A Day to Bare Our Souls - and Find Ourselves

OH MY, NOT AGAIN!

9 dead in Finland school shooting

Attack comes hours after video predicting massacre appeared on YouTube.

TUUSULA, Finland - An 18-year-old student opened fire in a Finnish high school Wednesday, killing seven students and the principal before turning the gun on himself, police said.

The attacker, who shot himself in the head, died after being taken to the hospital, a hospital official said hours after the school attack. The shooter at the Jokela High School in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of the capital, Helsinki, has not been identified.

Police said at a news conference after the attack that the gunman shot the victims — five boys, two girls and the female principal — with a .22-caliber pistol. About a dozen other people were injured as they tried to escape the school, police said.

“He was from an ordinary family,” police chief Matti Tohkanen said about the gunman, who belonged to a gun club and got a license for the pistol Oct. 19. He did not have a previous criminal record, he said.

Finnish media said the shooter revealed his plans in a YouTube posting before the attack. The video, titled “Jokela High School Massacre,” showed a picture of a building by a lake that appeared to be the high school, along with two photos of a young man holding a handgun. The person who posted the video was identified in the user profile as an 18-year-old man from Finland.

The video was apparently later removed from the site, but appears on another site, called LiveLeak.com. The profile contained text calling for a “revolution against the system.”

Police said they would investigate any possible connection the gunman might have had to the video.

Terhi Vayrynen, 17, a student at the school, told the press that her brother Henri Vayrynen, 13, and his classmates had witnessed the shooting of the principal outside the school through the classroom window.

Shooter shouted 'Revolution!'
She said the gunman then came into Henri Vayrynen’s class shouting: “Revolution! Smash everything!”

When no one did anything, he shot the TV and the windows of the class room but did not fire at the students. Then he ran out and down the corridor, Terhi Vayrynen said.

Kim Kiuru, a teacher at the school, said the principal announced over the public address system just before noon that all students should remain in their classrooms.

“After that I saw the gunman running with what appeared to be a small-caliber handgun in his hand through the doors toward me after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in the opposite direction,” Kiuru told reporters.

Kiuru said he saw a woman’s body as he fled the building.

“Then my pupils shouted at me out of the windows to ask what they should do and I told them to jump out of the windows ... and all my pupils were saved,” Kiuru said.

More than 400 students, from 12 to 18, were enrolled at Jokela, officials said.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen described the situation as “extremely tragic,” and declared Thursday a day of national mourning with flags to be flown half-staff.

Rare attack
The attack shocked the Nordic nation, where gun ownership is fairly common by European standards but deadly shootings are rare.

Finnish media reported that in 1989 a 14-year-old boy shot and killed two students, apparently for teasing him.

SOURCE

Treating insanity as danger, not transgression

(originally posted in April 2007, after the Virginia Tech Tragedy)

In 1995, when my Atypical M.S. became symptomatic I learned more about the disability process in the U.S. than I ever wanted to know. I had to fight for my benefits with little energy or support. I had to fight for a diagnosis and to prove empirically what my body was screaming to me. To this day, I am fighting for E.R.I.S.A. reform and disability fairness against one of the biggest lobbies in Washington, the Health Insurance Lobby - which has a stranglehood on the benefits & welfare of too many people in the U.S. who paid their premiums in good faith. In light of the Virginia Tech tragedy, I remain undeterred - and in fact, reinvigorated.

Those of you who still work, go ask for a copy of your policy from your Benefits Office. No, not the copy of the sanitized handbook they give you - a copy of the ACTUAL policy signed between your employer and their insurer. Don't stop asking until you get it - you are entitled by law to see it.

Now ask yourself these questions:

Did you know that most disability policies will stop paying your disability after 18 months if you are diagnosed with a MENTAL ILLNESS? And your job could let you go leaving you with no health insurance?

Did you know your insurer has a right to send you for an Independent Medical Exam (IME) with their doctor (in my opinion - "medical whore") who could very well diagnose you as able to work but mentally ill thereby cutting off your benefits and causing you to spend your own money on doctors to refute this?

Did you know that Social Security Disability puts many many people under a Mental Illness heading when they have a physical disability that the government doesn't want to see or doesn't understand?

Did you know an incorrect diagnosis of mental illness stays in your record forever?

Did you know that some doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs and do not require the patient see a psychologist? Or even follow up to see if the patient is taking their medication?

Did you know that pain, illness and job stress can cause depression - not the other way around?

Did you know that untreated mental illness can cause permanent chemical changes in the brain and body?

Considering the legal, medical and social stigma around mental illness, was Virginia Tech an accident waiting to happen? Or possibly the biggest wake up call to rip the curtains off the mental illness phobia we have had in this country. In my small opinion, people like Cho needed help and needed to be out of the general public mainstream.

Jewish scholars say:

Mental illness is taken very seriously within Talmudic and Halachic literature and is treated with the same seriousness as physical illness. (See Shabbat 50b and 128b)

It is certainly a mitzvah to visit those who are suffering from mental conditions just like one who is suffering from physical ailments.

Rabbi Ari Enkin -- Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel

All that said, this article nicely sums up the Wake Up call the U.S. just got regarding mental illness and how we treat it.

Let us pray for the young people in Finland, touched by violence and death.