I should rephrase that, it was originally blamed on bullying, but they later discovered thats not what it was. Like I said my husband knew one of the kids killed, and he also had hung out with the shooters, they were not outcasts, they were not bullied, they just were not happy with the people they shot. One of the first girls killed, Dylan shot her because she didnt want to date him. They planned on killing the whole school, if their bomb had went off, they would have killed nearly everyone, their plan was to then sit in the cars and pick people off as they came out of the building if they survived. They did it for the fame and the glory, not because of bullying.

AND...that again...Should have NEVER happened had the parents done even 1/100TH of their job. I VEHEMENTLY believe that the parents of BOTH should have been held criminally liable for that mess. they seen the signs...one father KNEW they were making bombs in the garage...and they did NOTHING to stop it.

I completely agree, my husband told me as much as he hung out with those boys at their houses he never met their parents. He lived three houses down from Dylan and never once saw his parents, that to me, says that no one gave a damn about those boys enough to be there and watch them. JeffCo police department KNEW they were making bombs and never once questioned them. They had tips about it, but they decided it wasnt worth looking into. GREAT job JeffCo. Great Job.

exactly. It was the same with the guy that killed Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. The mother bought him a gun AFTER he was removed from the Marines for being a mental case. she KNEW he couldn't legally buy one himself. The fact that she was never arrested for that makes my blood boil to this DAY. The same with the Columbine thing.

Also that fact that it happened on my birthday. I think about it every single year because I happened to be home making a birthday cake for myself and watching it on TV.

While I do blame the parents I more-so blame the police department, which is why I completely agree with the families of the victims suing said department. Yes its the parents jobs to keep the kids in line, but its the police officers job to step in when there is a complaint of that magnitude, you can bet your ass not only did they screw that up, but the screwed up the WHOLE Columbine situation. They recieved a lot of slack for it and have been investigated for the way they responded to the actual shooting.

I think people need to take personal responsibility, and take care of their children, but when people who are PAID to keep the community safe FAIL at something that could have been stopped, it is ultimately in their laps.

Kids aren't fully developed emotionally, nor do they have a good perspective of the real world. That is why they don't have legal rights, and that's why parents, school staff, and other officials are in charge of them, and if a situation like this occurs, then the full blame and responsibility MUST come down on those in charge.

I feel this way because when I was 13, I lived in a very bad situation. My father was emotionally and physically abusive to me and my siblings. We didn't have a kitchen (my dad had torn it out as a "project" and never finished). We only ate at school (lunch), and I went from 100 lbs to 80 lbs in one trimester of school. Both me and my sister went to our school councilor and begged for help. We told her ALL of this. Nothing was done. I think that cunt should burn in hell for knowing that children were in harm and doing NOTHING. She had the power to step in and have something done, but she chose not to. It's a choice.

If you've ever observed children or teenagers, they're pretty transparent when it comes to emotion. If something is wrong, it's obvious. When kids are involved, doing nothing is as bad as those committing the wrong-doing.

Teachers, counslers, doctors, and many other members of the community are MANDATED by law to report any abuse or neglect, whether it be by peers or adults, the fact they dont should cause them to lose their licenses.

I would be okay with them just burning in hell.

Maybe, but if the law kept up its side and actually punished these people who are breaking it by not reporting, more people would do their job and report. I was a mandated reporter when I worked with the rape crisis center, and its something I never took lightly.

The problem is it will always be someone's word against someone else's. Usually the adult vs the child, and a child or teenager doesn't know how to properly present their side of the story.

Yes it will but CPS HAS to investigate it, period. If I walked up to a teacher and said "my mom beat me last night" they have NO CHOICE but to report it, thats the problem. In this case, the teachers KNEW about the bullying and didnt do anything, they should be getting some huge fines, and losing their license.

Kids don't know teachers have to report it, so if teachers don't report it, then kids aren't aware of any other options.

But I agree with you. If they witnessed bullying and didn't take action or report it, they need to suffer the consequences. The consequences have to come down hard, so that other faculty will report.

Well said.

kids these days are soft. bullying isn't new, but there are new ways of going about it thanks to the internet and phones. doesn't mean it's acceptable, but it's definitely not worth killing yourself over. kids should be able to report it, have the parents talk to the other parents, or fuck, just move schools if it's that bad.

honestly what the hell else can schools do other than give the offending kids detention, etc? the asshole kid is going to be an assshole no matter what the school does. not all bullying goes on in the school. this is where you get cease and desist orders sent to the parents, which from what i've seen, usually gets the bully to stop pretty fast because the parent doesn't want to have to pay legal fees or look like a stupid asshole who can't raise his/her kid not to be a spoilt prick.

kids that are killing themselves over bullying obviously have something else going on as well, and the bullying just pushes them over the edge. plenty of people get bullied and don't feel compelled to end their life. i didn't, and two of my good friends that went through horrendous bullying didn't either.

Well, bullying wasn't defined as a concept in previous centuries. It's a relatively new concept. Clearly suicides did happen, and they may well have been triggered from bullying, but that wouldn't have been defined as such. And also, in the past, suicide was seen much more as a sin and a sign of weakness, so it would have been more likely to have been hushed up, or the person committing suicide would have been blamed.

It's rather like the concept of sexual abuse and child abuse, etc - it clearly isn't a new thing, but has been defined only relatively recently. You know, back in the day, Freud discovered that all the women who had been stigmatised and labelled by society as being 'hysterical' had actually been sexually abused, and their 'hysteria' was a reaction to that (now called 'post traumatic stress disorder). However, soon after he'd started making this discovery known, the men in society who had been responsible for the abuse, and who had positions of power in society, exerted their powerz and made him take back what he'd said, and to declare he'd been mistaken.

In a similar way, you don't hear about people having panic attacks in previous centuries. It would be unlikely that it's a new thing - rather, it is now just defined and framed differently. So what was labelled as 'swooning' in centuries past may well have been the same as what is labelled as panic attacks now.

I would say it's very unlikely that things are terribly different, with regard to bullying and suicides. The difference is more in what society chooses to draw attention to or to hush up, and where society places the responsiblity. I think traditionally people had more of the view that Music God is expressing - that anyone who can't cope with bullying is a weak pathetic person and it's their fault for not being stronger. Probably the reason for the change in views in today's society is how much more we know about neurology and how people's brains are wired, and chemical and structural changes that can happen and how people have different vulnerabilities, and how some experiences can cause people's brains to actually change. So it's now an established fact now that people who were abused as children are far more vulnerable to getting post traumatic stress disorder later in life when a traumatic event occurs. It's not their fault and doesn't mean they're a lesser person - just that the abuse caused changes and vulnerabilities to the brain, and it could happen to anyone.

Possibly another reason for the change in views is that traditionally people coped with being bullied themselves by suppressing feelings of inadequacy and despising what they saw as weakness in themselves - and so, when they saw another person being bullied and not being able to cope, it triggered their self-loathing and they projected that onto the person being bullied, and became bullies themselves. I have observed this happen quite a bit.

On the other hand, in today's blame-shifting society, there are people who are far too quick to see themselves as a victim in all kinds of situation (you know - the Bloopers who write woeful entries about how their evil parents made them do their own laundry and how that is the equivalent to child abuse!) and to refuse to take any responsibility in their life, so it can be a fine line to tread. On the one hand, it is a positive thing to be drawing attention to bullying and abuse as negative things and trying to fight them, and to support victims. But on the other hand, it can lead to people seeing abuse in every tiny little situation, or wallowing in their victim status forever.

Well then sure, I can accept that this is not a new thing, but I do think the majority of these news stories stem from the reasons presented in your last paragraph. I simply can't comprehend a feeling of suicide unless there is a severe mental issue involved.

I was thinking about it while not paying attention in Microeconomics today, that perhaps this victim mindset and blame-shifting culture comes from children being raised as if they are special, that they are entitled to special treatment, and pretty much enter a state of mental shock (or denial) when this mind-set doesn't work out for them the way they think it should. This could result in quite a few different problems:

1. Increased teenage depression (could lead to anything from mild bullying to full out suicide)
2. Increased aggressiveness (my mind shifts to entitled customers who will sue anyone for anything)
3. Sociopolitical tendencies (doesn't really give a shit about anyone or anything other than personal gain [people use people to increase social status])
4. Idealized world-view (people think the world revolves around their own personal choices)

All this mixed with the fact that we live in a highly anonymous world now, and it's easy to say anything to anyone without giving it your own personal signature. No one will ever know who you are if you say anything to them over the internet, and it makes it easy for people to say the most hurtful things you could imagine, and go on about their day, 30 seconds later, as if nothing happened.

Hmm... but the people with the victim complex don't tend to be the ones who commit suicide, unless the suicide is a mistake, as often happens. They're the ones who are going to shout from the rooftops about their sad victim status, and how cruelly they've been treated.

The thing with mental illness is that it's not clearcut. Traumatic experiences can cause mental imbalance. Someone could be mentally well at one point of their life and mentally ill at another point. For instance, some people go temporarily stark raving bonkers when someone close to them dies. Different people have different vulnerabilities in their brains, and whether they have a full-blown reaction as a result depends on their experiences.

However, I think there is one thing in our society which does have an influence on mental illness - and that is the amount of free time and luxury people have (compared to the olden days which lacked the modern gadgets we have today, and where most people are not having to worry about where their next meal will come from) and how easy things are in terms of not having to fight for physical survival. You know, in war times, there is much less mental illness, because life is so much harder and people are focused on surviving. When you're working hard to earn enough money simply to live, then you are less susceptible to mental problems. And also when there is a common enemy, people work together and support each other more. But when people have free time and all their physical needs are met, then they are more susceptible to depression, for instance, because they have more time to think and mull over things and wonder what is the meaning of life and what their life should be like, etc.

And I also blame the naughty American dream! Which I think is the same as your number 4. It originates from America, yo - the American dream. The idea that you can have anything you want to have and be anything you want to be, so long as you have the right attitude and try hard enough. This is bound to make people depressed, because in reality, everyone has limitations, and things are not all down to whether you have a positive attitude or not!

Hmm... but the people with the victim complex don't tend to be the ones who commit suicide, unless the suicide is a mistake, as often happens. They're the ones who are going to shout from the rooftops about their sad victim status, and how cruelly they've been treated.

That's not necessarily true. There are people who have a victim mind-set who actually believe that they are victims, and will react accordingly. Like, if someone thinks they are a victim of some nation-wide conspiracy (just, for the sake of the argument, they DON'T have any underlying mental illness), and they think there's no other way to go except suicide. Now, obviously, that hasn't happened, but that's the point I'm trying to make. People are dumb enough to threaten suicide under any given situation. Like, the conservative radicals in this country are heading off to the slaughter houses because they think the death panels are going to kill them off anyway.

The thing with mental illness is that it's not clearcut. Traumatic experiences can cause mental imbalance. Someone could be mentally well at one point of their life and mentally ill at another point. For instance, some people go temporarily stark raving bonkers when someone close to them dies. Different people have different vulnerabilities in their brains, and whether they have a full-blown reaction as a result depends on their experiences.

But aren't traumatic experiences subjective in this case? Like, someone can have their own faulty world-view turned upside down, and that would be considered a traumatic experience that can trigger depression of sorts. Like this "bullying" case could be considered traumatic to some, but not to others, but it was clearly traumatic to THIS girl, and it caused her to commit suicide. But a better understanding of how the world works could have prevented this entire situation.

I totally agree with the rest of your post.

Well, it depends on the age of the traumatic experience too, because when someone is a very young child and, say, they are being abused, the abuse is all they understand of the world, and so it shapes the development of their brain. They are not yet at an age to be able to reason and develop an understanding of the world outside the abuse. And so such experiences create vulnerabilities in the brain for future things - which is what I was saying about people who are abused being more vulnerable to post traumatic stress disorder from later traumatic events.

And it would depend on what sort of support system the girl had outside of school too. People without a support system are also more vulnerable to mental illness. So yes, it is subjective, but not simply a case of 'oh, change her understanding of the world and it will all be fixed'. To some extent, resilience can be taught, but each person is different, in the way their brain works and in their own social context and experiences. So I would say it's not that this girl simply had the wrong understanding of life. She would have had her own unique brain chemistry, and her own unique experiences, and so any decision she made, including the decision to kill herself, would have been influenced by a whole host of things, many of which were outside of her control.

As for people committing suicide from a victim complex... no, I think you are misunderstanding what I was saying. When people kill themselves there is something seriously mentally wrong - whether it's a temporary mental issue which would have resolved if they'd not killed themselves, or whether it's an ongoing mental illness. The instinct to survive is the strongest human instinct, and so to violate this natural instinct by killing oneself indicates something wrong, and is not at all the same as what I am describing as the victim complex. The victim complex is in itself a survival mechanism - it's absolving oneself from blame and responsibility to avoid having to look within and take some responsibility and do difficult things. It's a passive aggressive way of fighting others - by making them out to be the baddies and you to be the goodie. But actual suicide crosses a line, beyond all that. The person who kills themselves may indeed feel utterly helpless, but it's not the same as the victim complex.

You said what I've been trying to say, but said it much better. :)

I was going to say the same thing as Estella. The people you describe... the narcissists, the ones with personality disorders and victim complexes usually do not kill themselves (unless it's an accident). They tend to use 'suicide' methods which they believe are of low lethality (e.g. an overdose) and then they seek medical help. It's manipulative, attention seeking behavior, and I saw it a lot in psych and it annoyed me to no end!

The people who DO succeed are usually not attention seeking or manipulative, they usually cannot see any other way out because they are at the end of their tether and can see no future or anything to live for. Most of the time they are also suffering from mental illness (usually depression or schizophrenia), but not always. And they are the ones who tend to do it in the way that this girl did... using a violent method (hanging) with almost certain success, at a time when they know no-one will be able to find them in time (while her parents were out).

THIS girl is not the typical attention-seeking narcissist. Her methods show she had one purpose and that was to die and make sure of it.

I live a town over from where this happened. I'm glad that the kids who did this are being held accountable for their actions. There is no reason that Princes family should have to deal with this.
My heart goes out to them.

I know a girl in America who has been suspended. She was being bullied over Facebook, so when she was at school she punched the ringleader ;D I think that is a much better way for her to express her frustration, instead of getting all depressed. People who get angry instead of sad are apparently at less risk of heart attacks (I read that on Cracked but it was cited). Unfortunately, the parents of the other girl might be pressing charges which is ridiculous, as both girls are 18.

That's ridiculous. The pathology which causes a heart attack cannot possibly be due to anger. :P And something being cited doesn't make it true. There's A LOT of BAD studies out there. At least LOOK at the study before quoting it.

I'm lazy, which is why I said 'apparently'.
Anyway, I remember being taught in psychology that stress can lead to heart attacks. I'm pretty sure that becoming seriously depressed/anxious over bullying is going to lead to some severe stress.