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Mass Shootings

Mass Shooters Acting From Within a Depraved Subculture

The concept of overvalued ideas provides guidance for preventing mass shootings.

Key points

  • Fear of discussing school shooter behavior makes its risk worse. We must embrace discussing it.
  • Cognitive inoculation strategies can be used to prevent extreme overvalued beliefs from taking root.
  • Anorexia nervosa provides us guidance to apply to prevention and threat management.

Fear Is Our Gravest Threat

The headlines keep filling our screens—another school shooting and more innocent lives gone, leaving families shattered. Current school systems completely avoid and discourage any talk about school shooters. We think we might put bad ideas into young minds, right? Turns out we need to be doing just the opposite. Why? As we shall see, aggrieved minds will explore deep, dark, yet seductive holes. A lack of crucial counterbalancing information ensues, setting the stage for an extreme overvalued belief and a mass casualty event, called bang (terms used by threat assessment professionals).

Adolescent Grievances

Adolescence is a time of critical identity formation. A few struggle with feeling rejected, lost, or lacking love from family or friends. Some of these (mostly girls) turn their grievances toward striving to look thinner and more attractive. They begin to explore ways to diet online and slowly begin to develop a dangerous eating pattern. Soon they enter a seductive digital subculture of extreme dieting and learning unhealthy weight loss methods. Family members might at first unwittingly encourage their initial weight loss—after all, "thinner is better," right? However, soon enough, parents get worried when their daughter stops eating pizza, once her favorite food. They may eventually resort to forcing her into mental health treatment due to a life-threatening electrolyte loss. When confronted with their emaciated appearance and low weight, anorexics will often use rational, albeit distorted counter-arguments to justify their behavior.

British psychiatrists and some American psychiatrists have described eating disorder fixations as overvalued ideas, drawing a clear demarcation from delusions (fixed, false beliefs) seen in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. However, mood disorders, anxiety, and personality disorders as well as a high suicide rate are also commonly seen in anorexia nervosa. As we shall see, a similar destructive pattern can occur with boys, where their grievances are solved through the seductive power of macabre subcultures.

Relishing Prior Shooters

Nikolas Cruz, the perpetrator of the 2022 horrific mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, studied many past shooters and eventually posted "I am going to be a professional school shooter" on YouTube just six months prior to his attack. After years of research, FBI and threat assessment professionals have concluded that most mass shooters are inspired and indoctrinated by grievance-collecting individuals. They are decidedly not delusional. Despite the best efforts by defense attorneys to argue they are insane, they are usually found guilty of their heinous acts. In other words, they are acting rationally within their slowly acquired belief system. Often the digital trails they leave behind show how they relish fame and notoriety, as well as a way out of their life through suicide.

Like the eating disorder patients, their family may not even be aware of their dark secrets and can unwittingly conspire with them. For example, Sandy Hook elementary shooter Adam Lanza not only had an eating disorder but also espoused a scorn for humanity. His mother was a survivalist or "doomsday preparer" who indoctrinated her son in powerful rifles. She thought it would make him happy to indulge in what millions of Americans safely enjoy—shooting and collecting guns. Indeed, a recent Georgia shooting suspect, 14-year-old Colt Gray was charged with four counts of murder. His father, Colin Gray, despite being told that his son was posting threats (ironically, using the name Lanza in Russian) allegedly bought his son the rifle used to kill his classmates. It is important to note that shooters and terrorists act rationally within their macabre belief system, which, like a cult, appears irrational to outsiders. That is why they are most often found to be competent to stand trial and criminally responsible, not insane.

Extreme Overvalued Beliefs

School shooters and anorexia nervosa sufferers are often indoctrinated into destructive fixations called overvalued ideas. That is my conclusion after conducting 25 years of clinical, historical, and forensic research. My colleagues and I have recently reached back 125 years to resurrect this concept from the work of neuroscientist Carl Wernicke. We now use the more concise forensic definition, extreme overvalued beliefs to describe the ideological framework seen in targeted attackers:

An extreme overvalued belief is shared by others in a person's cultural, religious, or subcultural group (including online). The belief is often relished, amplified, and defended by the possessor of the belief and should be differentiated from a delusion or obsession. Over time, the belief grows more dominant, more refined, and more resistant to challenge. The individual has an intense emotional commitment to the belief and may carry out violent behavior in its service. Over time, belief becomes increasingly binary, simplistic, and absolute.

Prevention and Treatment

Let's apply what we know about eating disorders to understanding and addressing psychological mechanisms in mass shooters. Eating disorders are highly preventable; the Body Project is one tool used to create cognitive resilience in girls and women. Those who complete the program, given to millions of females, have an astonishing 60 percent lower risk of developing a new eating disorder. This brings me to a very important takeaway: By ignoring instead of openly discussing extreme ideologies, we cannot stop them. Schools, children, and families must begin to learn about these subcultures (e.g., eating disorders, suicide, cults, prior mass shooters). By decreasing the subcultures' seductive psychological power, they will be "cognitively inoculated" to resist them.

Once an eating disorder takes root, it is a challenge to treat it. It requires fundamental changes in identity and behavior, and a comprehensive, personalized care plan. As far as shooter threats, once on the radar, a threat assessment and management team is essential. Most shooters cannot be charged with a crime until they cross a legal line. Another barrier is that mental health clinics are not equipped to handle violent individuals. So, what can we do? Law enforcement can remove weapons. Next, a team of mental health workers must engage the individual. Why aren't we doing this? Ignorance is the biggest issue. We also need funding and more research. I now echo FDR's words of courage, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7, dial 988 for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

References

1. Rahman T, Zheng L, Meloy R. DSM-5 cultural and personality assessment of extreme overvalued beliefs. Aggression and Violent Behavior. Vol 60, Sept-Oct 2021.

2. Rahman T, Hartz H, Xiong W, Meloy JR, Janofsky J, Harry B, Resnick PJ. Extreme Overvalued Beliefs, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 48 (3), 319-326, 2020.

3. Rahman T, Abugel J: Extreme Overvalued Beliefs: Clinical and Forensic Dimensions. Oxford University Press. New York, 2024.

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