Just what are we squeamish about?
Myth of the Month:
“We’re all squeamish about mental illness.” “It’s the psychiatric issues,” “it has to do with their distorted thinking and depression,” and “more than three-fourths of the offenders in 30 murder-suicides in the Cleveland, Ohio, area had signs of mental illness.”
So reported a CNN.com article, “’Hopeless dads kill their families out of love,” on the recent spate of murder-suicides by family members, in its attempt to explain why familicide occurs. Cari Wheat, whose father Curt Wheat shot his wife, Marie, as she slept in their bedroom and then killed himself in 2003 explained, “We’re all squeamish about mental illness.” She believes her father pulled the trigger “out of a sense of love for her mother.” While an old story, it’s the same story as in April 2009, when New York attorney William Parente asphyxiated and beat his wife and two daughters in a Maryland hotel before killing himself, and in May 2009, when Troy Bellar killed his wife and two of his sons in their home in Tampa, Florida. After each incident of familicide, the question is invariably asked, “Why did they do it?”
Many researchers believe that a person who kills his family “could have control issues that lead him to decide the fate of the children, spouse and pets.” They suggest these are mostly mentally ill people who believe, “This is mine. Nobody else is able to take care of them except me. If I can’t control this in my life, I’ll preserve it in death so that my world doesn’t change.” They blame psychiatric issues. They claim these “thoughts become action when a precipitating event, or trigger, occurs, such as divorce, suspected infidelity or loss of job,” without which the crime would not have occurred.
It’s extraordinary that some think we are “squeamish” about mental illness when that is the only perceived cause of familicide pinpointed in an article in which alcohol and other-drug addiction, the far more likely underlying cause, isn’t even mentioned. Yet the odds (particularly when stacked together) greatly favor substance addiction as the underlying motive for a need to control and commission of the ultimate crime.
Why then are triggering events so often confused with the cause, with the latter omitted? Because the myths of addiction have created a stigma, which makes us even more squeamish than does mental illness. Why would such events qualify as triggers? Because they are ego-deflationary, which compels the injured ego to do all it can to compensate and repair the damage to itself. As the ultimate act of control, there is no more complete ego-inflating act than taking the life of another. Because the “experts” do not grasp the fundamental idea of alcoholic egomania, they fail to identify the underlying cause of most tragedy.
Although nothing else could be found on the Internet regarding Curt Wheat, the daughter admits “he was being treated for depression and trying different medications.” As shown in the April-May 2007 TAR Top Story on Cho Seung-Hui most being so treated are already proven alcohol and other-drug addicts. Curt Wheat and Troy Bellar are not likely exceptions.