Praying for Peace

I want to post about Japan because it was amazing, but before I do I feel compelled to write about a recent event on the campus of UT-Austin. A student ran around campus with an AK-47 shooting random shots (thankfully without actually shooting anyone), before killing himself on the 6th floor of the Perry Castañeda Library (PCL).  As a staffer/student who has pretty much been around UT since 2003 (I feel old), I always wondered at the back of my mind the possibility of a gunman opening fire on campus. With a student population of 50,000, it seemed possible there could be just one that would do something like that. 

On the first Wednesday of every month at 11:50 a.m. the school conducts a siren test throughout the whole campus. The sound is so eerie and occasionally creates images of a disgruntled student causing tragedy on campus.

Sadly, on September 28th- a Tuesday, the sirens went off and everyone began receiving text messages alerting them a gunman was on campus and to stay put. After a while, the UT community was told the student had shot himself.

The incident has made me think about society's general perception of mental illnesses and the importance of getting help. I use the word general because I know I'm making a really broad generalization, but in my experience it seems like people associate a stigma with mental illnesses. I'm aware that plenty of pharmaceutical companies are spending millions of dollars trying to get people who may not really have a mental illness to purchase their products. I understand there are people who think taking a "happy pill" will fix their problems. Still, there are people who have a genetic predisposition to mental illness. Sometimes the genes never get expressed, but other times, whether it be environmental factors or whatever else, people suffer.

My heart breaks for this student who resorted to suicide to finish whatever torment he was experiencing. I imagine his friends and family are asking themselves what they could have done to prevent this from happening. I did not know this student, but I really wish that at some point he could have received psychiatric help, some sort of counseling, some sort of comfort that would help him make it another day.