Amy Bishop Anderson, who was charged with capital murder in a Friday shooting spree at the University of Alabama, has a history that is getting stranger by the day.
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Anderson and her husband, Jim, were questioned after a package containing two pipe bombs was sent to the Newton, Massachusetts, home of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, a Harvard professor and a doctor at Children's Hospital Boston in 1993. However they were supposedly cleared. Anderson’s husband told reporters that this was one thing from the past he hoped would not be dredged up.
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On Saturday, it was revealed that in 1986, when Anderson, was 19, shot her brother to death in Braintree, Massachusetts. Authorities determined at the time the shooting was accidental.
An official involved in the case and still working for Braintree police told him that the teen had shot her brother during an argument. She fired a shot in her bedroom without hitting anyone, then argued with her brother and shot him, he said. It’s interest that her mother at the time was a member of the Braintree Personnel Board and could have influenced the police investigation and may have been responsible for it being treated as an accident. And now the file at the police department about this incident is missing!
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Our country must be full of these people walking around. When the conservatives dismantled the mental health care system in this country under Reagan, it led to the current epidemic of unstable , untreated and undiagnosed mentally ill being undetected in our society. Its no help that the country still views the mentally ill as crazy and subhuman. This has caused many to not seek help when they discover they might need it for themselves or others.
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When are we ever going to learn to remove the stigma from mental and motional problems. Contrary to what conservatives want, we are NOT in the dark ages anymore. And their idiotic beliefs should no longer effect how we treat our fellow Americans. You cannot promote attitudes like the conservatives hold about people without major problems. Their decisions and ideas from years ago are still killing people indirectly. And of course this too they will deny, but none the less we should hold a light to the blood on their hands, especially since they fight against the mentally ill getting treatment because they are too cheap and greedy to live up to their responsibilities as a citizen.
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Comments: 58
I have read hat 1 in 10 people are mentally ill and 1 in 4. (Anyone certain?)
However many there are, the news is full of their deeds. The one that got to me recently is the nine-year-old boy who did not want to do his chores. He shot his mother and later his father when he got home. Then he spent the evening playing video games and watching TV
Either way--are they charging him as adult. If not, he'll be out by 18 I guess.
Maybe she merely had her hand slapped too often . Maybe she needed to be on medication.
Either way, bad for the families of the 3 fatalities--and the wounded 3 as well.
Along with that attitude we have insurance companies that will only pay for a minimum of treatment, if any at all.
It is very disturbing.
Unfortunately I do remember his "community based" approach to mental health care. It involved turning people who were a danger to themselves and others loose.
I worked in the prime panhandling area of SF for over 15 years and met more than my share of people wandering around who would have been in mental institutions if we still had them. You'd be surprised how many people take advantage of the acoustics of areas of tall buildings to make speeches.
Bernard
OMG That's really fuc!!ng ludicrous, even for you.
But it does save money.
YOur comment said: "So, you're blaming the republicans for what happened in that teacher's meeting in Alabama? And for every nutcase walking the streets?"
your wrong or you twisted it on purpose.... the fact they are walking the streets is what is the fault of the Repubs, not the mental illnes as you state... And not the shooting in Alabam, but the fact she was never treated or diagnosed... she did the shootings and with the help of the repubs favorite NRA
But not for them three dead professors in Alabama.
And not for Berlin.
(and maybe we'd be paying taxes to Moscow......)
...And then they committed suicide. Which is why the suicide rates under Reagan and bush1 rose.
The funding still has not come back.
Please keep posting to our group and ask others to join.
And while you make some valid points about the social stigma's surrounding mental health disease, there is as yet no evidence that Amy Bishop ever sought any kind of treatment, and neither is there evidence that she didn't do so because of any negative social stigma about it. So I ask again, what does any of this have to do with Amy Bishop?
Understand, I have no doubt that she needed some kind of help, but it assumes a lot to think that she didn't seek any treatment because of any associated negative stigmas. The idea just dont hold water. She could just as easily have not sought help because she didn't think she needed any. And unless she had done something which had brought her into a situation where a court demanded an examination, there is nothing anyone could do to force any treatment on her.
It makes me wonder how she got hired. I also heard she was angry she was not given tenure by the college, her motivations for the shooting, any wonder why she wasn't given tenure.
I really don't understand how she got the position and how she kept it....beyond killing her brother.
I think she must have been surrounded by enablers and it's sad she killed 4 people (including her brother) before she was locked up.
Your so right about that Heather!