A few years ago Chris Benoit, a wrestler, killed his wife and child. Having always considered wrestling, football and ice hockey foolish and dangerous sports, I remember the double murder and suicide well.
“Christopher Nowinski, a former professional wrestler who worked with Mr. Benoit, and who was forced to quit because of head injuries, said he believed that repeated, untreated concussions might have caused his friend to snap.”
At the time, much was made of the fact that repeated blows to the head could make a man do things that he would not otherwise do – like kill people. The media gave us a list of football players and wrestlers who had gone bonkers because of brain injuries.
A study in the journal “Aggression and Violent Behavior” has fueled the debate even more. It noted that “some mass murderers and serial killers have something in common: autism and head injury.”
We recently saw a man on TV run up to a police car and shoot the policeman inside. He later said he did it for ISIS.
Although I listened very carefully, all I heard was a lot of talking heads discussing the man’s trip to Egypt. It was taken for granted that he had been brainwashed into becoming a terrorist.
At no time did I hear that the man had long suffered from a head injury sustained years before when he was playing football and that he heard “voices.” I had to learn that from Rachel Maddow – who is never distressed when she has to report unpleasant facts.
The gunman’s mother said he had been hearing voices in his head. She wanted him to seek medical attention.
Years ago, I was visited by a Rockland woman who wanted me to help her get rid of the voices in her head. She was convinced they could be removed by legislation, and, although she didn’t grasp the import of what she was saying, she was probably right: At present, mentally ill people cannot be forced to take medication against their will.
Her husband, a good friend of mine, later told me that she would not take her medicine and that the law said she could not be forced to take it. He was helpless and she was driving him crazy. Every week or so, he would have to move out and live somewhere else just to recover from the mental strain.
Her visit was an unnerving experience and, although I’d known her for years, while she was in my dooryard I didn’t dare turn my back on her.
So I learned long ago that there is no help for these tortured souls until they finally snap and end up in jail. Which gets them off the street, sometimes at the cost of a couple of lives, but helps neither them nor society.
Our mainstream media wants Americans to think that we are being attacked on all sides by terrorists. Seldom is anything said about mental illness or how many times a gunman was knocked out while playing football as a child.
Presidential candidates joyfully blamed the Philadelphia shooting on President Obama’s failed policies. If they were referring to his inability to remove guns from the hands of the mentally ill, they were right.
Sixty years ago, we would have called the Philadelphia cop shooter a “punch drunk.” In a progressive society, he might well have been institutionalized or at least deprived of his gun and kept under observation. In the United States, there is little or no help for him – or the other walking time bombs who hear voices or suffer from traumatic brain injury.
Were we to consider these much-publicized shootings on a personal level, would they be easier to understand? Many of us old folks have stood by our friends when they got cancer or heart disease. Mental disorders are more difficult to deal with, however, as lifelong friends can turn against you and, in extreme cases, even murder their own spouses and children.
So – what do you do when your childhood chum manifests the first dangerous signs of brain injury or dementia? If he or she sleeps with a loaded gun under the pillow or is carrying, being a buddy is not without its risks.
The humble Farmer can be seen on Community Television in and near Portland and visited at his website:
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story