Adam Lanza was crazy. Nancy Lanza was crazy.

[_Liann_]

125. I basically said what he asks for.

Lots of people with non-violent mental disturbances are stigmatized by broad brush blanket lumping together with violent monsters. I separated out two categories known to furnish violent monsters: SOCIOPATHS and PARANOIDS.

It did not stigmatize everybody as collectively guilt of mass murder, but these two groups furnish a lot of mass murderers.

People need to be able to distinguish US from THEM, by spending an hour reading the symptoms list of real people with the problems and we can all be reading on the same page when we use high media attention examples like the Lanzas.

I don't think most people have problems with the idea that killing 20 kids point blank range is prima facie (plain on the face of it) evidence of mental illness, but specifically what kind, and what are the signs so we can see it earlier before it erupts in a killing frenzy?

Adam Lanza was crazy. What kind of crazy? I say specifically sociopathic crazy, which has a specific list of things that are matched up to the physical facts of the massacre.

Nancy Lanza was crazy. Not everybody agrees, but the evidence on the table suggests paranoid schizophrenia. However she was on medications for an illness that she thought was fatal, and the toxicology tests of her blood has not been released. Neither has her private medical records, which we will never see. Some guesswork is required. Some drugs can induce temporary insanity which looks and results in identical behaviors as natural mental incapacity.

She was at the least reckless in her disregard of public safety as the ultimate facts demonstrate without quibble.

Using her as a teaching moment to learn something about the symptoms list of paranoid schizophrenics is worthwhile. Being able to distinguish the socially dangerous from the innocuous is a valuable skill that ought to be taught in schools, but at least people can learn it now, here, by studying the teachable moment, and maybe heading off the next time.