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School Shooting As a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal Hostile Intentions

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School Shooting As a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal Hostile Intentions ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY School Shooting as a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal Hostile Intentions Antonio Preti, MD Suicide with hostile intent encompasses a wide range of behaviors, from self-killing by methods that can harm others, to the suicide that generally follows a spree-killing raid. Reports on school shooting, a highly dangerous and lethal behavior that is spreading from North America to European countries, are analyzed within the paradigm of suicide with hostile intent, with the purpose of discovering some elements that might prevent and limit the dissemination of this behavior by imitation. In school shooting, the perpetrators often register a message before their killing raid, as in an ancient form of suicidal assault, the devotio, that was widespread across ancient Mediterranean Roman, Greek, and Hebrew cultures. The development of a code of rules to report on these episodes, likely to attract the interest of the population for their bloody implications, could prevent the dissemination of cultural norms that encourage this behavior. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 36:544–50, 2008 Suicide with hostile intent encompasses a wide range shootings involve multiple intended or actual vic- of behaviors, from self-killing by methods that can tims, often randomly targeted. While many spree- harm others (use of explosives, car driving), to the killing episodes end up with the arrest of the perpe- suicide that generally follows a spree-killing raid.1 trators, or their deaths at the hands of local police The major determinant of these forms of lethal be- authorities trying to subdue them, a large fraction of havior, potentially or intentionally harmful to others, the documented school shootings have ended up is the will to express rage toward those who are seen as with the perpetrators killing themselves. School the source of one’s misfortune.2 shooting, therefore, often implies some suicidal in- Suicide by revenge was known in ancient times,3–5 tention on the part of the perpetrators, who awaited and now it is considered by current anthropological or planned the action with the purpose of commit- and ethnological studies as being stimulated by cul- ting suicide after the execution of one or, generally, turally approved rules that should earn the suicidal many victims. This scenario was proved beyond any actor the support of the community in his or her doubt in the Columbine incident (Littleton, Colo- efforts to obtain compensation for the suffered rado, April 20, 1999).8 wrongs.6,7 School shooting, a dramatic behavior that In this commentary, reports on school shooting is becoming more and more frequent in North are analyzed within the paradigm of suicide with hos- America, and is spreading in Europe, can be attrib- tile intent, to discover some elements that may pre- uted in some way to the mechanics that govern sui- vent and, in particular, limit the dissemination of this cide with hostile intent. behavior by imitation. The expression “school shooting” refers to firearm violence occurring in educational institutions, espe- Evidence on School Shooting cially the mass murder or spree killing of people within such an institution. In most cases, school School shooting is an extremely rare event: there is not an agreed upon definition of what a case is, and it Dr. Preti is Consultant Psychiatrist, Genneruxi Medical Centre, Fo- is even more difficult to define nonevent cases for rensic Consultant in Psychiatry, Cagliari Court, and Adjunct Professor comparison.9 Because of the uncertainty about both of Psychology, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy. Address corre- spondence to: Antonio Preti, MD, Centro Medico Genneruxi, via the numerator and the denominator in studying Costantinopoli 42, I-09129 Cagliari, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] school shootings, the extrapolation of causal path- 544 The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Preti Table 1 Episodes of School Shooting Since 1966 Number of Cases Ending Number of Reported Episodes by Year, Number of Victims, Number of Wounded, With the Suicide of the Location Episodes on Average on Average on Average Perpetrator(s) US 44 1.0 (1966 to 2008) 3.8 6.3 15 (34%) Canada 7 .2 (1975 to 2007) 3.4 7.5 4 (57%) Europe 7 .4 (1989 to 2008) 6.8 8.5 6 (85%) Other 5 .5 (1997 to 2008) 3.0 2.2 None Reported in Wikipedia; updated as of May 29, 2008. ways is a desperate concern for all those required to tional episodes, 5 in 2008 (all in February). The cor- investigate the topic. Since a small number of cases responding events were three in Canada, four in Eu- may be open to a large number of potential causes, rope, and three elsewhere. Roughly half of all pattern matching has been the most frequent method episodes in these locations had occurred in the past used to analyze school shooting scenarios.9,10 Pattern 10 years. The number of victims ranged from 0 to 33 matching is the sole approach that can reduce the by episode in the United States, 1 to 14 in Canada, 0 degree-of-freedom problem, (i.e., too many variables to 17 in Europe, and 1 to 8 elsewhere. to be investigated in too few cases). Indeed, while it is The number of wounded people ranged from 0 to undoubtedly true that many hypothesized causal fac- 31 by episode in the United States, 0 to 19 in Can- tors also recur in many settings in which a school ada, 0 to 37 in Europe, and 0 to 6 elsewhere. On shooting has not happened, negative cases are not average, there were more victims per episode, both informative for identifying necessary but not suffi- murdered and wounded, in Europe than in the cient factors (the first line in causation). United States or Canada. Data from Wikipedia were used to investigate the Often a single perpetrator was responsible for the phenomenon; Wikipedia is rather accurate in de- killing, but sometimes more than one assailant was scribing facts, at a level that has been equated to the involved in the episode, as in the Columbine inci- Encyclopaedia Britannica.11 Data were inspected on dent. The assault ended up with the perpetrator’s April 25, 2008, and again on May 29, 2008. As a suicide more often in Europe than in the United matter of fact, there is no alternative but to use media States, Canada, or elsewhere. In the United States, coverage such as that reported in Wikipedia to ana- the majority of events (60%) ended with the capture lyze the phenomenon of school shooting, since these of the perpetrator(s). deaths are not routinely reported to state or federal However, sometimes a suicide note was retrieved agencies and cannot be identified by using traditional in cases in which the perpetrator was arrested or public health or criminal justice data sources.12,13 killed by police authorities in the course of the inci- A total of 44 episodes were listed to have occurred dent. Among those sentenced to prison, in some in the United States from 1966 to 2008. Seven listed cases evidence of insanity was found, but details on episodes occurred in Canada (from 1975 to 2007), this occurrence were not available for many of the and 12 outside North America from 1989 to 2007 episodes. (Table 1). There were seven episodes in Europe (three in Germany, and two in Finland), and five occurred elsewhere (Australia, India, Argentina, Past Investigations on the Topic Yemen, The Philippines). In a survey considering all episodes of school- The incidence of episodes was higher in the related violent deaths that occurred in the United United States than elsewhere, with a robust trend States from 1992 to 1999, single-victim student ho- toward an increasing number of episodes over time micides were found to have decreased significantly, (about one episode every 10 years; ␤ ϭ 0.65, t ϭ while multiple-victim homicides increased.12 More 3.80, p ϭ .001, R2 ϭ 43%, adj. R2 ϭ 40%). recent data, from 1999 to 2006, revealed a reversed Following the Columbine incident (April 20, pattern, with single-victim student homicides in- 1999: 15 victims), the bloodiest episode in the creasing and multiple-victim homicides decreas- United States before the Virginia Tech massacre ing.13 In the 37 incidents investigated by the Secret (April 16, 2007: 33 victims), there were 24 addi- Service’s National Threat Assessment Center within Volume 36, Number 4, 2008 545 School Shooting as an Expression of Suicidal Intentions the Safe School Initiative (SSI), all perpetrators (n ϭ Concerns have been raised on the chance that sen- 41) were boys or young men.14 sational publicity about a violent crime or suicide Most of the victims were adolescents (mean and may cause an increase in similar violent behavior. median, 15 years; age range, 6–18). In approxi- Media guidelines have been proposed to reduce the mately half of the incidents, one or more of the vic- impact of this alleged copycat effect.22 Results seem tims were targeted before the attack. In most, the encouraging for decreasing copycat suicide.23 attacks were planned in advance.14 Media coverage of school shooting, too, was re- More than 50 percent of school shooting events ported to have been followed by an increase of threats were preceded by some action that might have against schools. In the four weeks immediately after warned of the potential for impending violence.10,12 the Columbine incident, for example, up to 350 stu- More relevant to the intent of this article, homicide dents were arrested in the United States on charges of perpetrators were often found to have expressed sui- having raised some kind of threat against a school.24 cidal behavior such as suicidal
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