Charise White Posted October 3, 2017 Share Posted October 3, 2017 Hi Colleagues, I am up this morning trying to get a little work done, but listening to the news as I do and hearing the horror of the latest mass shooting, which was in Las Vegas. I feel almost overwhelmingly sad and am tremendously sorry for the victims and their family and friends. I am posting because I wanted to express my feelings, but also to look to the neuroscience community for thoughts. There are rage killers, psychotic killers, vengeance killers. . . . One question is do all mass killers belong on the mentally ill side of the spectrum? I am trying to process this tragedy. Please forgive me if this is too intense for this site. cw14 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin Aamodt Posted October 4, 2017 Share Posted October 4, 2017 Hi cw14, IMHO it is really tough to determine who is “mentally ill.” It seems like early childhood adversity and behavioral genetics are always at play in criminal behavior. I do think it’s worth asking what drives mass shooting behavior. This article, in addition to what I saw on Pubmed, suggests that notoriety seeking is a big factor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charise White Posted October 4, 2017 Author Share Posted October 4, 2017 Thank you for the information. I am surprised and disturbed that notoriety is high on the motivation list. But then again, for some negative attention is preferred over no attention. Perhaps because I am very far removed from this characteristic, it is hard for me to understand this motivation. I can sort of understand acting out of pain, fear, rage, and of course psychosis, i.e. acting from primal emotions. Does attention seeking fall into this category? Does it stimulate the dopaminergic (reward system)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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