I used to be acquainted with someone very much like the Virginia Tech gunman.

[TheWraith]

Not in a terribly personal way, but we were members of the same forum for roughly a year, and I got a lot of time to watch his gradual descent farther and farther into his pathology. All the news channel discussion about the VT killer's screeds strongly reminded me of the stuff that the other fellow used to post all the time.

The truth is that despite all the interest, particularly among the media, in what this package may "tell us" about the killer, most of the content is likely meaningless, at least to outsiders. Individuals with schizophrenic tendancies like this man obviously had, particularly when they're allowed to progress to this point, split off from reality and start to develop their own sort of secret pathological language, where particular words, phrases, or symbols can be imbued with a meaning which makes sense only in the individual's mind. The person is, in effect, having a conversation with themself, and their language and writings are reflections of the fantasies being played out in their mind. You can sometimes glean bits of the underlying psychology out of it, but the vast majority of the time, it's simply the meaningless acting-out of the person's disease. These letters and videos aren't likely to show any more than that, and it's simply a waste trying to examine them for that which might in some way make sense out of the whole incident.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Everybody does.

Everybody knows some weird loner that they think will could go postal someday.

I think that accounts for a good portion of the speculation, and rumor-mongering, and irrational fear.

[SmokingJacket]

3. I've known weird loners (am one) and psychos, and there's a big

difference -- one difference is the increasing intensity of the behavior. Weirdos are just consistently weird, while sick people get worse, get better, get worse. You can see it happen and once you've seen it once (my best friend in middle school became schizophrenic) you recognize it.

The guy's roommates knew he was sick, and even speculated that he was a shooter, but had no resources to turn to.

Also, it's much easier to just ignore it, since most of the time in our lives, the worst doesn't happen.

[treestar]

6. I have a relative who we in the family think could go postal someday

But he is not a loner. He is rather angry and loud mouthed.

But sometimes the people who know someone who did go postal say "oh, he was the nicest guy," so I've often thought this relative was after all not likely to do anything violent. He just talks that way. (And he has guns in his possession).

[whistle]

2. Do we know that Cho was schizophrenic, that he was actually evaluated

...professionally before this event and determined to be schizophrenic and seriously mentally ill?

Any talk about this now as I have heard in various news accounts is pure speculation. Unfortunately the best that we can conclude now that Cho took his own life is that he was a very disturbed person.

[NNguyenMD]

5. as a 23 yo college student, he would fit the age group of when Schizophrenic symptoms

begin to surface.

At least thats what some Psychiatry texts say. I'm sure there are at least some on this board who at or point or another knew of a classmate in college or high school manifest similar behavior or received a diagnosis of some form of Schizophrenia.

[MistressOverdone]

4. I teach two kids right now who I can see going in that

direction, and over the years have taught maybe 15.

But you just never know which one will actually do it and which one won't.