...As could be the case with Colorado shooter James Holmes, mental illness, combined with our broken mental health care system, may turn out to be the culprit in Wisconsin.
While Page had almost no criminal history, a telling moment occurred in 1998. Although he had joined the military in 1992 and been assigned to psychological operations--an exclusive department that develops and deploys intelligence information used for psychological effect (propaganda)--he was dismissed from the army during 1998, and received a discharge "under other than honorable conditions."
The reasons why Page was not honorably discharged, just like the reasons why James Holmes withdrew from the University of Colorado, must be made known. Because if both men were displaying signs of a mental disorder, and if both men were then cut loose from the organizations with which they were affiliated (the military, for one; a university, for the other), then a lack of followup would amount to those organizations washing their hands of these psychologically disordered, potentially dangerous men, without due care being taken to protect the rest of us from them.
There are many among us who are so vulnerable, so fragile, that losses we would be pained by, but move on from, lead them to kill themselves, or others, or both.
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At present, our mental health care system is so fractured, with followup so unreliable, information so scattered and authority granted to psychiatrists so meager, that those with delusions, even those who have expressed the desire and intent to kill others, falling through the cracks isn't the exception; it's the rule...
