12 Year Old Stabbed by "BFF"

[DrPhil]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justic...bed/?hpt=hp_t1

Investigators and experts already say there are issues of mental illness and the girls read a website. They better not try to blame mental illness and this website. There is most likely a connection but mental illness and that website did not cause this.

[Kevin]

What did cause this in your estimation?

[DrPhil]

Not mental illness and a website.

[TonyB06]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

Not mental illness and a website.

In this instance, Kevin asks a fair question. If not mental illness (or simply, the pure visitation of evil) what do you think caused the girls to act this way?

[Cheerio]

So THAT explains NBC's Sunday June 1st airing an of update on the Skylar Neese murder in West Virginia. It's a very similar case: three good teen friends, and 2 end up stabbing the third. There is still no answer to the question "Why?" in Skylar's case.

[AZTheta]

IMO - having once been a 12 year old female (I'm a little older now) - I will say that NOTHING makes sense at that age, absolutely nothing. You have to have a very firm foundation (i.e. ethics, values, moral code, what have you) before you hit puberty and adolescence or you're really in big trouble.

It may be something as simple as "I just wanted to" or "I wanted to see what it felt like". Seriously.

In other words, WHO KNOWS? Thankful that their victim survived.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by TonyB06

In this instance, Kevin asks a fair question. If not mental illness (or simply, the pure visitation of evil) what do you think caused the girls to act this way?

Perhaps (the very broad and vague) "the pure visitation of evil". But, not mental illness.

These girls could have been bored, unsupervised, and curious about brutally beating or killing someone. Based on these kids' accounts, this was planned out included finding a place for the stabbing that had drainage for the blood. They are being charged as adults based on the planning, brutality, and heinousness of the act. It is less likely for kids to be charged as adults with a $500,000 bail when mental illness is considered the cause.

Even psychopathy/sociopathy are widely debated as mental illness vs. "just evil/bad/morbid people". Antisocial disorders are in the DSM but some experts consider psychopathy/sociopathy to go way beyond antisocial traits. Many violent people (abusers, murderers, mass murderers, and serial killers) are dismissed as "just evil/bad/morbid people" who were conscious and cognizant rather than empathized as people whose behaviors were caused by a mental illness; and whose behaviors could have been reduced in likelihood with mental health services.

I hope this victim survives.

[DubaiSis]

Mental illness would be a symptom or contributing factor. Crazy doesn't give you carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want.

I feel like violence is shown to everyone these days as the solution to all your woes. Add some level of psychosis to seeing too many instances of people getting shot, stabbed or otherwise brutalized and being able to walk away from it or fight back (with little to no blood) and a disturbed adolescent could do something really stupid.

And to further AZTheta, if you know the song I don't Like Mondays, that was supposedly the reason why a girl went on a killing spree at school.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

Mental illness would be a symptom or contributing factor. Mental illness doesn't give you carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want.

Exactly. It is the basic "correlation is not causation." The average person with mental illness is not stabbing other people and that includes the average person not on medication.

[WhiteRose1912]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

Even psychopathy/sociopathy are widely debated as mental illness vs. "just evil/bad/morbid people". Antisocial disorders are in the DSM but some experts consider psychopathy/sociopathy to go way beyond antisocial traits. Many violent people (abusers, murderers, mass murderers, and serial killers) are dismissed as "just evil/bad/morbid people" who were conscious and cognizant rather than empathized as people whose behaviors were caused by a mental illness; and whose behaviors could have been reduced in likelihood with mental health services.

I know this is kind of a tangent, but I recently used an article related to the topic of psychopathy in an assignment for my students. (In fact, I'm grading them right now!) You might find the results interesting.

Primary psychopathy is related to a deficit in affective empathy with no change in cognitive empathy, which means that such individuals "retain their ability to read and assess others’ emotions, and subsequently utilise this sensitive information to formulate strategies with which they can acquire what they want, while their lack of affective empathy may lead them to overlook or ignore potential harm inflicted to others in the process".

Participants high in primary psychopathy "experienced positive affect towards sad emotions, thus showing affective desensitisation and discordance to such stimuli. Additionally, primary psychopaths experienced positive affect towards angry and fearful expressions"; they also were "associated with experiencing negative affect towards happy expressions". This is "consistent with neuroimaging studies that tend to show highly psychopathic individuals demonstrating dysregulation in the amygdala, which is known to play a role in coordinating emotional responses".

Lastly, "primary psychopathy demonstrated significant deficits in the accurate identification of all expressions except neutral".

I personally consider psychopathy to be a personality disorder. So far as treatment goes, one can treat the symptoms (aggression, impulsivity, etc.) medically. Therapy can be effective but we've seen mixed results.

Even if serious, violent criminals can point the cause of their violence to a mental disorder such as psychopathy, I'd rather see them go to the mental ward of a prison then be placed in a "normal" psychiatric institution or released to the streets. They'll get the help they need, and are no longer a danger to the general populace.

Anyway, tangent over and back to grading for me.

[ADPiEE]

Wow this story is very sad and disturbing.

Maybe I'm just getting older and have a different perspective but it seems like there is a general lack of respect for "life" these days in our culture which is now affecting our children. I know this can be a controversial topic because it relates to abortion and euthanasia but I also see it as a result of being unintentionally desensitized to death by the media. Kids (and adults) see so much death in the news, video games, internet, etc. You add that to being raised by parents that may or may not pass on strong ethics of "right" and "wrong" to their children (lots of ethical relativism in our postmodern culture), throw in some mental illness and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't know that that was the case in this situation, I'm just trying to brainstorm why 12 year olds would do this and why it's not an isolated incident?

[DrPhil]

Thanks for procrastinating with us, WhiteRose1912. The experts keep updating information and fueling the debate on these "disorders".

***********
ETA: There are people who've said "they're just kids" and "mental illness is to blame" or "Slender Man is to blame".

Ghoulish Stabbing Raises Question: Who is Slenderman?

Google "Slender Man" or "Slenderman" and find websites with a lot of information and http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fKgXGdAJ8Ak

Many of us who grew up playing video games like Contra, Altered Beast, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter; and grew up watching movies like vampire and werewolf movies, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, and Pumpkinhead are hardly convinced that this Internet meme "caused" anything.

[StealthMode]

Originally Posted by WhiteRose1912

I personally consider psychopathy to be a personality disorder.

First of all, MANY prayers of peace to these families and healing to that poor little girl. I can't imagine walking into the woods with my friends and having that happen.

Second, Phil's right in that research is constantly updating with these terms and descriptions. AFAIK "psychopathy" is an outdated term but the description you posted is the accurate definition of antisocial personality disorder (which makes your above statement correct). It is true that these person's lack affective empathy but that does not change their cognitive ability to know right from wrong or know when they are causing suffering.

Sidebar: I met one patient with this disorder while working inpatient and it was terrifying because of how smooth he was in his manipulation. He was polite, soft-spoken, and charming--you would have never guessed he was capable of the crimes he committed against his wife. To this day, I get creeped out thinking about him.

/sidebar

That being said, a 12yo can't be diagnosed with a personality disorder. Even if these personality traits are present early on, they wouldn't be the cause for these actions. The girls (presumably) know right from wrong and legal from illegal. I'm not sure how I feel about charging them as adults but...planning this since February? That is more than "mental illness" or being "just kids." That is a combination of both plus more than I can even imagine. And since that article linked to another about a 14yo who stabbed her little sister, I'm thoroughly disturbed.

[WhiteRose1912]

Originally Posted by StealthMode

Second, Phil's right in that research is constantly updating with these terms and descriptions. AFAIK "psychopathy" is an outdated term but the description you posted is the accurate definition of antisocial personality disorder (which makes your above statement correct). It is true that these person's lack affective empathy but that does not change their cognitive ability to know right from wrong or know when they are causing suffering.

You're doing PsyD, right? (I think?) I'm over here in the PhD camp, so you'll have more knowledge than I. Nevertheless... there's debate about whether or not ASPD and psychopathy are the same. I'm in the camp that they're not. ASPD diagnoses are based off of Checkley's work from 1941 and only focus on behaviors; psychopathy is based largely off of Hare's PCL-R (1991/2003). The article I had to read over and over about while grading my students' papers used Levenson's Self-Report Psychopathy scale, which is similar to Hare's work. The more recent edition of the PCL-R uses a three-factor model, but the dark triad article sticks to the two-factor approach of primary and secondary psychopathy. Primary psychopathy is what I was talking about in my little quote snippets. It's more genetics-based and is associated with narcissistic personality disorder, social potency, low anxiety, and low empathy. The PCL-R describes primary psychopathy as "selfish, callous and remorseless use of others". Secondary psychopathy is more environmental in origin and is associated with ASPD and borderline personality disorder. The PCL-R labels secondary psychopathy with "chronically unstable, antisocial and socially deviant lifestyle".

Essentially, ASPD is behaviors. Psychopathy is personality. The DSM-V kind of acknowledges this by including an alternative model of ASPD with psychopathic features, but they don't include psychopathy as its own personality disorder.

So, yeah. Another tangent (sorry), but it produced a fun discussion among my cohorts with whom I'm maxing and relaxing.

[StealthMode]

^^^Indeed, I am in the Psy.D. camp! I love having someone to talk geek with me.

I agree--ASPD and psychopathy are not exactly the same. I was just saying the ASPD criteria spawned from the description of psychopathy. By all means, there is a ton of research that takes other stances so I'm not at all saying you're incorrect. In fact, I think you're onto something by noting ASPD focuses more on behavior rather than personality but lookin. However, looking at the criteria (I'm not well versed on DSM-V because all my comprehensive exams were based on DSM-IV-TR so forgive me on that front), the focus is on behavior with implications about the driving personality traits. For example, lying as an indication of deceptiveness, physical fights as an indication of irritability and aggression, etc.

This makes me wonder about patterns in the two girls' behavior. Did they display pervasive patterns of deceptiveness, aggression, manipulation, etc? That probably won't come out until an extensive history and psychological evaluation are done but it will a determining factor in whether psychopathological/ASP traits were at play in their actions. Of course, heavy emphasis will be given to whether they show any remorse or not--I found it interesting that the article didn't mention an apology of any kind.