Community Killings: Why can’t Medicine Decipher Columbine and Sandy Hook.

If you are trying to learn about the school killings, and similar incidents, you will find nothing of use from the medical profession.  There are many guesses about mental illness, from depression to psychopathy, many observations about drug side effects and withdrawal symptoms – but no real answers. There are two reasons for this situation.

First: the medical paradigm ignores healthiness and unhealthiness. The medical profession works by diagnosing illness (often not cause) and prescribing treatment once illness is diagnosed.  Even then, diagnosis typically does not happen unless the patient decides to visit a doctor, and in most cases, monitoring (except in clinical studies) is non-existent unless the patient decides to return. If a patient is ‘healthy’, or merely ‘unhealthy’, no diagnosis is made and no action is taken.

The field of medicine  is based on diagnosis.  If there is no diagnosis, there is no illness, and therefore the health of the subject is ignored.  In a few cases, the medical system attempts to ‘pre-diagnose’ or provide early warnings of illness. However, these are seldom used to improve healthiness – more often for early prescription of drugs. 

Second: the medical profession only acknowledges part of the Hierarchy of Healthicine and only attempts to treat a smaller part.  The layers of the hierarchy of healthiness that are most relevant in the community killings are misunderstood (at best) or ignored by the medical profession.  The medical profession’s coverage of the hierarchy of healthicine can be seen in the RED CIRCLE in this diagram.

The field of medicine treats illnesses, primarily in the layers of cells, tissues, organs, systems, body and some small part of the mind.  Illnesses of nutrition, including toxins, are poorly diagnosed, even those that are well studied.  Illnesses of genetics are seldom a factor in medical practice, with a few exceptions, although there is lots of research driving potential development of drugs.

The layer of mind is very poorly covered by the field of medicine.  There is much debate today whether current psychiatry is a science, or simply sophisticated guesswork.

The spirit layer is almost totally ignored by our medical systems.  Everyone has heard of someone with a ‘broken spirit’, but there is no diagnosis and no treatment.  Problems with the spirit are generally lumped with illnesses of the mind – and also treated with drugs. 

The layer of community healthiness is off the medical charts. Our medical systems make no attempts to understand healthiness of communities, and have no awareness of unhealthinesses or illness that can and do exist in many communities. Neither do they understand the community health aspects of individuals in communities.

Which layers of the hierarchy of healthiness are ‘unhealthy’ in cases of these community killings?  It’s not clearly not cellular, tissue, organ, system, or body unhealthiness.

Community killings are a result of unhealthiness in the areas where our medical systems are weakest.  Community healthiness, spirit healthiness, mind healthiness and possibly nutrient healthiness.  

Let’s start with the mind. We know that people who committed the school killings have serious mental problems of some sort.  Normal people can’t kill without conscience or remorse. We also know that most, if not all, had been previously diagnosed with specific mental illnesses. The shooters in Columbine and Sandy Hook were both prescribed and taking drugs for mental illnesses – that were obviously not correctly treated.  It is possible, even likely that the diagnosis and treatments only made things worse.

What do our medical systems think about the line between the body and the mind?  The brain consists of nutrients, coalesced into cells, grouped into tissues, creating a body organ that is part of the entire nervous system. Where is the mind? The mind is a layer above each of these sub-components.  It is the whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. It is entirely possible that some small isolated part of the mind is responsible for this behavior – but the mind is very complex, and poorly understood by medicine.

The Spirit?  What was the healthiness of the spirit of the shooters? Were their spirits strong and healthy?  Clearly not.  Their spirits were severely damaged.  But what do our medical systems know about the spirit?  Can our medical systems measure or even detect a strong spirit?  A weak spirit?  Is there a difference between a strong spirit and a healthy spirit? We know there can be a difference between a person who is physically strong and a person who is very healthy?  The field of medicine has nothing to say about the spirit, and prefers to pretend that it does not exist, sometimes comparing it to witchcraft via the placebo effect.  The spirit is a complex, important aspect of healthiness – and of unhealthiness in these cases.  

In virtually all cases of community killings, the spirit of the killer is attempting suicide – and generally succeeding.  It is important to understand that community killings are suicides first, and killings only to attract attention to the suicide. These killings are the last scream of the suicide. 

What about the community healthiness in these cases?  Community healthiness has two important components.  The community healthiness of the individual, the person who committed the killings, and the community healthiness of other individuals and communities that the killer interacts with.

There has been much discussion and many people have suggested that community killers are psychopaths.  However, the medical system does not recognize psychopaths.  There is ‘officially’ no way to diagnose a psychopath in the USA. There is a possible diagnosis of “ASPD – anti-social personality disorder“, however, this diagnosis requires that the patient be at least 18 years of age, and must have been observed to “repeatedly perform… acts that are grounds for arrest.”  Eg. you can’t have this illness until after you commit more than one crime.  Even so, medical officials estimate that 3 percent of males, and 1 percent of females have ASPD.  But, do you know of any females who committed mass killings? Clearly any diagnosis of ASPD is pretty lame, and leaves a lot to be explained and explored.

What is a psychopath?  A psychopath is an individual who has very low, possibly non-existent ‘community healthiness’.  However our medical system stops viewing healthiness at the layer of the mind – and does not consider the spirit and community layers.  Our medical systems do not attempt to understand healthiness – and do not attempt to understand healthiness nor illness of the spirit or the community.

What about the healthiness of the communities where these individuals live? Do their communities, their families, and many other communities, from work to religion, to businesses, to medical, to various layers of government consist of healthy communities? That contribute to the healthiness of their members? Or are they unhealthy? Medical science does not study ‘illness of communities’ and therefore cannot study ‘healthiness of communities’. If we are to optimize our healthiness – we need to understand and improve the healthiness of our various communities. 

Can we learn to understand spirit healthiness and community healthiness?  We can and will, slowly or quickly, learn more about mental healthiness, but until we recognize spirit healthiness and community healthiness as important aspects of healthicine -we will not have the complete picture.

I did mention nutrition as well.  What about the nutritional health of the killers.  Was that a factor?  The sad truth about nutrition is that medical science prefers to study nutrients in isolation – and diagnoses specific illnesses for specific deficiencies or excesses of nutrients or toxins.  Most, if not all of the shooters were on, or recovering from prescription drugs.  These drugs are toxic and can have many seriously unhealthy effects, which are poorly understood and poorly studied. As far as I am aware, their diets were not studied at all.

There is virtually no scientific study of most nutrient deficiencies and excesses in combination.  It is possible to be moderately deficient in many nutrients and moderately excessive in many toxins without any diagnosis.  Are the aspects of mental unhealthiness, spirit unhealthiness and community unhealthiness created or exacerbated by nutrition?

We won’t really be able to tackle those questions until we begin study those areas of healthiness more effectively – and until we tackle nutrient healthiness in a wholistic, comprehensive manner.

We cannot begin to comprehend, much less prevent, community killings until we take a much larger view of healthiness and of illness.  We need to study healthiness as thoroughly as we study illness. We need to study all of the layers in the hierarchy of healthicine.  We should start now.  For the health our our minds, our spirits, and our communities.

tracy
founder: healthicine.org

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About Tracy Kolenchuk

Founder of Healthicine.org. Author. A New THeory of Cure. Theory of Cure - Update 2023. Healthicine: The Arts and Sciences of Health and Healthiness, Healthicine: Introduction to Healthicine.
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