

The truth is - he was not ready to kill himself on April 30. It was not even that much of a manipulation (he knows the drill tho) but he was not ready to die on April 30 -he was working on killing others before his exit .

 

[Quester]

So then who prescribed the Xanax? If he had a prescription then a mental health care provider wrote the script like a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist. Which then the presumption is that he was under a more active therapy treatment than what has been stipulated?
And if this is the case, I wonder what this mental health caregiver is thinking now?

Tough spot. Sad every way you look at it.

FWIW:

At the time of his death, Elliot hadn’t seen a psychiatrist in over two years, and was seeing a psychologist.

“At the time of Elliott’s killings, he was being treated by two psychologists: one in Santa Barbara and another in Southern California,” a family insider previously told us. “His family now recognizes that he should have been in intensive treatment, including psychiatrists."

5/27/14: http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2...eeds-autistic-mother-claimed-court-documents/

 

[CARIIS]

I'm behind in the reading here, but it's possible he never TOLD anyone he had decided not to take the medication. He might have repeatedly had it refilled at the appropriate times (monthly or quarterly) so that his parents (who were probably paying for it via their insurance) and the shrink would not know that he was not taking it.

Yes, we all need to remember this was a 22 year old ADULT! No one is counting his meds, tracking his trips to get the pills, checking refill dates. Medication compliance is a huge huge issue!

He was an adult, just like us !

 

[Bravo]

Hello, I have been a lurker for a while now on Websleuths but have never posted...

I'm a psychotherapist and it alarms me that so many people are saying that his therapists should have been able to diagnose him or realize that he was a threat to himself or others. Please let it be known that therapists are not psychics!

It is very difficult to diagnose a manipulative client, and one that hasn't ever been involved in the legal system. We need symptoms to diagnose, and if those symptoms are not made available via client report/presentation, family, or client systems report, it is virtually impossible to come up with an accurate diagnosis. I believe that psychopathy can be easily misdiagnosed as Asperger's, but it is definitely possible to have both as one does not rule out the other. There is a saying in my industry: "You can't work harder than the client." If ER was not an active participant in therapy, then the therapists are left with an inaccurate picture much of the time and thus unable to accurately treat. I have my own private practice, and I terminate therapy with clients who are not participating/nonadherent to my treatment plan as it is a waste of their time and mine. I also cannot talk to family members of any of my adult patients unless my patient writes a release of information giving me permission to speak to them. In fact, I can't even acknowledge they are my client if family members call wanting to give me information.

We also don't know how many times he had seen therapists. I find it likely that he would not attend consistently and also terminate prematurely. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to treat someone who is psychotic, manic, delusional or paranoid when they are not taking their medication. I personally do not see any client displaying these symptoms until I can get a letter from the psychiatrist that they have been medically managed for 3+ months. This is mainly due to the fact that I work all by myself and I need patients with these symptoms to be accurately medicated for my own safety reasons. Many people who work in community mental health do not have this option, and rightly so.

An involuntary outpatient commitment could have been an option for ER in addition to involuntary inpatient commitment, as well as his parents getting conservatorship. However, these options are very hard to get, although I feel the involuntary outpatient commitment should be more readily available for those who have severe mental illness. Risperidone is available in a monthly shot as well and I feel that this should be used more readily in community mental health settings with people who have severe mental illness. However, if a patient does not share information with a mental health professional about plans to hurt himself or others, there is no duty to warn--in fact, we can be sued if we do so without such threats. In these cases patients often fly under the radar.

I have an aunt who is paranoid schizophrenic and has had 5 involuntary commitments due to the fact that she threatened others in our presence. She is extremely intelligent and figured out quickly how to get discharged. However, when we attempted to get conservatorship, she went missing for 3 years. To this day she doesn't adhere to her medication. We even found out that she bought a Glock in Texas AFTER she had already been institutionalized 4 times. Extremely scary. When I called to see if she had another gun in Nevada, where she had moved, no one was able to tell me if she had a gun or if she had ever applied to get one. We cannot force her to take her medicine as she is an adult. We cannot have her institutionalized again because she refuses to speak to us, and thus we have no more threatening statements from her.

Deinstitutionalization had many setbacks, and the biggest problem has been getting help for family members when you do not have threats of violence. I'm not sure what the answer is, because people with severe mental illness are warranted their own civil rights. Its definitely a major problem as a family member of a paranoid schizophrenic as well as a therapist.

JMO

Thank You for your post :seeya:

 

[BigCat]

So then who prescribed the Xanax? If he had a prescription then a mental health care provider wrote the script like a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist. Which then the presumption is that he was under a more active therapy treatment than what has been stipulated?
And if this is the case, I wonder what this mental health caregiver is thinking now?

Tough spot. Sad every way you look at it.

I haven't heard who wrote the script. My primary physician wrote my Xanax script, so I guess it doesn't necessarily have to be a mental health care provider.

And you're right: the whole situation is sad.

 

[mrsobrien]

*hugs* Our situations are a blessing in a way, our perspective of people will always allow for a different angle because of it, imo. It is sad to preemptively offer a disclaimer, but...if I had a dollar for every time someone suggested he "get checked", it would probably pay June's rent, lol.

It makes me sad that you felt you had to add that. I feel the same way when a mother who is bi polar kills her child, my mom was manic depressive now called bi polar but MD fit what she suffered from.My mom was a terrific mother who would have died protecting me or any child, she is nothing like them. It is terrible that people and their families feel so stigmatized to need to add a "disclaimer" to defend our loved ones who have done nothing wrong .

 

[Sedonia Sunset]

OT: A 24 year old white male pulled a gun on a classmate in the Chemistry lab at the Community College of Philadelphia. No shots fired. Police are hoping individual will surrender to police through his father. Campus evacuated. Argument over girl. Happening now.

ETA: Reporters are making reference to ER and UCSB murders. Students are terrified here.

When I was a young teenager, college campuses were in the news quite often. There were many, many protests (usually about the Vietnam war, but sometimes about the colleges and the way things were done). These protests sometimes ended in violence, such as Kent State in 1970. I was terrified of the mere IDEA of going to college. The Texas University at Austin tower shooting (Charles Whitman, 1966) was something I was not even aware of until I was well into my 30s, if not 40s. I was only 11 at the time, and it wasn't really on my radar, so group violence by students and military/police was the big thing in my mind at the time

Many of today's young minds will probably be quite afraid to go to college due to mass murders. It's a sad state of affairs, indeed.

 

[mck16]

O.T. Question:

Had Ted Bundy had therapy or seen a psychiatrist before the began his killing sprees? Was he always a sick person? ty

 

[Tedanddix]

I did (private hosp in-pt at that time, and sadly this may blow your mind(!)) but back then our typical length stay was 3-5 weeks (Great)

Fast forward 8 years it went to 23 hours , and d/c - disgusting

Your still practicing what is the pattern today in terms of length of stay?
Pt -Client ratios?

Curious if that too has been cut?

I don't know the exact numbers for ratios, but the facility I work in primarily serves patients who are covered under medicaid so many of the ratios are dictated by the laws in the states we serve. Most of our therapists have around 10-12 patients.

Most of the kids I work with have been in acute facilities before coming to ours, which is residential. Most stays are between 5-12 months, but can be longer for many of them. The max is about 2 years, and almost all of those kids are in the state's custody.

I would say about 90% of the females have issues with self-harm, and about 50% of the boys have attempted suicide or are self-harmers. The others mainly have behavioral problems, but we generally don't take a lot of very physically violent kids.

I'm still trying to catch up on all of this because I've been so busy lately! Can anyone send me a link or give me an outline of what we know about ER's mental health history and his upbringing/relationship with his parents?

 

[MyBelle]

Yes, we all need to remember this was a 22 year old ADULT! No one is counting his meds, tracking his trips to get the pills, checking refill dates. Medication compliance is a huge huge issue!

He was an adult, just like us !

He was a legal adult. He was a total dependent, however. He had never had a real job, never was forced to follow through on anything whether it be a regular school or music lessons or long ties to any type of team where he learned to work with others. There seems to have been an absence of any religious practices in the home. He moved to America as a small child and was expected to acclimate to the American culture yet his father was English, his mother was Asian and his step-mother was Morrocan. He was still a kid in maturity and in his ability to make decisions. My concern is how many more kids are out there with similar hurdles they feel are impossible to overcome.

 

[lawstudent]

I look at it as one would look at insulin. You take it when you're supposed to, stay healthy, and your life stays on a somewhat even keel. My Xanax is .05 mg 4x a day (I currently also take Effexor). If someone wants to call me an addict, I don't care.
I can function, for the most part, pretty normally, and that's all that matters.

Quality of life. Not escaping reality or being stoned out of your gourd. Being as "normal" as you can be. :seeya:

Totally agree, but sedatives lose their effectiveness so it becomes harder and harder to maintain normalcy for some people. If you are responsible and educated, it should be considered just like taking any other med like insulin. But people are very judgmental - I got diagnosed with ADD and you know how people feel about all of that. I don't believe most cases of ADHD should be considered disorders, but that certain symptoms should be treated in the best way possible. For many young kids, that really should be much more recess and activities at school - it is very normal for children to act out and not be able to handle focus at that age. We act like its abnormal or "bad" behavior." Some students do have a severe impairment that might require meds. I was diagnosed as an adult and my symptoms are not academic, so no one believes me, but it has changed my life. I sat in a dark apartment for 3 years before realizing I could buy lamps - that is the way adderall helps me shut out all these rushing thoughts and focus on my actual life. For me, it makes me normal. But people are trying to make it harder and harder for anyone to get meds because of fears of addiction and judgmental attitudes that all these problems are made up. I'm amazed how uneducated people are about meds and now they basically expect you to have a total breakdown before you take meds that might actually help in many instances. And then I saw someone else and he said I didn't have it but should stay on the meds, and then saw another that said I didn't have it but I had something called "ADD NOS" which means I have all the symptoms but don't meet the criteria! So far, I've gotten like 10 diagnoses this month, many of which involve not actual diagnoses since i don't meet the criteria needed, but I have all the symptoms of them. It really is not easy to get help, depending on the disorder and mental health access around. This just gives people some idea of the craziness that goes on - now imagine someone with severe mental health problems trying to figure it out.

 

[Nymeria]

So then who prescribed the Xanax? If he had a prescription then a mental health care provider wrote the script like a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist. Which then the presumption is that he was under a more active therapy treatment than what has been stipulated?
And if this is the case, I wonder what this mental health caregiver is thinking now?

Tough spot. Sad every way you look at it.

An MD or GP can prescribe Xanax.
Does not have to be a Mental Health practitioner.

 

[mck16]

When I was a young teenager, college campuses were in the news quite often. There were many, many protests (usually about the Vietnam war, but sometimes about the colleges and the way things were done). These protests sometimes ended in violence, such as Kent State in 1970. I was terrified of the mere IDEA of going to college. The Texas University at Austin tower shooting (Charles Whitman, 1966) was something I was not even aware of until I was well into my 30s, if not 40s. I was only 11 at the time, and it wasn't really on my radar, so group violence by students and military/police was the big thing in my mind at the time

Many of today's young minds will probably be quite afraid to go to college due to mass murders. It's a sad state of affairs, indeed.

I remember the Tower shootings because I had friends who were students there. But, if I remember or at least it was reported, Whitman had a tumor that caused his manic episode. jmo

 

[mck16]

An MD or GP can prescribe Xanax.
Does not have to be a Mental Health practitioner.

My dentist prescribed it to me. I can't think of any place where it is needed more than at the dentist. lol

 

[Nymeria]

O.T. Question:

Had Ted Bundy had therapy or seen a psychiatrist before the began his killing sprees? Was he always a sick person? ty

No one was aware of what TB was until he was caught.
He was very smart and very good at hiding who he really was.
And yes, from all I have read I think he was sick from his youth onwards.
He had issues-He was illegitimate, His mother had him at a home for unwed mothers. His grandparents raised him as their child and his Mom was his older sister for a while, he was not sure who his father was.

From Wiki-
For the first three years of his life Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied illegitimate birth at the time. Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Eventually he discovered the truth, but how and when is not clear. He told his girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a "",[14] but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he found the certificate himself.[15] Biographer and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believes that he tracked down his original birth record in Vermont in 1969.[16] Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for lying about his true parentage and leaving him to discover it for himself

Ted Bundy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[ATasteOfHoney]

An MD or GP can prescribe Xanax.
Does not have to be a Mental Health practitioner.

Thanks, and I know that. ER was allegedly on Xanax for 6 months. I was trying to figure out who was actively providing mental health care for ER? Obviously, if there was a long-term script (renewed) it was from a Psychologist/Psychiatrist. And then one could presume he was actively getting mental health treatment. Which leaves some more questions dangling about professional culpability, liability, malpractice, lawsuits, etc etc etc

ER had an issue where he went to a physician for treatment (the "ledge" incident) but I doubt that the physician would've renewed his Xanax script--which would give him access to it for 6 months.

His parents have come out and said ER was under the care of 2 Psychologists but they contend he should have been in more intensive therapy. Shouldn't the Psychologists noted & recommended that too---maybe we will hear more about this topic (of course without them violating their HIPPA privacy laws).

 

[Tedanddix]

Thanks for joining the conversation!

I work at a residential psych. treatment facility for kids and I see this ALL the time. Therapists see a lot of what the client wants them to see, even in institution settings. Therapists are not out on the floor all day, seeing the kids behavior and their interactions with others. Reports are written by floor staff, but very seldom are they taken seriously or followed up on.

There are lots of kids who "fake" it through a 6-12mo program. That isn't easy to do, but it is possible. And after their discharges, I have found out that many of them even admitted to it to other peers. It's so frustrating.

Hello, I have been a lurker for a while now on Websleuths but have never posted...

I'm a psychotherapist and it alarms me that so many people are saying that his therapists should have been able to diagnose him or realize that he was a threat to himself or others. Please let it be known that therapists are not psychics!

It is very difficult to diagnose a manipulative client, and one that hasn't ever been involved in the legal system. We need symptoms to diagnose, and if those symptoms are not made available via client report/presentation, family, or client systems report, it is virtually impossible to come up with an accurate diagnosis. I believe that psychopathy can be easily misdiagnosed as Asperger's, but it is definitely possible to have both as one does not rule out the other. There is a saying in my industry: "You can't work harder than the client." If ER was not an active participant in therapy, then the therapists are left with an inaccurate picture much of the time and thus unable to accurately treat. I have my own private practice, and I terminate therapy with clients who are not participating/nonadherent to my treatment plan as it is a waste of their time and mine. I also cannot talk to family members of any of my adult patients unless my patient writes a release of information giving me permission to speak to them. In fact, I can't even acknowledge they are my client if family members call wanting to give me information.

We also don't know how many times he had seen therapists. I find it likely that he would not attend consistently and also terminate prematurely. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to treat someone who is psychotic, manic, delusional or paranoid when they are not taking their medication. I personally do not see any client displaying these symptoms until I can get a letter from the psychiatrist that they have been medically managed for 3+ months. This is mainly due to the fact that I work all by myself and I need patients with these symptoms to be accurately medicated for my own safety reasons. Many people who work in community mental health do not have this option, and rightly so.

An involuntary outpatient commitment could have been an option for ER in addition to involuntary inpatient commitment, as well as his parents getting conservatorship. However, these options are very hard to get, although I feel the involuntary outpatient commitment should be more readily available for those who have severe mental illness. Risperidone is available in a monthly shot as well and I feel that this should be used more readily in community mental health settings with people who have severe mental illness. However, if a patient does not share information with a mental health professional about plans to hurt himself or others, there is no duty to warn--in fact, we can be sued if we do so without such threats. In these cases patients often fly under the radar.

I have an aunt who is paranoid schizophrenic and has had 5 involuntary commitments due to the fact that she threatened others in our presence. She is extremely intelligent and figured out quickly how to get discharged. However, when we attempted to get conservatorship, she went missing for 3 years. To this day she doesn't adhere to her medication. We even found out that she bought a Glock in Texas AFTER she had already been institutionalized 4 times. Extremely scary. When I called to see if she had another gun in Nevada, where she had moved, no one was able to tell me if she had a gun or if she had ever applied to get one. We cannot force her to take her medicine as she is an adult. We cannot have her institutionalized again because she refuses to speak to us, and thus we have no more threatening statements from her.

Deinstitutionalization had many setbacks, and the biggest problem has been getting help for family members when you do not have threats of violence. I'm not sure what the answer is, because people with severe mental illness are warranted their own civil rights. Its definitely a major problem as a family member of a paranoid schizophrenic as well as a therapist.

JMO

 

[Nymeria]

My dentist prescribed it to me. I can't think of any place where it is needed more than at the dentist. lol

:giggle: SO true mck!

 

[Nymeria]

Thanks, and I know that. ER was allegedly on Xanax for 6 months. I was trying to figure out who was actively providing mental health care for ER? Obviously, if there was a long-term script (renewed) it was from a Psychologist/Psychiatrist. And then one could presume he was actively getting mental health treatment. Which leaves some more questions dangling about professional culpability, liability, malpractice, lawsuits, etc etc etc

ER had an issue where he went to a physician for treatment (the "ledge" incident) but I doubt that the physician would've renewed his Xanax script--which would give him access to it for 6 months.

His parents have come out and said ER was under the care of 2 Psychologists but they contend he should have been in more intensive therapy. Shouldn't the Psychologists noted & recommended that too---maybe we will hear more about this topic (of course without them violating their HIPPA privacy laws).

I would say maybe he was getting it on the street like Brandon Daniel (Who killed Officer Jaime Pardon in TX), but somehow I can not see ER being social enough to locate and be trusted by street dealers.
Then again who know, a lot of his friends said he was "off" but they never thought he was THAT bad....so 'tis possible.