Human Pressure Cookers: When Anguish Turns Homicidal

In Texas, as in many states, annual state-wide testing includes an essay section. More than one million students complete the required essay. Of the one million essays submitted, guess how many essays become a cry for help. According to USA Today (March 28, 2005), nearly 700 youngsters wrote about their own abuse, neglect or rape.

The New York Times notes this week that the recent Minnesota school shooting may have occurred because "anguish turned homicidal." In the next sentence, they wrote: "Teachers are ill-prepared to identify and address the normal emotional difficulties of their students, much less the aberrational ones." Further, they correctly observe that "school counselors, who are better suited for the task, are severely outnumbered."

For more than a decade and a half, our company, Youth Change, has been criss-crossing North America, attempting to train teachers, counselors, principals and other youth workers how to better understand and assist troubled youth and children. For most of those years, we have been saying over and over, in school after school, in city after city, that anguish can easily become rage. In the past, the media has characterized school shooters as students who were bullied. That over-simplified sound bite has made our job so much harder because bullying is often not the sole-- or even primary-- contributing force that spurred the tragedy. The central force was the developing rage and on-going depression. The focus on bullying meant that quiet anguish that didn't involve bullying, could pass unnoticed by adults. Any opportunity for prevention is lost.

In the Minnesota case, clearly, the young shooter was a pressure cooker. The signs of depression, alienation and frustration were there to see; and bullying may not have been a factor at all. It is time for youth professionals to refine how they view school shooters. By subscribing to past media characterizations linked to bullying, youth workers are more likely to miss most the important clues: anguish and frustration. These two powerhouse emotions can easily occur without any bullying.

If you want to become better prepared to notice and understand youngsters who are human pressure cookers, there is only one option. If your background does not include mental health basics, now is the time to upgrade your skills. Concern about a potential tragedy at your site is not the sole reason that non-mental health workers must finally broaden their expertise. The real reason that these youth professionals must become more skilled in basic mental health methods is that for every sad child who does pick up a rifle, there are hundreds more who struggle and suffer more quietly. We now know there are at least 700 of them in Texas.

Children in Oregon have also confessed distress in that state's essay exam. Some of those sad stories have lacked proper punctuation, or apparently had sub-standard sentence structure, and ultimately received failing grades. A child tells of beatings or a recent rape; or writes of homelessness, or a lost parent. Not only will the cry for help fail to be answered, the cry for help itself is graded as failing.

Recently in Texas, a student died. It was the day before the state-wide exam. The school staff asked to delay the exam to allow the children time to grieve. The students were nonetheless required to take the test, seated next to the empty desk of their newly dead friend and classmate.

High stakes testing mania has become the center of the education universe. It consumes countless dollars, devours teachers' time, and diminishes the importance of every other educational activity. If a teacher wants to keep her job, she must produce the right testing numbers. With eyes firmly focused on testing, teachers are left precious little time to even think, never mind notice children's anguish. Testing is most certainly not the cause of this country's problems with school shootings, but testing has contributed to it. Flunking cry for help essays, compelling testing even hours after death, and our relentless pursuit of magic numbers are just a few of the ways that we sacrifice children's humanity to the gods of testing. If we put a mere 10% of the effort we devote to testing mania, into noticing and helping deeply troubled children, perhaps we could stop some of the shootings before they occur. Further, since you can't push profoundly distressed children to perform well on tests anyway, perhaps by noticing and attending to the distress, many sad children would accomplish more academically.

How do you know if your team is properly noticing and helping distressed students? Here is a quick litmus test for you to use to determine if your team has a solid basic mental health knowledge base, plus the inclination and willingness to notice deeply depressed youngsters who might one day explode; brief answers are provided as applicable:

1. Can your staff name the 3 students at highest risk of engaging in extreme violence?

Answer: Conduct disorders; thought disorders; extreme agitated, depressed kids.

2. Using one-size-fits all methods won't work with the three students identified in Question #1. Does your staff know how they must work differently with each of those three types of students?

3. Can your staff name the symptoms of major, clinical depression, and the three methods that work best to prevent explosive rage?

Answer: There are a vast array of symptoms that can signal depression. While only mental health professionals can diagnose, all youth workers can watch for sad moods especially without apparent cause, diminished enthusiasm, anxiety, hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness, helplessness, problems with concentration, changes in sleep, changes in weight, changes in appetite, and suicidal gesturing or comments. These are a few of the most common signs. The best methods to address depression, especially with the help of your school counselor: exercise, talking and carefully monitored anti-depressants.

4. Can your staff name the most important method to use with conduct disordered students?'

Answer: The single most important method is to keep the costs of misbehavior high, and the benefits low.

5. Is there a mechanism at your site or within your community to ensure that all children are noticed by their teacher, mentor or other adult so that warning signs (like violent web site postings, threatening remarks, alienation, and desperation) are not missed?

6. Candidly speaking, what would your staff say is the highest priority at your site?

Answer: Academic achievement and high testing scores really shouldn't be the answer in our contemporary times. The answer offered by your team should be site safety, or else safety is not the priority that it must be in our current violent times. Educational goals will quickly assume lower status if your team ever loses students or staff in a shooting or other tragedy. School safety should be the one thing that is more important than anything else that occurs within the walls of your school. Without school safety, nothing else matters.