Critical questions on The Danforth
Media missing the point on what caused the tragedy
Our collective reaction to Sunday night’s shooting in Toronto’s Greektown is remarkably predictable and similar to reactions to other senseless tragedies. We are literally obsessed with what happened, what people saw and how people feel about the events.
The media panders to this ghoulish primitive voyeuristic preoccupation sending a hoard of news reporters to the site who repeat what they have said many times before and who stick microphones in the faces of pedestrians asking them questions such as; “How do you feel about your city now, or do you still feel safe in Toronto?
Besides filling time and pandering there seems to be very little, if any constructive value in this type of media coverage.
Appropriately, the fate of victims is identified and in so doing we are all reminded of the fragility of life. Sadly adjectives such as innocent or beautiful are constantly used to describe the victims. One is left to wonder why there is a need to do so. If they were not, would the assault on them be less tragic? Assuredly all forms of violence, regardless of what it is perpetrated with is abhorrent and unacceptable. The fact that a gun was used in this instance is not nearly as important as it is made out it to be. Focusing on gun violence could well take us in the wrong path.
To the media’s credit, knowing that we all need to make sense of what happened on the Danforth they call in “experts” who by definition are knowledgeable in narrowly focused specific areas. This explains the confusing hodgepodge of perspectives they provide about what happened. For example, the experts do not explain that radicalized and gang related violence is a reference group ideologically prescribed behaviour problem. The Danforth perpetrator does not readily meet this criteria. The shooter in fact has no history of radical ideas or behaving violently. In fact his actions have been characterized as out of character. To be perplexed by his ‘motive’ while understandable is likely the wrong question to ask.
Given the perpetrator’s so called history of mental illness the more relevant question is; what caused him to behave in this way?
There is a vast body of scholarly, evidence based, albeit virtually entirely ignored literature that purport that depressed an or psychotic people do not kill themselves or others. Involuntarily, unwittingly intoxicated medication spellbound people do. We have known about this for decades and many malpractice and product liability law suits have been settled out of court essentially to avoid a sensational public trial exposing the dangers of psychoactive drugs, the primary tools used by psychiatry. Books by Peter Breggin MD are good reference sources for those interested.
In fact, there for the looking, are product inserted warnings about many psychoactive drugs that they might cause: suicidal ideation and behaviour, acting on dangerous impulses, unusual changes in behaviour, increased agitation, aggression and the list does go on.
Moreover, these reactions to the toxic substances can also occur after they have been stopped. The greatest tragedy being, the definition of medical spellbinding, is that the individual does not know or is unaware of the negative effects produced by the prescribed drug.
In trying to make sense of the Danforth tragedy the critically important questions to ask therefore are:
• What is meant by the statement trying to get help for the perpetrator?
• What medications and therapy did not work and why not?
• What medication was he taking or had recently stopped?
• What toxic, including prescribed psychoactive drugs were found by the autopsy?
As we all know, finding the right answer always requires asking the right questions. Especially in this case, finding the right answer also requires acknowledging the proverbial elephant in the room that psychiatry and psychiatric drugs often do more harm than good. Which was it in this case needs to be determined.