Life experiences and mental disorders?

This whole premise is wrong. Joseph, You are saying here is a guy who did some terrible thing and had a bad Childhood, I think this kind of childhood leads to mental illness and you have also said you think anyone who rapes or commits multimurder must be mentally ill. But all of this would rest on your assumptions. In the end I don't think it is going to prove anything.

 

Was your husband seriously injured in the accident? Did he suffer a head injury?

 

Straight and Narrow,

Yes and yes.

My husand and I had been married over 15 years when a drunk driver ran a stop sign and hit the car my husband and children were in. They collided head on, with the driver in an F150 pickup doing 55 mph, and my family in a small Ford Contour having slowed down to a stop.

My husband insisted that except for a few minor injuries he was fine so he refused medical care. It turns out he was definately not fine.

A few days after the accident he began to walk with a limp and he had slurred speech. I tried to get him to a doctor. He refused. Told me that it was just stress from dealing with the accident.

Then one day his secretary called me and told me that he was not able to write an english sentence anymore. I rushed him to a doctor who said he had suffered a subdural hematoma, and a severe frontal lobe injury. His brain was no longer producing the Serotonin, which regulates emotions. They warned me that if he wasn't already displaying rages, impulsive behavior, mood swings, and basically the behavior of a drunk - he might. I thought the doctors were being ridiculous.

Then my spouse started displaying the things they spoke of. He would go into raging rants over the most minor things. I found myself having to protect my children from their own father. He started drinking and smoking. He started talking about a woman in black that would visit him at night. Supposedly she was convincing him that I was going to have an affair.

One day he told me his parents wanted to take our kids on vacation. We saw the kids off one night, the next day he vanished. I sent out a massive man hunt, and his cousin, who was a deputy, called me and said, "Hon, where are your kids? We've got reports that his mother is telling people that she is their mother now."
I found him 24 hours later, and he begged to come home. The kids were not with him. His mother's instructions were to "hide them where I couldn't find them." He had filed for divorce and arranged for his parents to hide them. He told me he had no idea why he had done any of it.

It was a full week before I saw my children again.

The doctors promised me they could "fix it." I believed in my vows and I stayed with him.

He became suicidal, self mutilating, and he spoke of another "person no one else ever sees" telling him that God was waiting for him to come to heaven, but that God wanted him to prove his love for God by killing me, and then himself. I was terrified to let him out of my sight. I was terrified to be with him. By now the kids were begging me to divorce him.

The doctors told me he was having an allergic reaction to the drug Effexor (which they had given him post accident to help with the serotonin issue).

He began to have an affair with a woman he worked with, and he told everyone he worked with that we were divorced. He would go into strange rages, screaming at me for things that I never said or did. Then he would not remember having done that.

Though he insisted on continuing to pay the bills - he didn't. I have no idea what he did with the money, but I discovered the mortgage and credit cards were both so far behind the mortgage company was threatening to foreclose. He had almost drained our savings account, and he had written so many hot checks that it took a full month of my salary and another $3,000 (the remainder of our savings account) to fix it, even with the bank waiving all fees once they discovered his mental condition.

I continued to pray and work with doctors.

For almost a year, it seemed everything was fine. They'd found the right medical combination. He was normal. Then his doctor retired and his new doctor insisted on trying new meds. I begged them not to. They ignored me.

He started this pattern. If he woke up with a headache, he'd rage. He was like a two year old again. If everything didn't go exactly how he wanted, he would threaten divorce, storm out, vanish for hours. He would not show up at work. Then he'd come home like nothing had happened at all.

At times he claimed he didn't remember our wedding or having children. At other times he would make outrageous accusations against me. I weathered it all.

He apparently withdrew his retirement account and blew the money. On what I have no clue. I found out when the I.R.S. hit me with the early withdrawal penalities.

The day after Easter one year I got a call
from my daughter's school. She was in the counselor's office in a crisis. She had read a divorce announcement in the paper. He'd apparently filed the previous week, yet, he'd gone to church with us Easter Sunday, sat with us, and made love to me that night, like nothing at all was wrong.

My kids were hysterical. By now, they literally hated him. I gave it up then.

I discovered that he'd again cleaned out the bank accounts. I had 2 children and $2.00 to my name. My sister's church fed us that month. My church began to work with us in terms of counseling and offering to pay for more doctors. Another Christian man offered to pay for my attorney so I could protect the children.

My ex said he did not want to be married, but he begged me to do counseling. I agreed. My instructions to the attorney were - don't do anything to push it forward, but protect my children. My ex would go to counseling sessions and tell them he didn't love me, didn't want to be married, and then the next day call me, hysterical, wanting to know why I was leaving him. I would always tell him that I was not leaving him, but that I was going to protect the children. I would tell him that if he did not want to divorce, I didn't either, but that I had to know that the "divorce, stay, divorce, stay" threats were going to stop. He told me that he was not going through with it, but that he didn't feel mentally fit to move home.

Four months later he told me he was moving home. Two months after that he called me and said he was going through with it. I said okay and signed the papers.

Later someone told me that his mother had told him if he came back to me she would disown him. She has been diagnosed with a personality disorder for years, so I suspect there is a lot of truth to that.

I worked on helping him and my children repair their relationship. He could not see them when he was mentally unfit. He could, though, see them and participate in their lives as often as he wanted when he was mentally fit.

He agressively sought healing mentally. His current medications seem to work well. There are times he things he is cured and refuses to take them. We can always tell.

I'll never date or remarry. I believe with all my heart that in God's eyes, I am still his wife. I treat him that way as much as possible.

 

Lets simplify this. You are asking that if someone has a mental illness are they responsible for their actions?

The short answer is yes they are. They should pay for their crime weather or not they have been diagnosed with a mental illness. There are many many people with mental illnesses in prisons. Some of these are in prison hospitals and some in the general population.

I am not well versed on the laws reguarding competency, but my understanding is that if a person knows right from wrong then they can stand trial. We should follow the law of land when it comes to putting mentally ill people on trial and what sentence they recieve.

Bill

 

Those who can stand beside someone who suffers from a mental illness and always be there no matter how rough it gets are truly wonderful people. Even when a crime or accident is committed.

 

not to hijack the thread or anything, but I am moved by your testimony, Texas. Im glad to meet a lady who stays committed through such hardship.

God bless, and I'll be praying for you.

 

Wow, I completely agree!! Very touching testimony.

 

I was a teenager, and lived in Chicago then so I saw the whole thing on the news. Gacey made plans ot kill, did it over several years period of time. He knew exactly what he was doing and certainly was able to premeditate his crimes, which he did. His crimes were so horrendous I was glad when he was dead, he deserved nothing less.

 

The bible says everyman will give an account of himself to God. Means to me we are all accountable, we are all responsable for our actions as far as God tells us in His written word. Why should it even be in question then.

 

TexasSky,

I was reading something by C. S. Lewis a while ago--I think it was in Mere Christianity. He has an interesting idea based off of the idea that "to whom much has been given, much is expected" that relates personality to our souls. He believes that a person with a friendly and easy-going nature may end up being more spiritually corrupt than someone with a more hostile nature. He says that this is because the friendly person has an easy time of it--not much temptation to treat others badly--and may end up being lazy and not trying to cultivate virtue, just going off their natural inclinations. The unfriendly person, however, may be constantly fighting his nature, so while he stumbles more than the friendly man, he also has more spiritual victories. In the end he may have renovated his character more than the friendly man. I find this theory interesting because it is a step towards resolving the mind-brain issue.

I've often thought about senility and those who become verbally abusive in their old age, and of the story of a man who survived a terrible brain injury that destroyed half his brain but had a complete personality change. I now think that these people are not going to be held responsible by God for their actions and that these sins aren't really affecting their souls (at least to the same extent as someone who is mentally capable of controlling their actions), and that they will be restored in heaven.

Now regarding the opening post, are we ever going to find out who this person is? The suspense is killing me!

 

Regarding Charles Manson - Manson was the leader of one of the first famous drug-using cults in the United States. He became famous because he orchestrated and ordered the murders of innocent people, for reasons that are still debated today. He had asked Terry Melcher (Doris Day's son) to produce a music album for him. Melcher had refused. The first murder he ordered was against the mansion that Melcher had owned just a few months prior to the murder. At the time of the murder it belonged to an actress and her husband, Sharon Tate. Sharon Tate was pregnant. Manson wanted the murder to look like it was committed by members of the black community so that he could start a civil riot in the United States. He had seen a movie where black people had become associated with the words "helter skelter" and when the murder was over they had taken the blood from Tate's body and written those words on the wall.

Soon after he ordered the murder of an elderly couple, at random, again on the premise of trying to start a racial riot.

Manson had literally carved a cross into his forhead. His eyes, in real life, look like Jack Nicholson's in the famous "madness" scenes of "The Shining."

He claimed that he had magical powers, and that he could control his followers with ESP. He was and is to this day, the most raging, ranting lunatic I've ever heard of in my life, and I used to see a lot of truly mentally ill people when I was working for a psychiatrist once.

One of Manson's "followers" later tried to kill President Ford.

Donna already told you who Gacy was.

Diane Small was a woman who was known for rages during which she would shoot at people. She was also known for being able to appear sweet, helpless, and gentle. She had children, and she started having an affair with a married man. She convinced herself that if she did not have children he would divorce his wife and marry her. She took the kids out, bought a bunch of trophies engraved to her, calling her a wonderful mom, and putting her kid's names on them. Then drove the kids out on a dirt road. Shot them, then shot her own arm. Tried to tell police she was hijacked by a stranger, fought for the lives of her children and was injured in the encounter. She didn't expect God to spare one of the children. He told the police what really happened.

She went to prison.

Then escaped.

I believe she was recaptured, but I'm not sure.

 

so if not knowing who the OP referred to actually drives one of us insane and we do something bad because of that insanity......whose fault is that?

 

Bapmom.

To those of you who said kind things and offered prayers - thank you.

God has given me peace over it all. It took me awhile to get over that "Why me," feeling, but God is truly an amazing and awesome God, and even in this - He has blessed us.

 

Yes, I would think there was a high likelihood of what he went through contributed to his future crimes. I can't imagine the rage someone would have going through all that.
I believe he should be held accountable for his crimes regardless if he has a mental illness or not. It seems just to me to give him the death penalty.

 

If the person in the OP is who I think it is then he took his own life when capture was inevitable.

 

Aww come on Joseph! How long you gonna keep us in suspense?

 

Must be Saddam. If so I do not consider him crazy, but possesed perhaps.

 

My guess would be SADDAM too...who else's family would raise sheep ?

No I do not think ones childhood produces mental illness or serial killers. I think mental illness is mainly heritary and some people are just born with an evil bent.

Sharon

 

Going back and reading the OP more closely I see that I was way off base. I'm glad I didn't publicly say who I thought it was.

Bill