Columbine

[michaelflanagansf]

A person, like myself, is born with a tendency to depression, there is a lot of it in the family, society thinks that people such as myself are weak, feeble, disorganised in our thinking, and responsible for our conditions, they demand we change, "pull our socks up," "snap out of it."
That we change, become "normal," which we can't.
The stereotype of the person with mental health difficulties is that they are the "mad axe man, with staring eyes, coming to bludgeon you to death."

Both of these situations in life, dissimilar though they are are are condemned by society, whilst being so regularly apparent that they are commonplace.
This is the way I see them as being similar, not that I was equating homosexuality with an illness. An illness can make you feel terrible, there is nothing about being gay that should do that to you, but societal attitudes, may attempt it, unless they are shown to be wrong and misguided.

All difference in nature has to be accepted and understood if we are to create a better society, but of course really dangerous individuals like Eric Harris have to be prevented from harming others. It is not helpful when society insists that all mental disability and difference is the same, and is the fault of the person so affected.

All of this brings me back to Dylan - the person in the book with a depressive mental illness who didn't bludgeon anyone to death but did kill several people.  Within the context of the book what I would wonder is at what points you feel Dylan could have been 'saved?'  I would also wonder if you felt that Dylan's parents (who seemed very attentive, concerned and all in all good parents to me) missed any cues that could have lead them to finding out about their child's illness?

An over-arching question for me (and I suppose it does in a way reflect on gayness and my own personal experience as my mother found out about my being gay when I was 14) is this:  how much intrusion into the lives of children do you believe is allowed/appropriate to find out about their problems and/or issues?  For Dylan it probably would have required his parents finding and reading his journals.  Is the ever okay?  I would particularly be interested in hearing from parents about experiences they had while raising their children.  And, I would add, this doesn't necessarily have to relate to something like mental illness or homosexuality - merely being concerned about when a child has become sexually active (or potential drug use) is the kind of thing that I would imagine troubles parents and makes them wonder about how much intrusion into their child's life is too much.

And, of course, it would be really helpful to relate as much of this as possible back to the book.

[dejavu]

As far as Dylan and mental illness/depression goes, there's a good chance he could have been helped by being on medication to treat depression.  Eric was the one taking psychiatric medication (Luvox), but that medication is in the antidepressant category and is specifically used to treat social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Maybe some of Eric's symptoms looked like OCD, but the medication would not have gotten at his underlying psychopathy.  Dylan's condition was a much more treatable disorder, with medications that can often be effective.

The key would have been for someone who was looking into his misbehavior -- parents, counselors, diversion social workers -- to recognize that he had a probable medical condition (clinical depression is a medical condition).  I can't address the question of how much snooping the parents should have done; I'll leave that to a parent to address.  But a couple of points come to mind.  First, I'm not sure, even had the Klebolds seen Dylan's journals, whether they would have connected the "crazy" writing to depression, and taken him to a psychiatrist.  Second, I think depressed kids sometimes attempt to communicate their depression to parents, at least by sending nonverbal signals (apathy about school work might be one way), and the parents miss those signals because they just don't believe that anything is seriously wrong with their child.

I do have some personal experience with some of this, because I have been taking medication for a condition related to depression for over a decade, with happy results.  I am fine now.  Depression runs on one side of our family, too, and my first "episode" was when I was in ninth grade, younger than Dylan was in the book.  My mother knew something was wrong and was very concerned, but neither she nor the family doctor ever thought of depression.  It was completely misdiagnosed as another type of glandular disorder, and I was given some harmful medication which caused lots of unpleasant side-effects, until an endocrinologist determined that I didn't have that glandular disorder.  But nobody ever picked up on the reason why I had lost interest in normal life in the first place.  So I know it's not easy to read kids' minds, unless they come out and specifically say they are feeling bad.  And then I think the tendency is often as Jess said, to say, "snap out of it," etc.

[janjo]

I don't know when Dylan could have been "saved." I suppose it would come down to him and one of his parents having a good enough relationship for him to have confided in them just how suicidal he felt. It could equally well have been a teacher who noticed the way his thought processes were going and was able to have broken down his wall of resistance to talking about just how bad he was feeling.
Neither of these things really happened.
Perhaps also, some of the staff involved after the van robbery might have intervened.
Dylan seems a somewhat atypical depressive, in that despite feeling so full of fear, anger and anxiety he is able to function, to attend school, to interact with friends etc. More typical would be someone racked by severe panic attacks, paranoia, or too depressed to even get out of bed. Despite his suicidal tendencies he is able to hide what is really going on quite well.
Even if someone had picked  up his symptoms, what treatment would have worked?
The lucky ones amongst us respond well to drug treatments and are able to manage our condition with a mixture of such treatments together with psychological strategies, would medication have helped Dylan?
We don't know.
Treatment is still very much a case of trial and error until a regime is found that is effective.

I do hope your mother was nice to you, Michael, when she found out you were gay, or did she always secretly suspect anyway? The idea that children are not sexual beings, at least to a degree, strikes me as wrong, if only because I can remember having sexual feelings as a quite young child. So discovering a child is sexually active has really to be taken in ones stride.
I can certainly remember finding contraceptive pills in my daughters room when she was about 14. I was glad she was being sensible, and I don't remember giving her a particularly hard time about it, even though she was under age and so was her boyfriend. Obviously the prescribing doctor was satisfied with her reasoning too.
I wasn't looking when I found them, but rather giving her room a thorough clean. She was so messy it certainly needed it!
I don't think I would have read a diary, or journal, though.
If a child had their own public web site I would certainly read it now, although at the time of the Columbine shootings it would probably have been a fairly unusual parent who would have had the knowledge of IT to do it.
All this is a nightmare for parents, where do you draw the line?
Is there a right or wrong answer?
I do know one thing, and that is that I did the best I could, and probably on occasions got things spectacularly wrong.
Being a parent to teenagers is very difficult and fraught with problems whichever way you tackle it.

[dejavu]

Here are the questions for the fifth section of 'Columbine.'  As always, please feel free to contribute questions of your own!

Michael, I finished the rereading for Part 5, but will be away all day tomorrow.  I'd still like to go through your questions in order, and see what the other people have written, and if I can add something to some of them, I'll do that on Monday, if that's okay.  (But I leave for Alberta at the end of the week so can't really spend more than one day on them.)

[Dave Cullen]

I have a question for you Dave [and I would encourage other participants to post questions about the book to Dave as he's here and we're in our last few weeks]:

What was the effect on spending all of this time with this topic on you?  Did your opinions on various people in the event change over time?  Did your opinion about Eric and Dylan evolve over time?  Were there periods that you just wanted to get away from both of them?

The hard part emotionally was covering the survivors, not the killers. (Though Dylan got to me eventually, it was the survivors that weighed on me for years.) In that "Vacant" chapter set the morning after the attack, nearly all of those scenes were from my direct observation out there in Clement Park. The vacant stares on those kids really shook me up that morning, and I feared for years what would become of them. I spent days and days with the kids early on, and absorbed a lot of what they were feeling. All my later responses brought those back.

So the killers were a breeze in comparison, particularly Eric. He was like studying a disease under a microscope. He didn't really affect me emotionally.

I had two bouts with PTSD writing the book. I wrote an essay about the second one here:

http://www.borders.com/online/store/ArticleView_cullen?cmpid=SL_20090407_NR

My opinion of Dylan changed greatly over time. I knew after the first year that he was depressive, but I really didn't grasp fully what that meant, or certainly his particular situation. Reading his journal about seven years after the attack was a complete shock to me.

My opinion of Eric changed a lot in the first year, because initially I had no idea he was a psychopath, or even what that meant. Once I got that, he never really changed for me. He's a pretty classic case, and turned out not to have a whole lot of unexpected nuance. Dylan was incredibly nuanced.

The other people didn't really change much once I got to know them. I met them at different times, and learned more about them as I went, but I don't recall any big shifts.

[Dave Cullen]

Dave - Michael's question is also one which interests me, I have often wondered how people keep their own focus and balance when dealing with the same topic over such a long timespan. I think my own viewpoint would keep shifting, unless i had a fixed 'story' in my mind. So how did you keep perspective?

Well I think it was good for my views to develop and evolve over time, which they did. Time was a great thing. It gave me perspective. I ran into Frank DeAngelis just yesterday and Lucinda Roy's book on V Tech came up. It was published two years after V Tech, meaning she probably had to write most or all of it within the first year. I told him I struggled reviewing it for the W Post, because I liked some things in it a lot, but overall, I didn't like it at all.

He said, Well, imagine either of us trying to get Columbine down a year after it. We both have come so far in that time, it's almost humorous to look at how clueless we were about it then--particularly about the aftermath, the grief, the survivors. We could only guess at how it would play out--even for ourselves. What we needed was time for that to happen, and then more time to get perspective on that.

Luckily, I wrote most of the survivors' story chronologically, so I did the most recent stuff last, which gave me a few more years distance before I started it. That helped. (I wrote the killers' stories separately, too. I took nine months away from the survivors and did all Eric for five months, and then all Dylan for about four.)

I helped to have breaks from each. Spending almost a year on the killers gave me some perspective when I went back to the survivors.

Finally, I turned the whole manuscript in on Jan 15, 2007. It was 800 pages. I had a lot of rewriting to do, and told my agent I was wavering between plunging right back in or taking a little break while she and my editor read it. She begged me to take a break. The further I got away from it for a little while, the better, she said. That helped.

Then she (Betsy) and edited the whole thing twice between Feb and May. (Actually we did the first half once, started over and did it again, and then did two passes through the second half.) We cut 200 pages. Then we left Dutton and Jonathan Karp bought it for Twelve and we started over editing with him. He did one pass, I made changes and we did another pass where his assistant made comments, and then Jon commented on those comments in another color pen. (All this is done on paper.) We cut another 200 pages in those rounds. Then we started the copy-editing phase, which was huge, and I kept making changes  and doing rewrites all the way to Halloween.

So I don't know if I answered your question, but I think the evolution of my feelings was a good thing. For the most part, I knew the gist of what I wanted to accomplish from about 2004, when I reconceived the book, but I had so much to figure out. That's what the next five years was for.

[Dave Cullen]

Dave, My qustion is a bit similar to those above.   I've been wondering whether you were able to shake the depression (if you had any) while writing 'Columbine.'  Did you feel the need to get out and about to 'clear your head' after the darkness of the novel?


Question 2:  How were the reviews and comments of the Littleton community -- did you encounter anyone who resented your novel, and why?  Did they feel you were being an intrusive part of the press?

The Borders essay I wrote and linked to above will give you a good idea about my trouble with depression. As for shaking it, it came in the middle of the last Harry Potter movie, so it was two years ago this month. (I think they released the films on the same weekend in July, so it was excactly two years ago.)

I went to the new Harry movie Friday night, and just before I went, I wrote a blog entry about how the depression lifted in about one hour into it. I went from highly depressed to exuberant in about ten seconds. (I mention which scene in the post, which is here):

http://opensalon.com/blog/dave_cullen/2009/07/17/harry_potter_is_special_for_me_because

That was my last experience with depression of any significance. Thank God.

I would say that while I worked on the book, the biggest thing I did to keep the darkness away was dancing. I used to go nearly every Friday or Saturday night, but we don't have any good Friday night gay danceclubs in Denver anymore, so it's pretty much Saturday night. I went onto six day workweeks about four years ago when the first deadline loomed, and never really went off, so that's my night off, and then Sunday is off. (Though I still end up getting online to respond to reader mail, do online chats, etc. most Sundays. But I don't feel I HAVE to do anything Sunday if I don't want. It's a guilt-free day.)

But yeah, dancing is my great joy, and takes ita ll away. I'm very much in the present there, and really don't worry about any of the great weights looming over me.

Going to the gym really helps, in kind of a similar, milder way. The last three years (right after a family reunion in July 2006, I think) I made it a priority, and I feel so much healthier, so much better. I go 4-5 nights a week and it really clears my head, clears all the emotion out of my body. When you're lying there on the bench with a couple hundred pounds you have to force up several times, it takes tremendous concentration, and all the blood flows there, and everything else gets squeezed out. I really feel my body invigorated, and it's like fresh blood rushing through my brain clearing all that muck out, like the spring snowmelt rushing through a canyon with the water level 12 feet higher, and the water churning through at a furious pace. When the water level drops again, everything has been cleansed.

---

After I finished the book I felt a great weight lift. That was gradual. I sent the final corrected page proofs around Halloween, and around December, I noticed that I was only having crying fits a couple times a month. I knew that was way down, because several months earlier, my shrink had asked how often they came and I'd said about three to four times a week. (She winced at that, which surprised me--she usually covered her reactions--and I said, "Is that a lot?" She sighed and said, "Yeah, that's a lot." I thought back and realized I'd never cried frequently, until the last ten years, but it had been going on so long I'd just gotten used to it and forgotten it was a lot.)

It was really lifting by December though. Not an immediate feeling of the weight lifting one days, but gradual, so I didn't notice as it happened, only noticed afterward.

But since I mailed the stuff off, I went into book-promotion mode--and also taking care of some loose ends on the book--and I've been nearly full-time at it ever since. I'm just now getting to a point where  I can start on a few other things one day a week. So I'm not really onto anything new yet, but the promotion part is completely different, like a whole different occupation.


----

Nearly all the response from the local community has been positive--and very strongly so. For the most part, they were really grateful to have the whole story together in one place, and to have their story told with . . . (I hope it's OK to say this, but they have said with empathy and caring about them). That was a big relief. What they also said, and this part took me by surprise a bit, was that they were really grateful to finally get Eric and Dylan's story. Most were completely surprised by what they learned about the killers, and glad to finally understand what happened after ten years. (And many were angry and/or frustrated that it took ten years for them to get it.)

The main dissenter has been Randy Brown, who seems to have two big problems. 1) He feels the main reason for Columbine was bullying, 2) He says that describing Eric as a psychopath is just calling him crazy, and that let's him off the hook. (I feel the latter is a clear misunderstanding of what psychopathy is--not crazy--and that regardless, we have to try to figure out what Eric was about and say it, regardless of whether we like what we find.)

---

Early on, most people out in Jeffco came to resent anyone from the media showing up, including me. But actually, at many different points, they also wanted to get the word out on things and sometimes came to us, and/or were eager to comment on developments that came up.

Over the years, though, you develop sources, and most of the people I dealt with came to know and trust me, so it wasn't a big issue for me personally much of the time.

[dejavu]

Thanks for your responses, Dave.  It's great to be able to get your personal perspective on Columbine and on your writing experience.

[dejavu]

I'm going to try answering a few of the remaining questions today.

1.)  Regarding plans for the attack Dylan's notebook showed 'virtually no effort.'  Do you think this is because of his overall depressive mental state and is related to other manifestations of it (e.g. flunking phys ed) or something else?

Dylan’s lack of effort on the attack planning could be a sign that he wasn’t truly committed to the plan; however, after a certain point, Dylan seemed to very enthusiastic about it (as in his excited performance in the Basement Tapes).  I think Dylan was said to be manic-depressive (bipolar), not just depressive.  He seemed to me to be in a manic phase when he was getting so high and excited on the Basement Tapes.  His poor performance in school seems to reflect his depressed state and suicidal thoughts (why bother with school if he didn’t think he was going to have a future?).   

It’s important to remember that the signs of depression include disorganized thinking, lack of concentration, and inability to follow through on projects, and IMO this could account for his lack of effort on the attack planning, regardless of his level of commitment to those plans.  So I think there were two things at work:  one, in the beginning, he wasn’t as commited as Eric to those plans; and two, even if he had been committed, he wasn’t in the right state of mind to follow through with attention to details.

[dejavu]

5.)  What do you think Dylan's motivation was for the creative writing project that got the attention of his teacher?  The book indicates that the teacher did all she could regarding this writing project - do you agree?  Do you think the counselor should have picked up on the cues in this paper?

 

Dylan seemed to be motivated by NBK to write the story -- the character in the story was a blend of Eric and Dylan -- The man did it for vengeance and amusement, and to demonstrate he could.  The author writes that the teacher had done the right thing; she contacted the three people most likely to have other information about Dylan: his guidance counselor and parents.  Since the teacher, herself, considered it "the most vicious story I ever read," I would think the parents or counselor would have been alerted.  How good was the counselor -- did she/he have proper training and experience?  A degree in guidance counseling doesn't necessarily mean the person is good at counseling.  The parents seemed oblivious also.

This story was definitely sending out warning signs, especially since it came from Dylan, not Eric (Dylan, who had talked so much about love in his journal and adorned it with hearts).  I think the teacher did the right thing by talking to the guidance counselor and to the Klebolds.  She actually showed it to the counselor and let him read it, so that was the farthest she could have pursued it with him.  The counselor, in turn, did discuss the story with Dylan, but I don’t think he had enough training to  take the possible warning signs in the story seriously enough.

With the Klebolds, it sounds like the teacher only discussed it on the phone with them:  would they have been more alarmed if she had given it to them to read personally?  One other thing the teacher might have done would have been to show the story to Mr. D.  He also seemed to have a hard time accepting that all was not perfect with his students, but there’s a chance that he might have been concerned enough to bring in an outside psychologist to look at it.  However, I think there’s a much greater chance that outside opinions would be called in the post-Columbine era, than they would have then.

I wondered briefly whether law enforcement should have been called in, but I don’t think there was sufficient evidence for that; to them, it also would have been “just a story.” 

[dejavu]

7.)  Do you think Brian Rohrbough's opinions regarding the school were justified?  Were his feelings part of his healing process - that is, did he need to place the blame somewhere?

Brian felt he had been betrayed, and that the school and Jeffco officials had lied to the parents.  He was angry and emotionally devastated by Danny's death.  His judgments were harsh and bitter, and he needed someone to blame even though it didn't seem to help in the healing process for him particularly.

Nikki says it well.  I just want to add that Brian Rohrbough is one of the people in this book who gets on my nerves the most.  I understand his anger and devastation regarding Danny’s death, and I understand how he felt the parents had been lied to (because they had).  But neither the shooting not the police activity that day nor the Jeffco coverup were the school’s fault.  From the time that Brian went out and hacked the killers’ crosses to pieces, he seemed like a “loose cannon” to me.

What Brian desperately needed was some therapy, someone to talk all his feelings out with.  This might have been difficult for a man with his “macho” background in an auto shop to recognize, but I think it would have helped him.  His continual blaming of others was his way of trying to deal with his loss, but I don’t think it helped him to heal.  He probably would have been better off doing what others eventually learned to do:  forgiving.

[Nikki]

To Dave Cullen:

First, I want to apologize for using the word "novel" when referring to your book in my posted questions.  I think I was brain-dead at the time.

Second and most important, I want to thank you for your lengthy, thoughtful, and informative answer to my questions. It must be hard to relive all of this; I felt guilty after reading your post, it was so personal in many ways.


Your poignant Borders essay about your second bout with PTSD was so touching it could have been an appendix to the book.  I wanted to copy it for one of my daughters who plans to read 'Columbine,' but my stupid printer is on the blink.  How great that you found joy in the Harry Potter film -- you did need a light moment -- and that your depression lifted.  I love Harry, read all the books, and saw the latest film last week. A trip to Hogwarts can take you out of yourself!  So dancing lifted some of the darkness for you?  I think it's wonderful that doing something you love kept the darkness a bay.

I'm so glad the response from the local community has been positive.  It vindicates the sincere effort you put into something that will become a cautionary classic of a horrible tragedy.  I guess you can never change Randy Brown's opinion. He has to come around in his own time, and maybe he'll realize one can't just write off Eric as crazy, or that bullying was the main reason for 'Columbine.'  Did he read your book?  If not, maybe it would help him to understand psychopathy, and maybe not.

Again, thank you, Dave, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer my questions.  I appreciate it more than I can say, and wish you luck in all your endeavors.

Nikki

[dejavu]

9.)  In 'Ready To Be Done' Dave begins wrapping up the aftereffects of the killings.  What events (e.g., the sealing of the parents depositions, Michael Moore's conclusions, Mr. D's divorce) were predictable and which came as a surprise to you?

I agree with everything Nikki said about this earlier, but want to echo that one of the one of the worst examples of post-Columbine behavior was that Rev. Marxhausen was forced out of his parish.  I do understand why his parishioners hated the Klebolds at that moment; still, it was his duty to minister to them in their hour of need, and he should not have faced these sorts of repercussions.

I also found it surprising that Judge Babcock sealed the depositions for 20 years, and don’t agree with that.  The material in there that is relevant to preventing future tragedies should be made available right now.

[dejavu]

10.) Why do you think the vast majority of school shooters are male?

This is really a guess based on other cultural trends I’ve observed, and some sociological studies I’ve read.

For one thing, I’m reminded of (not terribly recent) studies of suicide which showed that male suicides were far more likely to use a gun than were female suicides.  Females were more likely to use something we would perceive as “non-violent,” such as overdosing on pills.  This may be changing, since more women today carry weapons for self-protection than in the past.  (And of course, Anne Marie’s mother used a gun to kill herself.)  But traditionally, men have owned guns, enjoyed collecting guns and going to gun shows, and enjoyed shoot ‘em up movies and entertainment more than women. 

So I’m guessing that when a male student feels sufficiently angry or traumatized to want to act out his feelings, it would be more in keeping with his cultural upbringing to find a gun and attempt a violent attack on others.  Female students would be more likely to turn their anger against themselves and engage in behavior which shows low self-esteem, such as sexual promiscuity or even prostitution.   

[dejavu]

11.)  Do you think the revised list of FBI guidelines and warning signs regarding school attacks are specific enough?  Given the list of warning signs are more likely to describe a child who is depressed what should be done if a child manifests several of these warning signs?

The book says that the list of warning signs was “specific,” and included symptoms of both psychopathy and depression.  We are only given a small excerpt of the warning signs, so I would imagine that it is “specific enough” or “inclusive enough.”  The problem would be training someone at each school to serve as an expert in recognizing the signs.  Also, I recognize a few of the symptoms as coming from the Paychopathy Checklist (superiority, narcissism) so it would be helpful to qualify the symptoms as to whether they are more likely to indicate a psychopath or a depressive. 

This would aid in identifying which students would be candidates for therapy aimed at treating depression.  Depressives are not normally threats to others and are not normally the people who would be planning an attack, so therapy would be the first option.  For a psychopath, given the lack of readily available treatment, and given their greater likelihood to be planning either an attack or some sort of rip-off of others, caution and watchfulness would be the best options until there was solid evidence which could warrant getting law enforcement involved.