All the articles now are starting to tell the tale of just how very disturbed Jared Loughner was. The rapid progression is rather alarming actually.
Snipped, bolded by me.
No, actually, this is a typical progression of schizophrenia. It can seem alarmingly fast, but I'd venture to guess that it was years in coming; he was considered "odd" in high school, and it's 4 years since he's graduated (if my math is correct).
I'll venture another guess and say that we are hearing only a small portion of what went on in his mind...he's probably been hearing voices and been disturbed for a long while, and only in the last year and a half or so have the symptoms been so overt that someone with no training/experience in MI and outside the situation would think "hm. Something is wrong."
So if we think of it as beginning in HS, when his friends said he asked some strange questions, and think about when overt symptomology occurred (probably when he was in college, and according to some internet postings attributed to him, spring 2010), it really wasn't "too fast".
The key time in his MI was when it began to manifest outside his own mind, and that probably would've been in high school. That was when treatment would've been easier, more successful, and might've stopped this event. It was missed, as most MI is missed, in the early stage, and the development of the illness gathered steam, gained momentum, and a few years later, we have this situation on our hands.
Family and friends must be under so much guilt. I feel very bad for them.
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Herding Cats