Focusing on Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho as a disturbed mental patient has led media analysts to ponder how he could have been more readily identified by the mental health system. But Cho is not someone who slipped beneath the psychiatric radar. Instead, he was frequently detected as a large object on the screen. On separate occasions, he was involuntarily hospitalized, sent for psychological evaluation, and referred to the university counseling center. Consistent with getting him more psychiatric “help,” experts have also opined on how he might have benefited from medication. These are all the wrong lessons.

1. Love is joyful awareness. Love life—people, animals, nature, gardening, art and music, sports and exercise, literature, God—anything and anyone that brings you a joyful awareness of the wonder of being a living creature.

Getting the FDA to move forward by presenting it with scientific data is like using a peacock feather to tickle a sleeping giant tortoise on its shell. Many people die before the agency opens its eyes and then it barely reacts at all.

Recent reports in media describe retired star baseball pitcher Jeff Reardon as commiting a senseless robbery typical of victims of antidepressant-induced madness. Apparently taking numerous antidepressants, Jeff Reardon, a wealthy former baseball player, impulsively robbed a jewelry store armed with the threat of a non-existent gun. Instead of walking out with valuable jewelry, he left with $170 in a bag. Reardon was so aghast by his own actions, he turned himself in to a security guard on the way out of the mall, explaining to the surprised guard, “I completely lost my mind.” Later he told the police, “I flipped on my medications.” Reardon had been in treatment following the death of his son by an overdose two years earlier.

Newly released information demonstrates that the manufacturer of Paxil withheld key data concerning the risks associated with its antidepressant Paxil. The drug company Glaxo SmithKline failed to release its complete data concerning rates of suicidality on Paxil. In the information that was originally provided to the FDA, the number of suicide attempts on the antidepressant Paxil was under-reported and the number of suicide attempts on placebo was inflated. The drug company also hid the stimulating effects of the drug that pose a potential risk for causing violence.

On August 19th the headline in my local newspaper the Ithaca Journal declared, “Threatened men more pro war, SUVs.” The reporter asked the question, “What makes a macho man?” and then replied, “A simple threat to his masculinity could to the trick, according to Cornell University sociologist Robb Willer.”

On June 25, 2005 Tom Cruise did the unthinkable on TV. Actually, he did several “unthinkables” in a filmed interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer for the Today Show.