Preventing Suicide

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Suicide is one of the most horrible events that can happen.  It’s devastating to the people left behind and very sad that an irrevocable step was taken by a human being.  And you never know when it could happen.

From the National Institute of Mental Health: 

Suicide is a major, preventable public health problem. In 2007, it was the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 34,598 deaths. The overall rate was 11.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people. An estimated 11 attempted suicides occur per every suicide death.

Risk factors include:

• Depression, other mental disorders or a substance-abuse disorder.  Often the substance-abuse disorder goes hand in hand with a mental disorder.  90 percent of the people who die by suicide have these two risk factors.
• Previous suicide attempt
• Family history of mental disorders or substance abuse
• Family history of suicide
• Family violence, including physical or sexual abuse
• Firearms in the home (the method used in more than half of suicides).
• Incarceration
• Exposure to the suicidal behavior of others, such as family members, peers, or media figures.

Suicide or suicidal behaviors, however, are not normal responses to stress; just because someone may have one or two of these risk factors doesn’t mean they are going to kill themselves.

Almost four times as many men as women commit suicide, with males using firearms 56% of the time while women use poisoning 40% of the time.

In 2007, suicide was the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24.  Most likely, suicide is due to existential issues: young people going from being a kid to an adult, or not having the maturity to deal with romantic, work, and transitional situations.  Some illnesses like schizophrenia tend to show up in the early 20s. And as with the general population, young people are more likely to use firearms, suffocation and poisoning over other suicide methods.

Older Americans are disproportionally likely to commit suicide.  The national average in the general population is 11.3 per 100,000 people.  Those who are 65 or older average 14.3 per 100,000 people.

When people call me who believe someone is just crying for attention, I tell them not to think that way. Most suicide attempts are expressions of extreme distress, not harmless bids for attention.  If a person who appears in any way suicidal, and you’re going to make an error, err in the direction of getting that person hospitalized immediately.

A type of psychotherapy I’ve talked about numerous times and is a major contributor to my perspective on helping people is cognitive therapy.  All kinds of studies have shown cognitive therapy has reduced the rate of repeated suicide attempts by 50 percent during a follow-up year.  Cognitive therapy helps suicide attempters consider alternative actions than self-harm.

If you think someone is suicidal – do not leave them alone.  Get them help immediately.  Call 911 or put them in the car and take them off to the psychiatric ward at a hospital. Eliminate any access to any tool than may be used in a suicide, like drugs, knives, guns, or rope…

One of the most horrifying things that happened to me as a psychotherapist was helping a particular married couple.  A colleague of mine was counselling the wife, and I was counselling the husband.  He was distressed for many reasons.  I learned he had a gun and I made a deal with him to get rid of it.  His wife confirmed he had done so.  He began to feel better and terminated our therapy sessions.  Sometimes when people start to feel better, it means they have put a suicide plan into place, and about three months later in front of his wife, he pulled out a new small caliber pistol and shot himself.  Ultimately, these things are uncontrollable unless you’re physically there and can call for help.

So while we can know the signs of what risk factors to look for, knowing what’s going on in the recesses of someone’s mind is tough.  But if suicidal behaviors are being demonstrated, get nervous and do something about it.  Don’t stand by thinking, “I don’t want anybody to be mad at me.”

Women Who Love Prisoners

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There’s an increasing population of women who want to date, have sex with or marry death row prisoners.  Some women actually find that sexy.  So I did some research in trying to understand more about why a woman would be turned on by that. 

We all know women are turned on by the bad guys. Most women are turned on by bad guys because we’re biological organisms, we’re mammals, and a bad guy is strong (or perceived to be that way), and able to protect her because he’s dangerous.  The worse a guy is, the more attractive he may become to a woman.  Remember the musical “Grease”?  Sandy is a nice girl and she falls for Danny who is a bad boy rebel.  So there’s a huge physical aspect to the attraction; it’s animal.  A lot of times the women who seek out these inmates suffer from a variety of psychological problems like depression or poor self-esteem and they seek out the unconditional love of someone who has less than they do to make themselves feel validated.

Women also become fixated with these pieces of scum because of the popularity the media gives them.  I mean, Ted Bundy became a celebrity.  So did Scott Peterson — it was all Scott Peterson all the time on television for a while. A lot of these women just cannot find love, so they pretend this is love.  And a lot of women don’t want to have to deal with a guy every day. 

I found some information on some two sisters who did this.  Two middle-aged, Christian sisters, Avril and Rose, left long-term, boring marriages for men in prison.  One man had been convicted of a string of minor property offenses and the other man had killed his previous wife.  His new wife, Rose, said, “I have faith that if you’re genuine with the Lord, you’re a new person.  A lot of people have said I should be worried about him because of what he did in his background, which is pretty awful and violent, but I have no fear.”  Despite the women’s faith, both relationships ended tragically.  A week after his release, the thief blungeoned Avril to death with a hammer.  The other husband ended up back in prison after trying to cut off Rose’s ear and trying to pull out her teeth with pliers. 

One of the realities of women being attracted to these men isn’t often expressed, because it’s not politically correct, but it happens to be a reality: hybristophiliacs.  These are people sexually excited by violent outrages performed on others.  These women often send porn pictures of themselves to the prisoners.  These women are not necessarily “sit back and just get horny” about violence.  A playwright, Veronica Lynn Compton, began a torrid affair with one of the Hillside Stranglers.  You remember those guys?  They were two cousins who abducted, raped, and mutilated very young women and then they ritualistically displayed their corpses on hillsides in Los Angeles in the 70s.  Yeah. 

As part of an elaborate defense strategy, one of the stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi, asked Compton to kill a woman using his M.O., because then he could say, “See.  It wasn’t me.  I’m in here.”  DNA evidence was not available then. Only the blood type could be determined from the fluid samples, so he asked her to sprinkle the dead body with his sperm and passed her a sample in a rubber glove.  Compton tried but bungled the attempt to murder the woman and the prospective victim got away.  By the time Compton was in prison for attempted murder, Bianchi had married somebody else.  And then Compton found another sexual, serial killer to romance.  One year he sent her a photo of a decapitated female corpse as a Valentine’s Day card. 

Vicarious murder is sometimes a motivating factor.  It’s easier for these women to overlook the violence that offends all the rest of us if they have seriously considered it themselves.  Even while the woman is the creep’s culpability, it is his ability to murder that attracts her.  He acted out on his rage.  The woman just couldn’t get around to doing that because, “I don’t know, I just can’t…I just can’t murder.”  But what a turn on that he can!  “I can live in the glow of his being able to let go of that inhibition when I can’t.”   Pretty sick…pretty scary, pretty sick.    

As I’ve always said, there are always women around to embrace evil.  There are infinite numbers of stories you’ve heard of women who stay with their husbands after the husbands have molested the children or somebody else’s children.  They will defend them and they will send their own kids off to go somewhere else to keep that man.  I remember one call in particular (thank God I cannot crawl through a phone line).  She called to see if it was okay now that her husband  (the step-father who molested both her daughters severely) was getting out of prison, if she could take him back because she “thinks he’s learned his lesson”.  They deny what they don’t want to know so they can have what they want.  There’s something sleazily erotic for these women.  It’s not just “they’re dainty and scared”.  Wow.

I guess a lot of women use these situations as an escape route.  It’s tough to be something, to be someone, to build…that’s tough.  There’s a lot of failure, frustration, and loss along the way.  Success requires a lot of work, and some people don’t want to work hard, so they join gangs and they steal and kill or push dope.  And the women gain a sense of power and position by being associated with this sort of stuff.  You become important and powerful by proxy. 

So, it isn’t about compassion.  It isn’t about really believing they’re innocent…they know they’re not.  It’s about getting off on it emotionally, sexually, psychologically…it’s about those 15 seconds of fame.  It’s about somebody so trapped in a prison he can’t fool around on you.  You’re safe and you own him, and all you have to do is show up with cigarettes.  It’s drama…it’s sick.  It is seriously sick.  And I feel the women who do this are evil.  Not pathetic, not pitiful but equally evil.  They want to make an allegiance with evil because it’s like being reborn with the position and power, the strength and importance and total control.  But it’s still evil.

I Am the Face of Child Abuse

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When the scandal at Penn State broke, and everyone was scrambling to protect the school football legacy, and coach Joe Paterno, I went on the air livid no one was talking about the children who were allegedly abused by Jerry Sandusky.  I dedicated a major portion of my SiriusXM show on Friday, November 11 to any victims of child abuse.  I wanted them to tell their stories, so people could no longer distance themselves from those who have had to live their lives with memories of these heinous crimes.
 
One of the most powerful callers was Roxine, who wrote out her statement so she’d be able to get through it.  She has given us permission to reprint it, and I encourage you to share it with all others and especially with those who would like to just “look the other way,” and not think of the actual effects of abuse on these children.  If you’d like to hear the actual call, click here, but what follows is the text of Roxine’s statement:

I am the face of child sexual abuse

And this is the face of my abuser.

He was my grandfather.  “Paw-Paw” sexually abused me from age 5 to 13.  And people knew.

The events unfolding at Penn State involving the sexual abuse of children and subsequent cover-up has awoken that little 5-year-old girl who deserved to be protected, who deserved a childhood, who deserved to live, who deserved for someone to say something to make it stop – as did all of the victims of this sexual deviant at Penn State.
   
The sexual abuse of a child not only takes away their innocence, it takes away their life, because who that child was supposed to be is forever changed.  And while we don’t carry scars that you can see, they are there.  Internal, emotional scars, filled with trust and betrayal issues, fear and anger, loss; sometimes we are unable to find value in ourselves as human beings because we were once just objects used to satisfy someone’s abnormal sexual desires.  Once we are old enough to realize that what our abusers did to us isn’t right, we begin to think  that maybe we had no worth, because no one protected us, no one stood up for us, no one cared.
 
Used and discarded, we are left to seek out “love” and “value” in the only way we know how, through sexual behaviors that aren’t rooted in real relationships.  We don’t know how to have relationships because we can never trust anyone fully.  The relationships we counted on as children failed us.  No one stood up for us.  No one protected us.  No one spoke up.

Because child sexual abuse is taboo, it makes people feel uncomfortable.  And it is this uncomfortable feeling that leaves the door open for the abuse to continue.  The incredulous thoughts of “not in my family, not him, not her, no way he or she could do that” make people question what they actually saw, or makes them doubt what they know is true.  Because it is such a gut-wrenching notion to imagine a child being raped by an adult, people would rather rationalize it than deal with it.  They would rather it just go away than have to face it.  Our mental self-preservation mode kicks in and we try not to think about such awful, monstrous acts on a child.

Already, just a few days into this news story, there are articles, reporters and radio hosts saying they just want to be done with it.  It makes them so uncomfortable that they just want it to go away.  But for us, for the little kids who suffered the heinous acts of child sexual abuse, this never goes away.  In a way, we welcome this conversation and want it to continue.  It is the only way that some will listen.  That little 5-year old girl is screaming at the top of her lungs for you to help her – if it doesn’t look right, if it doesn’t feel right – go with your gut – say something, do something, anything.  Don’t just walk away because it makes you uncomfortable.  Don’t sweep it under the rug because you don’t want to embarrass the family or the team or the university.

Children cannot protect themselves.  It is our duty to keep them safe. Speak up.  I would rather say something and be uncomfortable, than say nothing and risk losing another child.  No matter what, always protect the child.  If any of those involved had said something, they would be hailed a hero.  Instead, they turned a blind eye.  In my opinion, they are no better than the perpetrator himself.

Joe Paterno and the Penn State Child Abuse Horror

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It is my never-to-be-humble opinion that coach Joe Paterno from Penn State ought to be in jail.  Fired wasn’t enough.  Let’s see, endangering the welfare of minors, knowing kids were being molested and not reporting it to the police?  I don’t know, I think that should be actionable.
 
The other night just before I went to sleep, I turned on the computer looking to see if there’s anything I really need to talk about on my program the next day.  What I saw was a video of 2,000 moronic, amoral young people, spoiled rotten with no moral compass clapping, laughing, smiling and shouting, “We stand up for our school!  Paterno is our iconic hero!.”  These were totally misguided protests from creepy kids on the campus.  And they had nothing to say about the victims.  Me? I would throw them all out of school.

Jerry Sandusky abused little boys over a period of 15 years.  Not only that, but the story gets worse when you learn where some of them were “done”.  I would say, “More than ever Paterno should be fired. He took no moral responsibility and did not follow through on the information he knew so he could protect little kids.  And yet he talks about his 17 grandkids…”
 
Would he have felt differently if Sandusky had done one of his grandkids?  I don’t know.  Think he would’ve stepped forward to do anything?  What? And mess with Penn State football?  I don’t know, maybe he’d sacrifice one of his own grandkids too; I have no clue.  But those 2,000 students, who had no clue, morally, as to what this was really all about, make me sick for our future.  And the parents…if you’re parents of any of those kids who were out there, you should be embarrassed you produced critters like that.
 
Good for the board for not allowing Paterno to write the blueprint for his own exit.  He wanted to leave on his own terms.  Creep.  He wanted to finish out the season.  They got his butt out of there anyway.  He didn’t help the young victims of “alleged” sexual predator Jerry Sandusky, his former defensive coordinator, and he knew about it.
 
Paterno made a statement on Wednesday.  He described himself as “‘absolutely devastated’ by the recent indictment of Sandusky for 40 counts of sexual abuse across 15 years.”  He promised “to pray for the ‘comfort and relief’ of the victims identified.”  And he had the friggin’ gall to say, “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”  That’s an admission of guilt.  The victims probably wish he had done more too.
 
To add to this, the current assistant coach Mike McQueary, who was then a graduate assistant, walked into the Penn State shower to see Sandusky raping a 10 year old boy, and turned around and walked out.  He turned around and walked out.  He is 6’4″, 220 pounds, and he turned around and walked out.  He didn’t call the police.  He told his dad and he told Paterno.  “I saw it with my own eyes.”  And what did that bastard do?  Nothing.  Why?  Probably because he thinks, “I am God.  I am a football coach for Penn State.”
 
Loyal students camped outside Paterno’s house chanting, “Joe must stay!,” cheering a man who could’ve stopped a predator from attacking kids, had he just dialed 911.  They are cheering to keep him because football is king, success breeds power, power breeds influence, influence breeds a bullet-proof arrogance and most of our young people have absolutely no concept of morality.

It’s Dangerous To Be A Guy on Campus

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I received a letter from the folks at SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments).  They’re a group of people dedicated to improving the effectiveness of America’s approach to solving the problem of domestic violence through education, training, and awareness programs.  Well, they’ve expanded a little and are actively protesting against a new set of rules issued by the Department of Education regarding sexual assault on campus.  I’ve decided to reprint the letter here:

When sexual morality breaks down, lives get chaotic. When lives get chaotic, the government steps in to deal with the mess – and that rarely ends well.

Two recent stories vividly illustrate this principle:

Story 1: Newsweek just released an unusual and provocative set of college rankings. One of the lists – we kid you not – is the 25 “horniest” campuses. These are the colleges “where students have the best odds of hooking up.” This is presented as an appealing feature of these campuses.

Story 2: The Department of Education recently issued new rules telling colleges, in great detail, how they must handle accusations of sexual assault or harassment. The rules in effect strip accused men (students or faculty) of the presumption of innocence and the right to confront their accuser, even when they’re facing expulsion.

So on the one hand, liberals celebrate the “hook up” culture, the ultimate expression of their precious sexual revolution. And the place where liberalism reigns supreme – the American university – is now the scene of sexual anarchy. On the other hand, college boys who have obediently “explored their sexuality” face career-ending prosecution by an academic inquisition that will probe every salacious detail of their intimate encounters. The irony couldn’t be richer.

The results are seen in an illuminating article in Philadelphia magazine: “The New Rules of College Sex.” And we now have the inevitable lawsuit, brought by a young man who was expelled from Sewanee after an obviously fraudulent accusation of rape: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/aug/24/sewanee-lawsuit-trial-begins/

The federal rules about sexual assault on campus are such an egregious assault on basic civil rights that a backlash is brewing. (Even the American Association of University Professors has protested.) SAVE is leading the charge against these rules. We advocate for men falsely accused on domestic violence. Your listeners can find our more at our website saveservices.org.

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE)

Pedophilia is Normal Say Some Mental Health Pros

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About 10 years ago, there was a major point I could not get people to see or believe. I said the sole end game of the liberalization of sexuality in our culture was to have sex with children. 

You look at societies throughout history and there are many societies in which having sex with children was okay.  You look at a place like Afghanistan and unless the men want to have babies, they do boys and animals.  This is nothing new on the face of the earth.  But, in western civilization, this is an issue and I said back then the end game was to have sex with kids. 

So, I found an article on Fox News titled “Mental Health Group Looks to Remove Stigma From Pedophilia,” which says:

“A group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals say it’s time to change the way society views individuals who have physical attractions to children.

The organization, which calls itself B4U-Act, is lobbying for changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the guideline of standards on mental health that’s put together by the American Psychiatric Association.”

The DSM is the one where you look up a number for the disorder so the insurance companies will pay.  And, let me remind you for the umpteenth time:  there is nothing in psychology that makes it a science.  What goes in and out of the DSM as a disorder is based on social pressures and voting.  It has nothing to do with science.  I want you all clear…psychology is NOT a science.

“The group says its mission is to help pedophiles before they create a crisis, and to do so by offering a less critical view of the disorder.”

That’s just a bunch of bull and it’s words.  Words sell things, and even “nice” words can be co-opted to do some awful things.

“B4U-Act said that 38 individuals attended a symposium in Baltimore …[and] the speakers in attendance concluded that “minor-attracted” individuals are largely misunderstood and should not be criminalized even as their actions should be discouraged.”

I said a long time ago the end game of all this social liberalization (unknown to people even amidst the social liberalization) was to do your kids and not be criminalized for it, and this is what this article refers to.

Many of you may not know or may not remember the American Psychological Association published the infamous “Rind article” in its 1998 Psychological Bulletin.  This was a study which downplayed the impact of men having sex with boys, finding quite a few of the boys remembered their molestations positively, and not every child who has been molested has problems.
 
That’s like saying “I shot you in the head and you survived; therefore getting shot in the head is not a bad thing.”  This article was published by the American Psychological Association, and it said essentially man/boy sex was okay as long as the boys consented, because it was “love.”

I went on the air after the Rind article was published and I was very clear about this article wanting to decriminalize screwing your kids.  Grown men screwing your boys:  “it wasn’t a bad thing, it was a ‘love’ thing.  It’s a cultural problem;  people are just misunderstanding it.”

Well, I went ballistic and I got everyone in my office on the phone to Congress, and I asked the audience to do the same. I want to tell you the upshot, and I’m going to take all the credit for it.  It was my pressure which made Congress condemn the study and the American Psychological Association for the first time in its entire history backed down and apologized and the president of the American Psychological Association found another job.  I am proud to say I had enough power to mobilize enough people.  And Rind and his buddies were still invited to talk everywhere and were still published in other places.
 
Well, that may have happened, but we still have mental health professionals going to a symposium from a group which looks to remove the stigma from pedophilia.  “It’s a cultural thing.”  If the culture allows it, it’s not a bad thing, they say.  It’s not a bad thing for example in Afghanistan.  So, if it’s the norm (like Rome before it fell), what’s the big deal?  This is savage and all I can say is, I warned you.
 
I want you to understand the attempt to normalize screwing your children is still on in full gear.
 
They refer to pedophiles as “minor-attracted individuals.” How benign can you make it?  That’s why I call things as they are.  There needs to be clarity.  When you say “minor-attracted individuals,” you can follow it up with “are largely misunderstood and should not be criminalized.”  So, don’t be impressed just because someone is a psychologist or a psychiatrist.  You have to be very afraid because people get into positions of power to change things.  If I were a pedophile and I wanted to get it normalized and not criminalized, I would secretly and quietly get a bunch of my buddies and we’d join the psychological associations and teacher associations –  everywhere there are kids — and get in positions of power.  And then we’d gently start using different words (i.e., words that don’t shock, words that don’t alarm, words that don’t send up red flags) and slowly make it happen.  Remember the Rind study said it was not a problem; kids were not hurt by this.  And the American Psychological Association actually published that.

Tragedy in Norway

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I was in Hawaii after the Transpac 2011 ocean race, doing my program from there, trying to recover, when I heard about what happened in Norway, where this piece-of-crap decided he was going to make a statement by starting a revolution similar to the Crusades to stop Muslim integration and destruction of Europe by Islam.  So to do this, he blew up a government building and killed scores and scores of kids, which of course, makes everybody incredibly sympathetic to his cause.  Now Norway is a liberal country like Holland and Denmark — incredibly liberal. 

Yesterday morning I read that Norway’s maximum penalty for any crime you can commit (no matter how heinous) is 21 years in prison.  So for killing between 80 and 100 people (the number keeps changing), if he’s found guilty, he could spend 21 years in prison which is equivalent to a penalty of 82 days — 82 days — per child’s death.  I have nothing more to say.

Some Doctors Turn Away Obese Patients

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