Navigating the cluttered corridors of Jared Loughner's mind will take psychiatrists months or years. We will likely never know all the reasons he took a cab to that Safeway on Jan. 8, paid with a $20 bill, calmly got his change and then killed six people and wounded 14 others.
But snapshots of his life are accumulating from acquaintances and his few friends. (His parents issued a short statement of apology, but they are said to be too distraught to speak about their son.) These snapshots depict a quiet, normal boy who had grown into a man descending steadily into serious mental illness. A partisan, highly nonscientific debate has erupted over whether extreme right-wing rhetoric could have inflamed whatever illness he may have and caused him to target Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. We don't know the answer, but psychological research suggests that political rhetoric could never be the single cause that leads a person with complex mental problems to commit violence.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2042358,00.html#ixzz1jH3st5fD
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